TTAG Amber Alert for Caracal C 9mm w/Speed Sights

NAME: Caracal C
HEIGHT: 5 Inches
AGE: New In Box
MISSING SINCE: January 16th, 2012
LAST SEEN: 2500 Utah Street, Boulder City, NV

Have you seen this gun? We haven’t lost it (we leave gun-losing to the ATFE and the Red Jacket crew) but we really really really want to test it, and we can’t find this speed-sighted Caracal C anywhere. It made a big splash at the SHOT show last month, and a handful of its conventionally-sighted siblings are available for sale at Centerfire Systems, but the Caracal and its manufacturer have suddenly disappeared as mysteriously as Glenn Miller or Amelia Earhart.

So we’re putting out our very first Amber Gun Alert, because we know that somewhere out there in the great big Internet, somebody has seen one of these pistols. And that somebody out there can help us find one.

The German-designed, U.A.E.-built humpback 9mm was one of our favorite pistols from the whole SHOT Shot extravaganza. Farago and I both loved the bizarre-looking speed sights built into the front of the slide, even though they make the gun look like the fuselage of a Sopwith Camel. Nobody wants to be an ‘early adopter’ on the bleeding edge of new technology, but our quality control qualms were calmed by the knowledge that the Caracal had already been accepted for military use by the notoriously OCD weapons inspectors of the Bundesrepublik Deutschland. When it comes to guns (or cars, or aircraft, or beer), if it’s good enough for Germans, it’s good enough for me.

When it comes to popular music? Not so much…But I digress.

Caracal seemed to spare no expense at the SHOT show: their Range Day booth was well-staffed and generously supplied with guns and ammunition. A trade ambassador from the U.A.E. was personally on hand, along with a few of Caracal’s German engineering wonks, and they all bent over backwards to make sure we had some quality trigger time on their new pride and joy.

It worked. Ever since we were finally escorted from the darkened press room of the Sands Conference Center at the end of the SHOT show, we’ve been trying to secure a Caracal C for testing and evaluation. But our efforts have hit a brick wall. How can that happen, less than a month after our Range Day extravaganza?

Somehow, Caracal USA has dropped off the face of the Earth. The parent corporation’s website, www.caracal.ae, won’t respond to our repeated emails. Their U.S. phone number rings endlessly, with no receptionist or answering machine. Their U.S. fax number has no fax machine connected to it.

Centerfire Systems, the only American Caracal retailer we could find, said they’d only ever received one shipment of Caracals and didn’t expect any more for at least three more months. And most likely from a new, as-yet-unnamed importer.

If you know where we can get a Caracal C like the one in the photo, please contact us at guntruth@me.com, ASAP.

And Caracal, if you’re reading this, please contact us and send us a loaner pistol. If it’s anything like the testers you took to Nevada last month, you’ll be glad you did.