I do enjoy when a company makes a serious item without taking itself overly seriously, and Taurus naming their optic ready option the Taurus Optic Ready Option, making the acronym TORO, when their emblazed Brazilian emblem has long been and remains a bull, is just that type of casual nod to not taking themselves too seriously that I find delightful.
Taurus has been quietly making efforts to solidify their position in the industry. Their products are the juggernaut of low cost handguns, period. But their hit and miss reliability in the past (*cough* 24/7) has pushed them out of consideration for many serious shooters. Trust, once lost, is hard to earn again.
Taurus is aware of this. Taurus is aware that even if they brought out a Glock or Sig grade handgun tomorrow, it wouldn’t and couldn’t turn the bull on a dime. It would also abandon the customer base that has allowed them to succeed thus far by suddenly entering the ~$700 handgun market from the ~$300.
The company has known it had to introduce positive change to its image without abandoning its base market, and those paying attention saw the first fruits of that change in the devilishly popular TX22, which is now among the most popular .22LR pistols on the market as a trainer. Heck, it probably has a better subjective reputation than the Glock G44’s well documented market pains.
The Taurus G3 came in next, quietly, unassuming, it simply slid in as the next Taurus handgun slightly more expensive than the G2 line. Everyone seems to agree that, while “its a Taurus” the thing runs pleasantly well.
Caleb ran one and it did itself proud.
Steve Fisher and I shot one back and forth for a few hundred rounds too. I left with the same impression he had.
If I needed it, I wouldn’t hesitate to buy it.
I just don’t need it, but someone certainly does.
And it is that brilliant little shift in course that Taurus is continuing to steer itself into. Not trying to topple a market full of premium duty handguns that they could not, not without tremendous cost (and their competitors failing spectacularly), but to start losing the stigma of serious shooters actively sneering the brand while steadily offering their customers more. They’ve seen other companies hit low spots and rise again to respect, they can rise too. Most importantly, they’re putting in the right work to do it.
And thus, we are back to the G3 T.O.R.O.
The G3 has earned that quiet nod of respect in a competitive industry. A collective, “Not bad, Taurus.” that holds more sincerity than any bombastic YouTube review ever truly could to non-Taurus customers. The obvious next step is join the optics ready market.
So you take your ‘not bad’ pistol and make it able to take every popular dot on the open market, from Trijicon to TruGlo, and open the utility of your handgun to your customer base and new potential owners wide. Handgun optics are mainstream. To be mainstream, Taurus must work with optics. Now they do.
For a $408.77 MSRP for the G3 and G3c TORO models, you can assemble a dotted pistol for around $600-800 with the foundational expectation that it holds up.
I want to run one, actually I want to run a sample of several, through a handgun course or few and see just where Taurus has pushed their failure limits forward to. Every gun can and will fail, but seeing a massive company like Taurus starting to catch Sig, Glock, Walther, and Smith & Wesson will result in an even stronger push by the whole industry towards better products.
And if for no other reason at all, the G3 TORO rocks for that.
