From 1991 until 2002, I carried a Beretta 21A in my pocket; which is a gun you frequently espouse. Great little gun when I bought it:
- small enough to pocket carry unobtrusively,
- DA, which meant no need to dink with the safety prior to firing (which is important as I carried it in my left-hand pocket),
- fed Stingers and any plated hi-velocity or hyper-velocity ammo fine
Couple years ago, I replaced it in my pocket with a P32. The only negative in doing so was ammo cost. Other than that, it's"
- lighter,
- thinner,
- holds the same number of rounds, and
- holds a larger, more powerful round.
I understand the idea of the .22's price letting you practice enough to get 'good' with it, but I am good enough for this type of gun's use. Neither the P32 or the 21A is a match gun; they're "shoot & scoot" guns, meant as a close-range surprise.
A .22's easier to suppress, but as my 21A wasn't suppressed, it's not an issue for the P32, either.
Again, the ONLY "downside" is ammo cost, and as I only shoot this particular gun probably one or two hundred rounds a year, that's not that big a concern.
Size, weight, thickness, power; the P32 is measurably better in all these categories.
For a non-suppressed, small defensive pocket pistol, I'd be curious to hear what advantages the 21A has over the P32, in a head-to-head comparison. Because the P32 has the four measurable, objective advantages listed above, and I'd be curious to see how the 21A off-sets those somehow.
And as I said, I still own (and actually still like) the 21A; so I'm not bashing it. It's just that when I stepped back & compared their characteristics side-by-side, the P32 was even better in four categories, and tied in the fifth (capacity). After that, as much as I like the 21A, it would be intellectually dishonest of me to proclaim the 21A as the "better" of the two.