REVIEWS
Perfect Pocket Protection
The abbreviated Kahr 9mm PM9 could render most .380 autos obsolete.
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As I write this column, there is a pistol on my desk. For a guy who fiddles with handguns daily, this is not an uncommon situation. The gun is Kahr Arms' latest model, the 9mm PM9. To the best of my knowledge, it's the first specimen to leave the Massachusetts factory.
Since I saw a prototype at the 2002 SHOT Show in Las Vegas, I've been eagerly awaiting a shooting example of the PM9. It's here, I have fired it, and I believe I am looking at a very significant pistol in the ongoing history of defensive handguns.
In a world full of high-capacity autos in powerful calibers, Kahrs have always been unabashed concessions to common sense. From the first models introduced less than 10 years ago, Kahrs were designed to be small. So small in fact, that they make excellent concealed-carry pistols.
Now any pistol designed for this role faces an uphill fight for acceptance. First of all, it needs to be sufficiently powerful to stop fights--quickly. And it needs to be simple and easy to deploy. Size is critical to concealment, so a proper concealed-carry gun has to be small enough that anyone can tuck it away on their person. The final criteria is arguably the most important of all: weight. The heavier the gun, the greater the likelihood you'll rationalize away the need to carry it "just this one time." And that's the one time you'll likely need it. Nothing is perfect, but the auto that comes closest in the concealed carry ideal has to be powerful, simple, small and light.
Kahr's first model was the all-steel K9. A single-column 9mm, it had a simple and safe DAO trigger system and weighed 25 ounces empty. The demand for a more powerful gun drove Kahr to build the K40, which was basically the same gun in .40 S&W. It required the use of a heavier slide, which raised the weight to 26 ounces. Beautifully made little guns with heavy, strong parts and great reliability, they were instantly popular.
The only knock on them was their weight, which was as much as many full-sized autos. Subsequent models addressed the problem by shortening the butt to make a so-called "Covert" pistol and using a polymer frame in both short and long versions. Polymer really created a light pistol--17.9 ounces as opposed to the original K9's 25 ounces. There was also a Micro Kahr which was all-steel, but came with a short barrel and butt. The obvious solution was to use the Micro format of short butt, short slide, then make the receiver a very light polymer. The resulting pistol would give up nothing in on-target performance or operational simplicity, but would be a bit smaller and a lot lighter.
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