We’ve published three reviews of the Kel Tec PF-9 over the years, but RF thought it would be a good idea to provide a brief overview for the less gun-savvy readers Googling onto our website in the aftermath of that shooting in Florida. So here’s the quick and dirty run down . . .
The PF-9′s made by Kel Tec. The Florida-based gunmaker didn’t get to the top of the American sales charts by making the world’s best firearms; Kel Tec makes acceptable firearms at a reasonable price. They’re not bad, but they’re not top-tier firearms either.
The Kel Tec PF9 is a self-defense handgun, pure and simple. There are no bells and whistles. For example, there’s no external safety (a switch that must be flicked for the gun to fire), no flared magazine well (a wider opening to make it easier to put bullets/cartridges into the gun under pressure).
The PF-9 is classified as a sub-compact handgun. In other words, it’s an extremely small firearm that’s relatively easy to conceal. As Kel Tec’s website proclaims, the PF-9 is one of the lightest (18.2 oz. fully loaded) and flattest (0.88″ wide) 9mm pistols made.
The PF-9 is what’s called a “double action only” handgun. When you pull the trigger, the movement cocks (pulls backwards) and releases (allows forwards) the hammer (the bit that strikes the cartridge, ignites the charge and sends the bullet out of the muzzle). In that sense, the PF-9 shoots like a revolver (that hasn’t been pre-cocked).
Only worse. The PF-9′s trigger requires less finger effort than most revolvers (5 lbs. of force) but there’s little to no “feel.” You don’t know exactly when the hammer will release. This makes the PF-9 hard to shoot accurately over long distances—unless you have lots of skill and plenty of practice.
That’s not really a problem. Most violent encounters happen at “bad breath” distances; the closer the target the less accuracy required. The PF-9 is more than accurate enough for close-in self-defense.
The PF-9 shoots America’s most popular “caliber” (bullet size): 9mm. Before the recent development of the PF-9 and similar sub-compacts, small guns shot smaller bullets. The 9mm caliber PF-9 generates more muzzle energy (roughly speaking “force”) and shoots a greater variety of less expensive ammunition than the previous generation of sub-compacts.
There are a few drawback to the PF-9′s size . . .
1. The PF-9 tends to get caught-up in clothing when a shooter tries to remove it in a hurry.
Carrying the gun in a proper holster and practicing drawing it from concealment dramatically reduces the chances of this potential problem. But many people who carry handguns this small and (let’s face it) cheap don’t “invest” in a good holster or spend much time practicing unholstering at the range. Even worse there are a number of people who simply pop one of these in a pocket and carry it that way, which makes getting the gun out and into the fight extremely difficult.
2. Shooting the PF-9 creates considerable recoil: the equal and opposite reaction that occurs when the explosion inside the gun sends the bullet forwards.
The smaller the gun, the harder it is to control the recoil for follow-up shots. Recoil can also be painful; reducing the chances that the PF-9′s owner will practice shooting their gun.
3. Small guns are more likely to malfunction than their bigger brothers.
A shooter has to grip a gun like the PF-9 properly for the firearm to cycle (eject a spent cartridge and load another bullet). Smaller guns are harder to grip than bigger guns. And small guns can be ammo sensitive; failing to feed or fire or eject certain types of ammo.
The Kel Tec PF-9 retails for $333. (Gun stores usually sell the PF-9 for a little under three bills.) A roughly similar Ruger LC9 retails for $443, while a “baby Glock” retails for $438. Again, the Kel Tec has a big advantage in terms of concealability.
In short, the PF-9 is the cheap bastard’s carry piece. Small, concealable and deadly.
I think you’re being overly critical of the kel tec’s
Smallest, thinnest lightest 9mm made, actually quite a feat of engineering. Because of the physics involved (size/weight) finicky about ammo and the shooter but reliable when both are accounted for . Widely copied- the lcp and the lc9 are just straight rip offs by ruger. I will never buy or carry any firearm based on price and dont carry the kel tec’s because they (or I) am “cheap”.
Don’t get me wrong — they work, they shoot, and they’re a fine choice for a self defense gun. But they’re the Honda Civic of the gun world. They do it all, but there are models that do it better.
I lol’d at “the honda civic of the gun world.” People at work are looking at me funny.
I think Honda Civics might be insulted by the comparison!
Now if you said they were Kias…
Actually, the DB9 is smaller, thinner, and lighter.
Small, thinner, lighter paperweight. I heard the DB9 is not reliable.
The DB9 holds one less round for it’s smaller size and no last round slide lock. I carry a PF9 when none of my Sigs will hide in what I’m wearing despite the fact that Sig now makes a gun in this size. The Sig P290 is heavier, holds fewer rounds, and manages to be less comfortable to hold, for double the money.
I’ve used a PF-9. I have two complaints:
1) It has a ridiculously long trigger pull and incredibly long reset on the trigger – it’s incredibly hard to be accurate or fast with follow up shots
2) There’s just too much felt recoil. Perhaps this could be mitigated by changing the recoil spring, but, in stock form at least, it’s hard to control the rise of the gun as well as it downright HURTS your fingers to shoot it.
If they put a little effort into fixing those two issues, I think it would be one of the best concealed carry guns out there.
That was my impression as well when I shot my friend’s PF-9. He bought it because he is a cheap bastard and he has had nothing but problems with it. Every kind of malfunction with a wide range of ammo.
I’m wondering if it didn’t load another round because he didn’t have a proper grip on it or because someone had their hand on top of the slide.
I’d personally prefer a revolver of similar size. Tiny nineys are very nice, but tiny revolvers will not jam or fail to feed, which is what may have happened to Zimmerman’s pistol. I wouldn’t shoot a competition with a snubby, but for close work or as a contact weapon, the snubby is unparalleled.
I’ll have to see how a revolver with a trigger job feels. I really hate the heavy double action trigger pulls. I cut my right index finger to the bone as a kid and as a result permanently lost some strength and range of motion. Not enough to make normal everyday tasks an issue, but double action trigger pulls take a huge amount of effort for me. I’m fine with single action or striker fired guns, but I detest double action.
Good issue, CarlosT. I recently bought an Apex trigger kit for my snubby, intending to install it myself. Unfortunately, the factory overtorked the screws holding the side plate, so I can’t remove it to do the install.
I’m going to use a penetrating oil and heat to free the screws. Then I’ll do the install and write it up for TTAG.
Agreed, people look down at revolvers but don’t think that in many defensive cases a semi-auto becomes a single shot. Unless the attacker politely agrees to back away so a contact shot isn’t necessary and give enough space to assume correct grip and avoid limp wristing. Just depends on how things play out in real life.
I saw videos of police training, and they were practicing close-contact shooting with semi-automatics. They started with two shots pointing the muzzle down towards the attackers legs (to back him up), followed by two shots to center mass.
I guess it could still FTF during the first shots, but it did seem like a good way to minimize that risk.
Why does it always have to be one or the other? Am I the only one who loves both semi-autos and revolvers? Both have strengths and weaknesses, and that’s why I prefer to carry both. A .357 snubbie is quick to retrieve and perfect for those bad-breath range, last minute shots, and as a backup. Carrying the snubbie allows you to carry a full size, or compact, .45 ACP concealed well enough to not be visible. If you may not have the time to retrieve the .45 go for the .357.
The problem with guns this size? Any auto loader can be kept out of battery if the right force is applied during firing.
I to prefer a J frame, but for the money the Kel Tec is not a bad gun.
Can’t any autoloader be kept out of battery with the right force regardless of size?
That is exactly what I am saying – everything from a baby Browning to a Desert Eagle
A Springfield Armory /HS Industries XD has a standoff cap on the guiderod to prevent close contact from pushing the weapon out of battery. A full size Desert Eagle cannot be placed out of battery at contact distance on account of the “slide” only moving in the back 1/4 of the weapon. Of course, the latter scenario implies the attacker stuck around AFTER staring down a Desert Eagle’s business end.
The Desert Eagle has a fixed barrel, a rotating bolt and no out-of-battery problems. I still wouldn’t want to do a contact shot with a .50AE. The blowback would be just a wee bit messy.
With the right force applied, it isn’t very hard to prevent the cylinder on a revolver from revolving either.
Yes, if you grab the gun around the cylinder, it won’t turn. Similarly, if you grab the slide of a pistol, it won’t cycle. If you take a contact shot with a revolver, the cylinder will rotate just fine. A contact shot with most pistols creates a jam.
And if the revolver has been cocked to single action the cylinder won’t need to rotate.
And if you are a fan of 70′s ninja movies you also know that a well thrown throwing star will stop the hammer of a revolver from hitting the primer.
J frame FTW
I agree with that, which is why I’m rarely without one when I’m out and about.
I wonder if the reports of how the gun was found (loaded mag empty chamber) are just more nit wittery by the press like “.9mm”. Does anyone have a real source for a malf from the kel tec?
I have not seen one yet. With all the crap this is generating the best you can hope for is some of the real details leak from the grand jury.
If the Kel-Tec did go out of battery or jammed because the pistol was limp-wristed or shot in contact, that would not be a malfunction. It’s just physics. The same can happen to almost any pistol.
Even with 7+1 9MM capability, I’ll stick with my 5-shot .38 Special +P model 340 J-frame that weighs about 13.4 oz loaded.
I’m a 642 man myself.
Got one of those, too. With a Crimson Trace laser, just like the 340.
Ruger SP101 in .357 mag for me.
Or as my local news has called it a “tec 9″.
*facepalm*
Oh. My. God.
Semi automatic assault handgun is a favorite term in our news.
the rappist?? Er, “rapper”
Crap Rap?
Actually, they are not far off, from a lineage perspective at least. The chief engineer at Kel-Tec designed the Tec-9.
As for bad reporting, I recall that ABC news referred to the weapons used by a French terrorist in a recent event as “semi-automatic machine guns”
It worked good enough to save George Z’s life. Remember the famous statement: If it saves one life…. well, there you have it.
Was Martin going to force-feed him Skittles until he died of diabetes?
No, he was content to merely beat him in the head instead.
thats how I feel when I hear bass thumping too…
My Co-Worker had multiple malfunction’s with his PF-9, including FTF’s, FTE’s. He sent it back to Kel-tec and they replaced everything but his barrel and frame and sent it back. a few months after getting it back he attempted to unload it to place it into his safe, the slide became jammed and would not come out of battery. He tried to force the slide back with his strong hand and fumbled the gun. He violated the golden rule and tried to grab it as it fell. His Right hand covered the muzzle and his left entered the trigger guard. result was a 115g JHP through his hand. He has returned to work and got rid of the PF-9 and bought a SR9-C. Needless to say we are both unsurprised to find it may have malfunctioned.
Maybe if he has a good attorney (I hope), this could provide them with the impetus to clean up their quality-control act. Everything I read about KelTec, and my own experience, indicate that they sell some passable guns and some deeply flawed guns. I can’t believe they stay in business with a model like that.
A good lawyer? Man, the guy would need Edward Bennet Freakin’ William and Gerry Spence, together. The poor guy shot himself in the hand. End of story.
I carry a PF-9 in my right front pocket, in a sleeve holster, loaded with Hornaday Critical Defense. I shoot it alot (50-100 rounds a week) and have never had a malfunction.
I’m sorry, but every time I read about Kel Tec firearms, I think of Ron Popiel and Ronco.
You know, guns are kind of like a parachute. When you need one, you REALLY need one, and nothing else is really gona do the job.
So do you go out and get a cheap parachute from a company with a reputation for dubious quality control, or do you go get one from a good, well known company? Personally, I went out and got the best damn gun I could, screw the money.
Kel-Tec has the WORST quality control in the firearms industry. I know this because I work as an armorer/RSO/Instructor at a shooting range, and when peoples guns have issues, they bring them to me a lot of the time. Sometimes I can fix them, sometimes they have to go back for warranty.
I see more problems with Kel-Tecs than any other firearm. Next in line is Taurus.
They both make lots of small, cheap guns that novices buy in droves.
You might have a Taurus or a Kel-Tec that works…And that doesn’t mean the company is any good, it just means you’re lucky.
How long is your luck going to hold out? Are you really going to trust your life to a handgun that was built as quickly and as cheaply as possible?
Zimmerman did, and he’s extremely lucky the first round did the job. The PF9 has horrible problems with FTFs and FTEs. Its one of those guns that are extremely vulnerable to limp wristing, and will malfunction with regularity if shoot at an odd angle and with out a perfect grip…
So what its small?
I carry all day, every day, almost with out exception. I do it in a Blade Tech IWB holster, and I do it with a full sized handgun. Its really not that hard to do.
Odd synchronicity.
I just took my FP-9 out to the range this past Sunday. I was impressed by how accurate the gun was. The trigger pull was long-ish but much less painful than the S&W bodyguard .38 I tried out. Recoil is snappish but it was easier to handle, oddly, than the S&W M&P compact 9.
I did have some failures to feed. The problem seems to be that I kept hitting the mag release slighly during recoil. More practice and a different grip may help that.
It’s very small, very light and is my ‘go-to’ carry gun if I’m wearing dress slacks or I need to deep conceal carry.
All that said, I vastly prefer my XD 9 or XD 45.
The Ruger LC9 is a hell of a piece.
I thought so too, until mine started light-striking. Which is particularly problematic since the LC-9 doesn’t have second-strike capability. I sent it back to Ruger and their fix has eliminated everything except my vivid memory of the gun refusing to go bang when I pulled the trigger. I’d never carry that particular gun as my primary or only defensive firearm.
“We’ve published three reviews of the Kel Tec PF-9 over the years, but RF thought it would be a good idea to provide a brief overview for the less gun-savvy readers Googling onto our website in the aftermath of that shooting in Florida. So here’s the quick and dirty run down . . .”
I plugged this paragraph into my Truth Translator and got this;
“We’ve already posted three articles about the PF-9 that literally anyone can find with 4 minutes of searching, but we wanted to get a bigger piece of that juicy google search traffic so we decided to rehash some random facts in an article and put both zimmerman’s name and the gun in the title…”
For a pocket rocket I carry Beretta 21A loaded with CCI QuickShok hollow points. People poopoo .22LR, right up to the point one blows through their torso, then they sing a different tune entirely. Add to that the fact it is incredibly LOUD at close quarters range and it works quite well, for that limited area of use, of course.
I get consistent 3 inch groups at 25 feet, and that is about all you can realistically expect from any caliber of pocket rocket.
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You make so many generalizations that are so very far from the truth… especially: “Small guns are more likely to malfunction than their bigger brothers”. Who are you to review a gun company so critically when you clearly have no idea what you are talking about?
I don’t get the trash talk about the PF9. It’s a light, concealable carry gun, not an object de’ art. It’s perfectly suited for what it’s designed to do…stop attackers by being small , light and cheap enough to carry each and every day without worry.
Yeah, you can pay a lot more money and get a Kimber or the like, but it’s going to be heavier, more expensive and no more capable than putting a big hole in , say… a 6’2″ attacker than the Keltec is. By the way it’s made in the USA and has a lifetime warranty. Mine cost me 219$ on local sale.
-Jay
Yes it has recoil. If you can’t handle that, perhaps Airsoft is a better choice.
I used to be scared of guns. Then I bought myself a PF9.
I’m Still scared of guns, so I carry my PF9 with me every day.
It helps me feel a little less scared of guns knowing that I actually have a way I could protect myself and my kin from evil that would seek to do us harm.
Some folks will never see this until reflection of personal tragedy shows them that it could have been prevented by carrying a gun at the time. My advice to anybody who is scared of guns is simple; Go buy a gun, protect what you are afraid of losing.
OK, if you say so.
Dr.Dave I must be screwed cause I carry a Taurus ultralite .38 in my right front pocket and a keltec pf9 in my waist band, both loaded with hornday critical defense.
thanks alot guys and girls, now i am really confuuiseed.