After putting down a deposit in May, I received my PF-9 yesterday. I took it to the range today and have some very positive feedback to share.

Before getting into the details, let me tell you that I am very pleased and very impressed with this gun. I have several Kel-tecs, including the p-32, PLR16 and P-11. I have also shot the P3AT many times, and would have bought one if I hadn't heard about the PF-9 being in development.

What I find to be the best, and most surprising feature of this new design is that it is effortless to align the sites and keep on target. This is an improvement from the older Kel-Tec pistols, and really reminds me of the ease of accurately shooting that one experiences with the Glock 19. The police officer/gun dealer/Glock armorer that I purchased the PF-9 from and I both agreed that Kel-Tec has done a very good job with the ergonomics and sight design.

Also, for those of you who have yet to see or handle one of these in person, I wanted to point out that the PF-9 is almost identical to the Walther P22 in general proportions. The main difference is that the safety levers on the P22 make it wider. I know I was looking for months at gun shows and shops just to "get a feel" for this new gun, so if you get a chance to handle the easy to find P22 with the pinky extension on the mag then you will get a good, general idea for the PF-9 dimensions.


I attached a photo, showing the gun in my hand as a point of reference along with some targets to show shot grouping. I am five feet, eight inches tall and wear a size medium glove. This is also noteworthy because the PF-9 w/pinky extension is a very tight and solid fit in my hand, but probably would not be for someone bigger than I am.

The perceived carry weight is, unfortunately, not what the P-32 and P3AT have, which is that you can forget that you even have them with you. On the other hand, the PF-9 is noticeably lighter and thinner than the P-11 and the "pocket Glocks," so I feel that it is a great improvement.

It reminds me of carrying a Walther PPK, which is not a bad experience at all. It also looks like the carry clip used for the P-32 and P3AT would work on the PF-9 with a minor amount of quality time with some pliers, and of course, a frame pin that is wider. I suspect the frame pin used for the P-11 side mount clip would work, but any of you Kel-Tec gurus can feel free to jump in here and correct me.

With such a clip in place it would go in the waistband very nicely and be very light and comfortable to carry. As is, the gun does fit snuggly in the back pocket of my jeans, but is partially visible. It also fits in the front pocket of my jeans but is not easy to pull out and of course, is recognizable as a handgun.

I am also very pleased with the felt recoil, and would say that it is quite a bit less than the P-11, and feels much lower/more manageable than the P3AT due to the increased size and weight of the PF-9. As a point of comparison, the S&W titanium revolver running .38 special has much more felt recoil and after only a few rounds the shooter feels the rubbing and impact points. After shooting the PF-9 I have no red marks or friction points.

Here are some details from today:

Fired 20 rounds of Speer GoldDot GDHP 115 gr. and 115 rounds of Federal total metal jacket American Eagle 147 gr.

The outside temp was 44 degrees, with light rain and about 60% humidity.

The targets used have an 8 inch diameter.

All firing was done with less than one second between trigger pulls, averaging about .6 seconds.

There were no failures, jams or other complications.

The very first round that I attempted to chamber was one of the Speer hollow points, and it caught on the feed ramp when I released the slide. As it is a brand new gun and this was the first round chambered, (by releasing the slide lock rather than pulling the slide fully back), I don't count this as a failure. Immediately following this delay I cycled a full magazine of the same hollow point rounds with no issues at all.

The only other break-in issue I had was that the slide lock would not release the slide without a manual pull back on the slide to help. This went away after magazine #4 was empty. I think this is part of why the first round did not feed because I may have reduced the amount of force behind the slide with my hand while trying to ensure that the slide lock was disengaged.

I fired two full magazines of hollowpoints to see if I could get rimlock, but had no problems at all. I also pre-loaded the chamber prior to inserting the magazine four times to see if any issues would arise. There was one, which was a failure of the trigger to fully pull/engage. I ejected the magazine, pulled the slide back about one centimeter, dropped it, and reinserted the mag. It then functioned.

I only point this out because I have gotten into the habit of loading some of my other semi-auto handguns this way, but my understanding is that you should not load a round into the chamber of a Kel-Tec this way. The problem I describe above is a perfect example of why not. My understanding is that this is not a good practice when it comes to concealed carry and self defense. Aside from on the range, I will not do this.

Now for the interesting point, which is the accuracy of this gun.

For my ten yard grouping 100% of rounds went on target, and I have to add that the two wild shots to the lower left were the products of me experimenting with/getting a feel for the best trigger pull technique and finding the trigger break point. Those two shots were numbers 4 and 5.

The image also shows my 15-17 yard range grouping, which I can say with great confidence I never could have done with my P-11. 100% of the rounds fired were on the target sheet.