When Kahr Arms introduced their first gun, the K9, it immediately established them as a gun company to reckon with. The K9's main claim to fame was its size-much smaller than we were used to seeing in guns chambering the 9mm Parabellum-with overall dimensions more in line with a compact .380. But this was a full-power, eight-shot 9mm. Numerous Kahr auto pistols have followed, some chambered for .40 S&W, but all have either been about the same size as the K9 or even smaller; some incorporated polymer frames for lighter weight.
I always thought that a larger version of the K9, incorporating its many desirable features but in a more "service"-sized package for improved handling qualities, would be a very impressive gun. Well, Kahr Arms finally built it. It's called the Kahr T9-short for "Target 9mm."
The first thing you notice about the Kahr T9 is its size. Kahr refers to this as their "big gun," and though it is indeed noticeably larger than its ancestor K9, this is by no mean a big gun. It's about the size of a Smith & Wesson 3913, which until the introduction of the K9 was considered a very compact 9mm. A comparison of size and weight, K9 versus T9, follows: Height: 4.50 inches, K9; .495 inches, T9; barrel length: 3.50 inches, K9; 4.0 inches, T9; Overall Length: 6.0 inches, K9; 6.50 inches, T9; Weight(empty): 25.0 ounces, K9; 28.1 ounces, T9.

This is a very visually appealing pistol. Its sleek lines remind me of some of the early Browning autos. Slide and frame are of bead blasted stainless steel for an attractive matte finish. The slide is a forging, machined from bar stock 416 stainless. The frame is an investment casting, also of stainless (in this case 421). It evinces none of the nasty porosity of shoddy castings. In fact, it's so nicely cast and machined that you'd never know it wasn't forged steel if the folks at Kahr Arms didn't tell you. All machining is done on high-precision CNC (Computer Numerically Controlled) machinery.
Grips are of checkered Pau Ferro wood from Hogue. The T9 is not, at least at this time, offered with the sort of black rubber grips we see on the K9. Being made of wood instead of moulded rubber, these grips are a bit bulkier and more hand filling than those of the K9. In the very subjective area of "feel," I like how the T9 feels in my hand. Of course I also like the K9's feel.
As with all Kahr auto pistols, the T9's barrel has polygonal rifling, a system familiar to gun enthusiasts from Glocks. Polygonal rifling dose have advantages. It gives a better gas seal behind the bullet, so you get the maximum "push" from burning powder and less friction as the projectile moves down the bore. All else being equal, a polygonally rifled barrel will "shoot harder," i.e., fire the same projectiles to higher velocities than if they were fired from a barrel of the same length with standard rifling. The tradeoff is that polygonally rifled barrels tend to lead heavily. So keep bare lead bullets out of your Kahr auto and you'll be fine.
According to the fine folks at Kahr Arms, recoil spring weight on the T9 is 20 pounds, same as the K9. I do not doubt this is true. However, it feels lighter. This is a good thing. Though the total amount of pressure the recoil spring exerts at full compression is the same, being a longer spring it requires less energy to start it moving, and the amount of force required to keep it moving doesn't increase nearly as swiftly. This addresses one of the very few things about the basic K9 design I've never really liked. Cycling the slide, as when loading the gun, requires enough hand strength it could be difficult for someone with weak hands, as in the case of many women. The T9 is much easier in this regard.
When field stripping the T9, you'll notice the spring, located inside the slide stop window in the frame, responsible for holding the slide stop in the downward position until it's raised by the magazine's follower to lock the action open when empty. This is in contrast to the K9, in which the slide stop spring is located within the opposite side of the frame. The spring-in-the-slide-stop window is a design Kahr first used in their ultracompact MK series guns, then later incorporated into the polymer framed P-series. By the time they got to the T-series it was just a matter of keeping things consistent. According to Kahr, eventually this system will be incorporated into the seminal K-series as well.
While we're on the subject of the T9's slide stop, I should mention that on my sample gun the slide stop pin was a very tight fit in the frame. So much so it requires a hammer and punch and several lusty whacks to remove the slide stop during routine field stripping. This may explain the three failures of the action to lock open when empty I experienced while testing the T9. The slide stop is a bit stiff in operation, even when engaging it by hand. I look for this problem to disappear once I have some more rounds through the T9 and its slide stop wears in a bit. According to Kahr, the T9's slide stop is "not normally that tight." Oh well, I can live with it, for now at least. I'd far rather have a part that fits tightly to start with than one that starts loose and gets absolutely sloppy after you've shot the gun for a while.
There are two options for T9 sights offered by Kahr. One is Novak LoMount fixed sights with three white dots. The other is MMC's adjustable WhiteSights, also with three white dots. There's no price difference between fixed and adjustable sighted T9s, by the way. Unusual that, as adjustable sighted guns commonly cost more than the exact same gun with fixed sights. I elected to have my sample T9 with WhiteSights since the basic MMC adjustable system is one of my favorite sights.
Trigger pulls on the T9 are double action only. It requires 6 1/2 pounds of pressure to cycle the trigger all the way through. This is excellent for a double action, even by the standards of Kahr autos that are known for their light DAO triggers. On the T9 the trigger significantly stacks, i.e., the amount of pressure required to keep the trigger moving increases toward the end of the trigger stroke. Kahr Arms has recently gone to a system in their guns that shortens overall trigger pull distance by 1/8-inch. The tradeoff is that it makes the trigger stack. Going from an older K9 to the new-production T9 is kind of like switching from a Smith & Wesson revolver to a Colt with the traditional DA mechanism.
The magazines are simply a longer version of the standard K9 design. T9 mags carry eight rounds of 9mm Parabellum versus the K9's seven. With a round in the chamber, the T9 is a nine-shot gun. T9 magazines are long enough that they could carried in a belt mounted spare mag pouch and still expose enough of the mag tube for a fast "draw" of the spare ammo during a speed reload. In that sense I much prefer them to the shorty K9 mags.
Frankly the slide-to-frame fit on my sample T9 did strike me a being a bit rough and not nearly as nicely tight as I'm used to seeing on Kahr auto pistols. Before firing this gun, I lubed it with a product called Slide-Glide. Developed to the specifications of Grand Master IPSC shooter Brian Enos by a retired engine development engineer at the GM Proving Grounds, Slide-Glide makes the action of any auto pistol much smoother.(Slide-Glide is marketed by Brian Enos through his website, www.brianenos.com.)
I accuracy and function tested the Kahr T9 with a reasonably diverse assortment of nine 9mm loads, two balls, one subsonic hollowpoint, two standard velocity hollowpoints and four +P hollowpoints. Solids on hand consisted of Black Hills "blue box" 115-grain FMJ reloads (the factory new stuff is packaged in red boxes) and Cor-Bon's new 140-grain Performance Match. Our representative subsonic hollowpoint was the Black Hills 147-grain JHP. Both our standard velocity/pressure hollowpoints were from Federal, their famous 115-grain JHP product code 9BP and 124-grain Hydra Shok JHP. Finally, the Black Hills 115-grain JHP +P, Cor-Bon's 115-grain and 125-grain JHP +Ps and Federal's new 124-grain Expanding Full Metal Jacket +Ps.

I began by firing five-shot groups from a standing, two-handed shooting stance at 5 yards to get some idea of the gun's close range accuracy potential. Any decent handgun should be able to put five shots into one ragged hole at this range with at least some ammo. And so it proved with the Kahr T9. Best accuracy was a slightly laterally strung but still one-hole group with the Black Hills reloads measuring a half-inch center-to-center.
At 50 feet, the maximum distance possible at the indoor range on which I was shooting, five-shot groups from the bench ran from pretty darn good to "eh, OK" to "not so hot"-though that last could be blamed on a particular ammunition type, not the gun (more about which later). The MMC sights had more than enough adjustment capability to handle all the loads fired, even considering the wide variety of bullet weights and velocity combinations with which we were playing. Kudos to MMC for that. Best accuracy was 1 3/16 inches with the Black Hills +Ps. The Cor-Bon 115-grain +Ps gave a 1 9/16-inch group, and the same company's 140-grain PM load printed a 113/16-inch group. Federal Hydra Shoks came in at 2 inches even. Most of the rest of the ammo fell into the 2- to 3-inch range.
Several loads printed decent four-shot groups with a single flier opening things up, the so-called "auto pistol syndrome." Thus the Black Hills 147-grain JHP put four rounds into 1 5/8 inches with a fifth bullet puncture adding exactly 1 inch to overall group size. Federal 9BPs gave a 2 11/16-inch group with four of those going into a tight 1 1/8-inch cluster. With the Black Hills "blue box" ball it was four rounds into 1-inch even, five shots into 2 13/16 inches.
The only ammunition truly disappointing was the Federal EFMJs. I've not been impressed with this new bullet type from the standpoint of accuracy at distance. I fired two groups with EFMJs. The first put five rounds into a mediocre 3 11/16 inches. I fired a second group, and when I examined the target, found only four bullet holes. Either one of those was a perfect double or one bullet missed the entire 14x14-inch square piece of paper! Considering the Federal EFMJs I recently fired during my evaluation of the SW1911 .45 were giving me groups on the order of 7 1/2 inches at 50 feet (this from a gun that would do sub-1-inch with other ammo) with an extreme propensity for throwing fliers, I tend toward the latter explanation.
Point of impact varied quite a bit among the various loads. Thus, when you look at the targets fired during this test session, you'll sometimes see groups shot before I got the gun dialed in. Just know that, though in the photos you may see a group clustered above or below the center of the target, the adjustable sights did have enough range to zero those groups eventually. Feed reliability was perfect with all rounds fired.
Firing impressions? One of the very nice features of Kahr auto pistols has always been how low the barrel rides above the shooter's hand, This low bore axis gives the gun very little leverage to flip its muzzle during recoil and explains how even such small guns chambering a service cartridge have surprisingly little "kick." This tradition continues with the T9, only being a slightly heavier gun with a longer, more hand filling grip, it's even easier to control.
The longer barrel translates into a gun that's quite a bit quieter than Kahr 9mms with shorter barrels. For years I've used a Kahr K9 as my representative 9mm teaching gun. One of the few negatives to the K9 in this role is that, when you begin firing a high pressure cartridge like the 9mm Parabellum through a snub barrel, you wind up with a gun a bit on the loud side. New shooters tend to be very sensitive to heavy muzzle blast. When the T9 came on the market, I switched over to it for my 9mm training piece.
Summary: Kahr's first gun design was the all-steel K9. With every successive gun they offered, my attitude was a bit like, "Why bother? They got it right to start." Kahr never offered a gun I liked better than the K9. Now they have. Manually cycling the slide is easier. The T9's shooting qualities are more mild mannered, its grip more hand filling. The gun is quieter during firing. Its magazines are long enough to work well during a speed reload. The T9 has officially replaced the K9 as my favorite Kahr. True, it's a bit larger and heavier, but for me at least that's its charm. Unless extreme-and I mean extreme-concealability is an issue, I think it's a more sensible gun.