My Day at the Range

I went to Omaha a couple of weekends ago and took my youngest son Jonathan to the Bullet Hole so we could try out my Kel-Tec PF9. I bought it new at a gun show in Kansas City back in January and hadn't had the opportunity to try it out. The PF9 is a hammer-fired, single-stack 9mm that holds 7+1 rounds. I bought it because it is flat and compact and fits neatly in an IWB holster at the 4 o'clock position.

Once at the range and ready to fire, I aimed and took my first shot. I pulled the trigger, and pulled, and pulled, and finally, BANG! The trigger on this thing isn't too heavy, probably about 5 or 6 pounds, but it has to travel a couple of miles, it seems like, between the time you start applying pressure and it finally fires. That's a safety feature, because the PF9 doesn't have a manual safety. When it does fire, it kicks pretty hard, because it's a polymer-framed, lightweight piece.

It ejected the old round and fed the new one in as expected, but when I pulled the trigger the second time, all I got was a click, and no BANG! I racked the slide to eject the round and load the next one. I inspected the ejected round, and there was no indicated the firing pin had hit the primer. I aimed and pulled the trigger again, and got the expected loud noise and hole in the target. It ejected the casing and fed the next round, but when I pulled the trigger for bullet #4, all I got was the click again. Again, no dimple in the primer. The next round was a "click" also, so I gave up on it. I rented one of the Bullet Hole's Ruger Mark III pistols and we had some fun wasting 100 rounds of .22LR.

My doctor, who, like Big Mullet, has forgotten more about firearms than I've ever known, suggested a broken firing pin. I checked out some web site information, and it seemed to be a common occurence from dry-firing--something Kel-Tec says is a no-no. However, I've never dry-fired mine without snap caps in it. I dismantled the pistol and removed the firing pin, which was still in one piece, so I reassembled everything. Further reading in the Kel-Tec manual said that failure to allow the trigger to return fully to its rest position after firing can cause failure to fire, because the hammer isn't in the fully cocked position. I'll have to go back to the range soon to see if this user error was the problem.

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