Opinions on Kahr CW9?

[MillCreek]

I have a line on a Kahr CW9 with about 500 rounds through it (so nicely broken in) for $ 225 plus transfer fee.  Does anyone have an opinion on the Kahr CW9?  I have not owned or shot anything by Kahr.

[bedlamite]

I've had a CW40 for about 7 years. It doesn't like Remington ammo, but otherwise I've had no issues. It's a little small for my paws, but not so much that it's hard to shoot accurate. Trigger pull is fairly long, but smooth and relatively light. It's also really easy to conceal. Good purpose built ccw.

[HankB]

I had a very similar polymer Kahr - a P9 - and what a horrible gun that was. Went back to Kahr repeatedly for problems like the trigger not actuating the firing pin, the trigger pin walking out, slide failing to lock back on an empty chamber, slide locking back prematurely, failure to feed, etc.

Kahr finally gave up trying to fix it and replaced the entire gun, but having been burned, I traded the unfired replacement for a G26. The Glock isn't as neat a package, but it actually works where the Kahr just didn't.

Various firearm forums revealed that I wasn't alone in having problems with a polymer Kahr pistol.

And for another opinion:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtqcV7QZAtk

[Kingcreek]

I've carried a Kahr pm9 for years with no issues.
I bought a CW9 for my wife. It has had no problems at all, shoots fine, all kahrs have a long smooth trigger pull more like a DA revolver than an auto but very easy once you know what to expect. Incidentally, my wife had some kind of problem qualifying with it (she was nervous I think) and immediately decided the gun was the problem. She borrowed a glock 43 from her girl friend and finished the class. I bought her a G43 and carry the CW9 from time to time in a OWB

[230RN]

I carry a CW9 crossdraw OWB in addition to a J-frame in my pants or jacket pocket.  This results in the unusual situation where the auto is my backup gun, and the J-frame is my primary.   I have laser sights fitted to both guns because of vision situations.

I like the Kahr.  It has been reliable with ball ammo, but I have not extensively tested it with the proverbial "200 rounds" of more effective and expensive premium HP ammo.  So what I do is carry it with one round of the HP ammo in the chamber, which obviously doesn't have to feed (since it's chambered already) and a mag full of ball ammo.   I also carry a spare mag, which has to be purchased separately since the gun comes with only one mag.

The only downside is that I highly recommend you exactly follow re-assembly instructions from the manual or other sources.  There is a rather stern warning in the gun's manual that failure to do so may result in the slide locking up and your having to send the gun back to the factory.

As far as I can tell, this is may be a general problem with some modern autos where the lockup is between the barrel step and the slide, and the locking is accomplished with a ramp istead of a link.  (When I had my Kel-Tec PF-9, I used a broken off Q-Tip as a sort of slave pin to hold everything in alignment until it was time to re-install the slide stop since this lockup would also happen with the PF-9.)

Terry

REF:
https://www.kahr.com/PDF/kahrmanual.pdf