Dakini

Hi. I was looking for other shooter's impressions of the Kahr CM9 and I landed on this forum. I joined mostly to tell my story about this gun which has frustrated me to no end. When I took it home, I wanted to like it because it was so small and light and great to shoot (when it fired) but it just kept giving me reasons to hate it. I won't list all the problems here. I had no idea it was an unfinished copy of a more expensive model, somehow, unfinished, unpolished, etc. I would have spent more for the better model had I known. As a dentist who polishes metals all day, the roughness of the slide's indentations made me crazy. I guess I was used to my well polished Sigs and Glock, so when my palms ended up blistered from racking the CM9 slide, I just took it into the dental office and polished it. Then I noticed the problems taking it apart and it was obvious that the plastic was unfinished and chopped up. The slide was so hard to move at first that it must have looked like a comedy, with me in all kinds of contortions on the floor. Then the muzzle grabbed the skin of my palm and refused to let it go, leaving me with a giant wound on my palm. Shooting the gun was all right but there were lots of jams. I know I replaced the slide with the spring in the right place but the slide kept doing bizarre things, staying open when it should be closed and closed when it should be open. I never felt I could trust it with my life. I knew I had voided that warranty anyway and while cleaning it, I just got so irritated trying to remove the slide that I ended up bashing it on a vice in my basement. I fantasized about whacking it with a hammer but restrained myself. (Yes, I did follow directions carefully but I feel sure that problem was the unfinished plastic since sandpaper later helped that problem.) I never felt this animosity about a gun! At one point I noticed that the plastic holding the slide rails had actually bowed out towards the front of the gun. The metal slide guides worked fine but, really, distorted plastic in a new gun? There were also little spurs on the plastic surface that needed to be smoothed. Anyway, here is my feeling about this gun: It was/is sold unfinished. Kahr wants the buyer to finish the gun with those first few hundred frustrating rounds and the first difficult take downs. This is like putting a cast crown in a patient's mouth and telling him or her to go home and chew a few hundred times until they grind in the bite! The manufacturer risks it's reputation by selling a product that is just poor quality. Yes, it is priced a couple hundred dollars lower than the PM9 but where is this manufacturer's pride? Yes, they offer a 'package' that includes some finishing for a couple hundred extra. The saddest thing is that the the design is great and it could have been executed well. But this gun will probably just sit in my gun safe for eternity because I can't trust it, have no pride of ownership in it and wouldn't sell it to my worst enemy. I have read great reviews, and it seems many shooters like this model. But it's hard to imagine that my experience was that unique.