I bought one of these a couple of weeks ago because of the way it felt in my hand vs the other slim 9 mm out there (initially I was going for a Ruger LC9). The 709 just felt better and I liked the trigger pull too. I took it to the range for the first time last weekend and put 220 rounds through it. 50 American Eagle 115's, 50 Remington UMC 115's, and 100 Win NATO 124's, and 20 Speer Gold Dot 124+P. No problems with feeding or firing.
However, I had two other issues:
1) Out of the box it was shooting way low and left at 7 yards. I had a hard time getting it sighted in, probably because I was simultaneously trying to get used to the trigger pull and grip. Fortunately, it has adjustable sights. In the end I had to adjust them all the way right and most of of the way up, and finally it was accurate enough to make me happy.
2) The slide failed to lock back on the empty mag when firing (but locked back fine when operated manually)
. I thought OK this is just a break-in issue, so I kept shooting and working on accuracy, but it was still doing it after 200 rounds, then I started to worry about it
. Then on my last couple of mags I looked at where my thumb was, sure enough it was resting on the slide release. As it turns out it takes almost no pressure on the button to stop the slide from locking back while cycling under fire
.
So in the end with these two issues solved (I hope) it is a very nice handling little gun, recoil was fine, even with the NATO and +P Gold Dots, and was much lighter feeling than my 38 snub with standard pressure rounds.
When I got it home - Man! was it dirty inside. Probably that Winchester NATO stuff. So I cleaned it up. Now I've just picked up 300 rounds of even cheaper Monarch stuff, and 40 rounds of Hornady critical defense. If it shoots up all the crap Monarch stuff and then the Hornady without any mechanical issues, then I may have found a reliable replacement for Snubby S&W (who will still be backup)- I'll let y'all know how that goes.
