Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Hey guys! Stu here and I just wanted to do -- even though I've done three videos of me shooting this guy -- I wanted to go ahead
and do a table top review and cover some of the features of this sidearm that weren't covered in my shooting videos.
And that is my PT -- Taurus PT709 Slim. And I apologize. It's not mine, it's my wife's.
We got this specifically for her to conceal carry. She was carrying a Charter Arms Lavender Lady .38 Special revolver.
Unfortunately, because of her profession and the type of clothes she needs to wear in that profession, she wasn't really able to conceal carry that on her body.
And so we went out looking for an automatic pistol that would conceal better.
So she was just carrying her Charter Arms in her purse and we wanted something that she'd be able to carry on her hip
or somewhere else on her body.
And so we went looking and we looked at a bunch of pocket .380's, a couple of pocket 9's
and none of them seemed to fit her very well.
I didn't like them either and so... It's, it's almost like, you know, it's not like I have big hands.
I'm six feet tall and I don't have these huge hands. I mean, I have an average-sized hand. Um...
My wife, also, she's like 5'4" and has an average-sized hand for someone of her height and size, and, you know,
it's almost like, you know, being a 400-pound guy and trying to give a 90-pound girl a hug or something, you know?
It just doesn't work out that well.
And so it was just uncomfortable and something that we would have to get used to, and something...
you know, it was just uncomfortable and we didn't like them.
And so the salesman brought out the PT709 Slim, and I was hesitant because it is a Taurus
and I know, you know, when a Taurus works, they work great. Sometimes you get a lemon.
I should say you can get a lemon with any manufacturer. It doesn't matter who you buy from, it's possible to get a lemon.
It just happens with Taurus a lot more often than with the other -- most of the other manufacturers.
And so I was a little hesitant, but we both put this in our hand and my wife said, "No, that feels really good."
Now it is, I mean -- slim. PT709 SLIM, right? That is a slim guy right there.
A liitle bit of discomfort there because it's so slim, but not really. Not so much that you, that it's really noticeable when you're shooting this guy.
And I gotta tell you, this guy is fun to shoot. Love it!
Now, a couple of issues that we did run into with this weapon.
Right off the bat -- right out of the box -- we had extraction issues.
Um...
[Silence]
...you know, spent casings just weren't extracting properly.
They would come out part way, but then I guess the extractor was slipping off of it and it was causing jams because of that.
That turned out to be a problem with the extractor. It took me awhile to admit to myself, because I knew that if it was
a problem with the gun, uh, I tried everything other than looking at the gun. I thought of everything.
And in the end it just came down to the extractor. I was trying to avoid having to send my gun back to have that replaced.
But I finally gave in and I called up Taurus Customer Support and I said,
"Hey," you know, "my gun's got extraction issues." And they were like, "Well, you can send it back to us
or, if you like, you can buy a new extractor." And I said, "Well how much is a new extractor?"
And if I remember right, it was $17. I was like, well, hmm. What do I do here?
Do I send my gun back, wait weeks for them to test it then weeks for them to fix it and send it back to me?
Or do I just pay the 17 bucks and have them ship me a new extractor and replace it myself -- problem solved?
And so I decided to go ahead and order the new extractor.
Now I was a little disappointed because it took Taurus five days to actually ship the extractor.
It took them two days to order it for me, and then three days after that before it even shipped.
I think it took a total of 10 days, so five days to -- five days for them to ship it and five days for it to actually get here.
Um, and so...
Disappointed in how long it took, but it eventually got here. I replaced the extractor and it fixed everything.
I took it out immediately after replacing the extractor and started putting rounds through it.
I ended up putting, I think, 53 rounds right off the bat -- and there's a video of me doing that if you want to go take a look.
I used three different brands of ammo. All of them ran through clean -- perfectly clean -- and no problems!
And the thing has been tons of fun ever since then. I absolutely love shooting this thing.
Now I have heard from a few people that complain about the sights being off out of the box.
Mine were dead on. I haven't had to adjust the sights. It does come with adjustable sights.
And the screws right there, adjustable for windage.
This right here, if you're familiar with Tauruses, a lot of Tauruses come with this. It is a key hole that locks the weapon up, and obviously this comes with that key to lock the weapon up.
It prevents you from operating the slide, it prevents you from pulling the trigger -- basically prevents it from being operable.
Another issue that I ran into was the magazine.
Now the magazine works great, just like it's supposed to. The only issue is
-- now you're going to get to see my dirty magazine because I haven't cleaned this since I took it shooting last --
but if you look at the magazine follower there, and this part right here -- if I can get that to focus --
this is the part right here that actually makes contact with the slide lock and causes the slide to lock open after you've fed, uh, after you've fired the last round.
Here's the problem. The slide was locking open when there was still a round left in the magazine.
So it was failing to feed that last round because the slide was locking open.
And so what I did is I took the slide off and I put the magazine in -- I put a round in the magazine
and then I slid the magazine into the slide with... sorry, slid the magazine into the frame with the slide off
and then I took a look at it and I saw that the magazine follower, you know, this part of the magazine follower was making contact with the slide lock even though there was a round in the chamber.
So all I did was file down this part of the magazine follower and that took care of the problem. So, no big deal there.
A single-/double-action trigger.
[Sound of slide being operated]
And so let's take a look at that trigger there. Here's the trigger pull on it.
[Sound of firing pin releasing]
Okay? It's actually pretty crisp for a double-action trigger.
Now if I, uh... Let's say it fails to fire, you do go into double-action mode, umm...
[Sound of firing pin being operated with each trigger pull]
And...
Although it is single-/double-action trigger, functionally this gun is basically single-action only.
Now if you have a round fail to fire, you do have that double- strike capability, but there's no way to decock the weapon.
There's no decocker on this weapon.
It does come with a thumb safety right there, which prevents the trigger from being pulled back.
But, no way to decock it, unfortunately.
I don't why they did that because it adds a functionality to the weapon that some people want. For me, I don't really care that much
Um, you know...
but it's something that some people want. Some people like to carry with a round in the chamber and the weapon decocked
with the safety off.
Can't do that with this weapon.
This is a really small gun. You can see that there's no rail on the front there. And so you can forget about mounting cool things
like blinding flashlights or super-duper lasers that, you know, um...
I actually used to work with a guy who was really into, like, little handheld lasers
and he ended up purchasing a laser -- he had to go, he had to order it from out of the country because it's actually illegal in the U.S.
but that laser was strong enough to burn a hole through paper within a few seconds.
And so unfortunately you're not going to be able to mount one of those on here.
I don't know. Maybe you could burn a hole right through a guys' retina or something. [laughing] I don't know.
But really powerful lasers out there though. Anyway...
So no rail system on here, so no mounting things.
You know, and my favorite thing to do is to mount a little finger flipping the bird if you've seen my past videos.
Can you just imagine, you know, having that pointed at you and there's a little finger flipping the bird at you? I don't know.
You're right. It's stupid, right?
You can see the, uh, the grip there has a, kind of a rough grip there. And it actually... I like the way it feels. It feels good.
It'll prevent it from slipping around in your hand, and so...
Now one issue I ran into [operates slide] and I don't know if this is an issue with the size of my hand or the way I grip the weapon -- probably the latter -- but...
you pull the trigger, okay? And then let's reset that [operates slide]
[Click, indicating trigger reset] There's the reset right there.
[Firing pin releases] You know, and, it's nice. But...
When I fire this weapon, uh, you know it's got quite a bit of recoil to it, and it throws my finger off the trigger when I do that.
So what I end up with is [operates slide] you know, when I pull that trigger, you know, it'll like throw my finger off
or something like that, and so when I go to reset [operates slide] my finger is in an uncomfortable position [trigger resets]
and I have a hard time [firing pin releases] pulling that trigger again.
One thing that happened to me a few times is that when I would go [operates slide] and do that reset, my finger would be thrown off
[trigger resets] into such a position that when I tried to pull the trigger again, for some reason...
You can see that safety device on the trigger there, kind of like a Glock
Umm... My finger would be in such a position that it wasn't applying pressure to that safety and so I wasn't able to pull the trigger.
And I've tried to duplicate it, but I can't
So, I don't know -- I don't know what was going on, but my finger was getting thrown into such a position that it wasn't applying
pressure to that trigger safety and therefore wasn't able to pull the trigger.
It was weird because I... like I said, I can't duplicate it, but it happens to me when I'm shooting the weapon.
So what I do instead is, you know, when I pull the trigger I just release it all the way, lift my finger away from it just a little bit, reposition it, and go back.
It makes it a little more difficult when you're doing rapid-fire drills.
It kills zombie watermelons really well. Uh, we've shot up a bunch of zombie sodas.
For those of you that don't know, I refer to diet sodas as zombie sodas. The reason being that, you know, I just don't like diet sodas.
And I don't like to kill anything that's not a zombie, so everything I shoot I end up referring to as a "zombie."
Zombie something. Zombie fruit, zombie pumpkin, zombie watermelon, zombie cantaloupe, zombie soda! Okay?
You know, regular sodas... regular sodas are nice and tasty. Diet sodas, on the other hand, are nasty and disgusting.
Umm... As far as I'm concerned, they're nothing but harmful so I shoot them.
For a gun this small, it actually is really... it feels more comfortable than I would expect from a gun this small.
It does have a pretty good kick to it because it's so small and light.
Something that I haven't any problems with, but my 12-year old son and my 10-year old son both have issues with the amount of recoil
and so they have to be very careful and make sure they have a good, firm grip on it when they're shooting it.
The recoil spring is a dual-spring assembly, and so that helps with the recoil a little bit.
It also makes it harder to operate the slide than normal.
But, other than that, I really have nothing bad to say about it except for the extractor issue.
If you talk to enough PT709 Slim owners, you'll find that the extraction issue is a relatively common problem.
It's more common than it should be. It's something that Taurus needs to get taken care of with this guy.
But other than that, you know, when it's working it works great and I absolutely love it. Tons of fun, okay?
Not the favorite weapon in my repertoire, but I'd say it's in the top three.
A lot of fun. A lot of fun. I like it. Okay?
So that's pretty much it. That's about... I can't think of anything else to say about it. That's pretty much it, and uh...
So, you know, I give it kind of a half thumbs up because the extraction issue was really frustrating for me,
but I say when it's working, thumbs up all the way. Lots of fun. Absolutely love it.
So... and, you know, it's a Taurus and it's cheap. I mean, I got this down in a gun shop up in Orem, Utah, at a local gun shop up there.
I don't live there anymore, but I have family there, so when I visit I always end up taking a trip down to Gunnies.
And $300 for this guy. So not a bad deal. Not a bad deal at all.
Add $17 to have the extractor replaced and, you know, I love it.
You might want to... it only came with a single magazine so you might want to buy and extra one of those
and, of course, that brings the cost up a little bit.
But for me, I think it's worth it. 300 bucks out the door and 17 bucks for the extractor and I'm good to go.
So until next time, have fun at the range and be safe out there guys, okay? I'll see you later.