Originally Posted by eastby
How about a Taurus PT709 "slim" 9mm for pocket carry? I know there's a lot of Taurus haters out there, but it seems most of the complaints about FTF and FTE occur primarily in the initial break-in period (the first 200 rounds). Also, many new Taurus owners fail to properly clean their new gun, and Taurus is famous for shipping their guns covered in heavy grease. They also seem to be more available now than "the usual suspects" (Glock, S&W, Ruger, Springfield) -- and cheaper. Kel-Tec PF9s are cheaper than the PT709, but you can't find PF9s hardly anywhere either.
Here's what I've observed, take it for what you will... It's not a "this is every one", but it is a "this is the outspoken".
People who talk a lot are the impetuous and impatient type. So you get both a false positive and negative. What do I mean by that?
1. False positive: You've got some who may or may not be able to afford a "high end gun" like a Kimber or Sig or HK or Colt Gold Cup or... etc. But they buy it and start to brag and boast is superiority before they even put a single round through it, let alone get it past the 500 round break in. They proclaim how amazing the quality is and how it feels in the hand. How well it conceals or returns to battery. They use ambiguous terminology misleading readers into thinking they speak from experience further than holding in a hand in their home and admiring the fact that it isn't cracked in half from the factory. They play with it, cycling the slide by hand and dry firing and give an informal review before more than viewing.
2. False negative: You've got some who buy an inexpensive brand gun. They take it home and let it sit until they can shoot. They know it's reputation from online research and know to wait until they shoot before they can determine its value. They don't clean the factory gunk or check the magazine or rack the slide to be sure they can perform the basic operations necessary to shoot. They buy ammo, finally go out and shoot it and it has a jam. They continue to shoot it, worried about further issues, limp wristing it not paying attention to the fundamentals because they're focused and determined on being disappointed and, inevitably, it jams again. Then, instead of trying to figure out why it may've been so, they call the gun junk. They denounce and degrade it as pure trash and whine up a storm. And after all this, they either sell it, send in for factory replacement and repeat problems originally caused by them, further perpetuating the stigma and misinformation.
This has been my experience with everything, but guns more than anything I've ever seen.