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4 gun 2 shooter comaprson of the Taurus 740 Slim, Glock 27, Keltec PF9 and a full size handgun

So an initial review of how the firearm actually worked was needed, and I decided to put a spin on the entire thing. I would take myself, a not amazingly accurate but at least semi-knowledgable shooter (a reasonable equivelant for many) and then take my friend Electra. Electra, while having shot firearms a few times, didn't know the difference between the slide release and the safety, or notice when the slide locked open on the last round that she was out. In short, if you're new to shooting, she's a fine comparison to how you're likely to do with these firearms.

The Plan for the Comparison

The plan was to warm up shooting a full size handgun to get us into the wing of things, along with make sure Electra knew the basics of shooting. Turns out she was quite safe and  quickl ytook to the basics so she was perfect. Next we were to shoot each of the handguns for a set amount of rounds and take a picture so you can see a real comparison with all the different varities of guns. Unfortunately, I will say that in hindsight this introduced some bias, as by the time we got to the Keltec PF9 we'd shot damn near 300 rounds and were really getting into the swing of things.

The guns and the order in which we would shoot them:

  1. Zastava EZ9. A full sized SIG P226 clone. Great fun gun. Quirky at times, but a fun one to shoot and CHEAP (a constant theme in my life...)
  2. Glock 27. A "compact" .40 handgun. A serious contender against the Taurus 740 slim for those wanting small guns in .40. The new S&W shield in .40 is also an option but... no one can get them.
  3. Taurus 740 Slim. The whole gun we're reviewing. At this point we'd be good and warmed up, and could shoot some rounds through it plenty.
  4. Keltec PF9. A smaller 9mm alternative to the Taurus. I've also owned the Ruger LC9 and these two are fairly similiar in regards to accruacy.

How it actually went (fairly close to as planned)

Electra never mentioened how long it had been since she had lost shot, but she politely hinted here or there that it may have been a while since she last shot. I personally hadn't shot handguns more than just to make sure they still cycled in about six months, so some initial shooting was in order. We went through about 100 rounds total between the two of us in the Zastava EZ9 to make sure we were ballpark ready to go, and we were off!

We shot fairly good groupings with the Zastava first try, so we took what we had honestly shot instead of spending a bunch of time chasing some lucky amazing grouping so we look nice and accurate. Next we proceed to the Glock 27. With the Glock we also shot fairly good groupings right off the bat and so we moved onward to the Taurus 740 Slim.

The Taurus 740 slim is where the show was put on pause. The Taurus 740 slim out of the box was sighted quite incorrectly, and we couldn't tell at first beause it's a real friggen hand cannon, and to be honest the trigger pull took some getting used to. The gun really bites your hand as you shoot it, showing where that extra width of the Glock 27 really helps. The gun also would occassionaly lock wide open despite having more rounds in the magazine, and even worse... the trigger would occassionaly simply not fire when pulled all the way in for the next  round, or stack wierd and not fire then suddenly fire right as you were wondering what the hell was going on. Essentially too much was going on with the gun to give it a fair assesment right away... but it also hadn't been broken in.

Being brand new, and needing a break in, We went and put 200 rounds through it between the two of us. We shot over and over and adjusted the sights and chased the gun as best as we could, and get it to a ball park area that was fun to shoot. It was hadly like zeroing a rifle like I'm used to since the gun kicked so hard and was definitely not a target gun, but we finally hit the point that we were pretty accurate and called it good. We shot our final groupings each (no redos at the point we decided to proceed) and took pictures.

Lastly was shooting the Keltec PF9. I had some experience shooting it, and Electra had just held it once when she pulled it out of my girlfriends glovebox. We went through about 25 rounds or so before we did our final no-retry shots for the comparison, as the gun had a bit of a quirk. The sights were of for elevation so you had to shoot noticably low. However, once we figured that out it proved to be quite accurate. It also helps that at this point we'd shot nearly 350 rounds between the two of us.

The Results for your comparison:

(Shred Jesse on the Left, Electra on the Right)

Zasta EZ9, first try little warmup.

ShredJesse Zasatava EZ9

Glock 27, first try, no warmup what so ever with gun

Taurus 740 Slim, After 200 rounds to break it in and get it sighted

The Keltec Pf9 after 10 or so rounds each to establish need to shoot low

The Taurus 740 Slim's Performance Review

So as much as we shot 4different guns, this is still a Taurus 740 Slim review. Overall, I have to say I left unimpressed. The gun didn't work reliably and it wasn't obvious either. I can see a FTF or FTE more often than not when the slide is off, but not being able to pull the trigger at all the second time or having it be ungodly harsh and feel like it wasn't going to fire... but then surprise you by firing? What the hell Taurus...

Overall, the gun was a real chore to get to shoot accurately. We spent the 200 rounds of breakin almost as focused on figuring out the quirks of the dam gun, and it still failled to have trigger pull twice on me during my actual no-redo shots.

I'll be contacting Taurus to see just what the hell is going on, but yeah... not impressed. The gun has a lot of potential, but it mechanically just doesn't stack up and isn't reliable for personal proection. It's a damn shame too as it could have been a real contendor... but it's just not there. I'll admit I was even a bit biased, and wanted this gun to be great, but it just wasn't.

I will say however Electra managed to shoot it with far better accuracy than myself during out 200 rounds of break in, and she really loved the size of the gun and was quite happy. I also four times more often then her encountered the trigger failure... not sure what that was about. So yeah, the gun worked great for her.

The Results really say it all...

  1. Zasata EZ-9 (Full sized gun, as expected)
  2. Glock 27 (Compact renowned firearm, as expected)
  3. Keltec PF9 (Who knew?)
  4. Taurus 740 Slim (Beat by a purse gun... sad...)

More to come on this gun, but doubtful there will be a long run review of it unless Taurus has some repair work to perform on it.