Kel Tec P11

[TFOGGER]

I purchased this a while back as a CCW piece, but just finally got a chance to wring it out at the range yesterday.

Initial impressions: Extremely light weight. Pretty thin, and compact overall, particularly for a 9mm with 10+1 capacity. Fits my wide, short fingered paws fairly well. I added the fingergrip floorplate to the magazine prior to shooting as a comfort measure. The sights are conventional square notch rear, with a fairly low profile and rounded edges, combined with a decent front. OEM sights are set up with white dots front and rear, which offer pretty average visibility. I'll probably upgrade these as time and funds allow (tritium night sights).

Shooting: Recoil is sharp, but reasonably controllable. I am VERY glad I installed the optional floorplate, however. Trigger action is DAO, and requires a very long, stiff pull. Possibly the worst trigger pull of anything I have shot this century, but not unexpected on a DAO gun with no mechanical safety. I had one failure to extract/eject in the first magazine, put it down to new gun hiccup. After that, I put about another 110 rounds of various ammo down range, with no stoppages. Accuracy was good, with 90% headshots at 50 ft on a reduced B-29 silhouette. I did manage to pinch the base of my right ring finger pretty good when swapping magazines(New Gun Gods extracting their required Blood Sacrifice), so a little caution is advised during magazine changes. The slide release is very low profile, and pretty tough to get a thumb on. It's fairly stiff, but got better as the day wore on.

I installed the optional belt clip on this, and now understand why they recommend thread locker, as it started to loosen after about 50 rounds. After re-tightening, I had no further issues, but I'll take it apart when I clean it and loctite it anyway.

Overall, I give it a B+ as a carry gun. This is not one I'll shoot much for pleasure, but as an inexpensive, easily concealable carry weapon, it is quite satisfactory.

[funkfool]

Trigger action is DAO, and requires a very long, stiff pull. Possibly the worst trigger pull of anything I have shot this century, but not unexpected on a DAO gun with no mechanical safety.

I concur...
I picked one of these up for the wife... took it and her to the range and let her fire it... she knew with one mag she didn't like it. I shot it and agreed.
Why?
It has a VERY long trigger pull and very long trigger reset.
I was wearing thin gloves and had trouble getting my finger in between the front trigger guard and trigger and then when I released the trigger to reset it - it did not reset - my glove was too thick to allow it to travel back far enough...
Trigger resets at the trigger rest point it seems.
Just my 0.02¢

[TFOGGER]

I'm guessing the trigger was designed by product liability lawyers. As a CCW piece, I can live with the long first pull, but yeah, the reset is stupid long, and the final letoff has to be 15 lbs or more...

[Irving]

How does the DOA trigger compare to Kahr's DOA? I'm not trying to derail the thread, just curious.

[funkfool]

No experience with Kahr's - TFOGGER?

[TFOGGER]

No experience with the Kahrs, but I know I've seen a few come up for sale on here, so someone has to have shot one...

[Irving]

I've dry fired in the store, and they also have very long, DAO trigger pulls, but I don't usually think about trigger reset or anything. Also, I wasn't wearing gloves either.

[TFOGGER]

The Kahrs are probably quite a bit heavier than the KelTec, so recoil should be less of an issue. They are also more of a conventional striker fired design, so the trigger pull should be lighter. I haven't had a lot of chance to handle one, so I can't speak to things like pull quality and reset.

[Irving]

So, are you keeping the Kel tec then? I had a chance to shoot a Kel tec 380 a few years ago, but didn't, so I don't know what a pocket gun feels like. Is it less comfortable than shooting say a light weight 38 special revolver?

[TFOGGER]

Yeah, gonna keep it as a CCW piece. If I need to use it, I'm not going to be worried about recoil or trigger pull. Recoil is sharper than my J frame w/+p, but the Keltec is a LOT lighter.