Accuracy And Endurance
I had the opportunity to extensively fire several first-production SR9s at the Ruger facility in Prescott, Arizona, prior to the gun's introduction to the market, and I found them to be reliable, accurate, and extremely good-feeling shooters. And the day after the SR9 was officially introduced and shipped to dealers, I received a production-run review sample. I immediately subjected it to an extended accuracy and performance/endurance workout with a range of different commercial ammunition loads (pretty much emptying my 9mm ammunition locker). The results are listed in the accompanying chart. The overall accuracy performance was well above the generally accepted 4.5-at-25 norm for duty/service/military auto pistols.

As for endurance, I have often commented in these pages that I have no use for so-called "torture tests." I don't think they tell you very much. The very term "torture" implies unreasonable cruelty, and you can break anything if you push it past its design limits. Automotive magazines don't review new vehicles by driving them into bridge abutments at 60 mph. At the same time, I believe an "accelerated normal-use test" (ANU) can provide a very useful indication of whether a product lives up to its maker's claims for how long it can serve you usefully.

For handguns, an ANU test means shooting a lot of rounds through a gun within a shorter span of days, weeks, or months than a "normal" user would ordinarily fire but without pushing the gun past what a normal shooting session would entail. The standard for such tests was set by the original Austrian Army specification that made Glock famous. It called for an initial 10,000 rounds with a 500-round average malfunction interval (i.e., no more than 20 stoppages in 10,000 rounds) and an initial 15,000-round "main parts" survival interval. So if you buy any decent polymer-frame pistol today, you should reasonably expect it to run--with ordinary care--for at least 5,000 rounds with no more than 10 stoppages before you should need to start thinking about "small parts" replacement. How long would that be in real-world use?

Ruger’s new approach to announcing new products is to have guns assembled and ready to ship at the time the announcement is made. In that fashion, SR9s are being shipped as you read this report.

Firearms manufacturers tell me the average civilian-owned handgun only makes it to the range maybe three or four times a year at best, for an average 200 to 300 rounds total annual rounds fired. At that rate it would take nearly 20 years before 5,000 rounds would go down that barrel. For an ANU test, we can do that in 10 days, shooting 500 rounds a day, four sessions each day, not stressing the gun.

My procedure is to spend about a half-hour first thing in the morning, shooting 125 rounds--one magazine every four minutes. The gun doesn't even get hot. Before lunch, I'll run another 125 rounds; mid-afternoon another 125; evening another 125. I start with the gun just as it came from the factory, without any preliminary maintenance, and track how long it takes to dirty up and start misfiring because of firing residue build-up. Then I'll give it a standard fieldstrip maintenance and continue shooting.