Rost Martin RM1C: A New Company And A New Gun

Rost Martin is a new Texas-based firearms manufacturer, and it's going for a fresh take on striker-fired 9mm semi-autos with the RM1C pistol.

October 08, 2024 By Joel J. Hutchcroft, Editor-in-Chief

It’s not often that we here at Shooting Times get to report on a brand-new gun from a brand-new company, so I’m especially excited about this project. The gun is the RM1C, and the company is Rost Martin. Rost Martin is based in Texas, and the principals are Chris and Stefany Toomer. Chris served five years as an infantry officer in the United States Marines, deploying with the 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marines, before going to business school. Stefany is the daughter of Springfield Armory CEO Dennis Reese. I’ve been acquainted with Mr. Reese for more decades than I care to admit, and I well remember Stefany when she was much younger. It’s cool to see her now running her own gun company. I guess I’m getting pretty long in the tooth. By the way, Springfield Armory has nothing to do with the Rost Martin company.

Excellent Features

rost-martin-rm1c-9mm-pistol-02 — The new 9mm Rost Martin RM1C was reliable, comfortable to shoot, and accurate. It averaged 2.75-inch five-shot groups at 25 yards with six different factory loads.

The new RM1C is a compact, polymer-frame, striker-fired, 9mm semiautomatic pistol. It competes with the Glock 19, SIG SAUER P365, and Springfield Armory Hellcat. It has a 3.77-inch barrel with 1:10 twist, and it comes with two magazines. One magazine holds 15 rounds of 9mm ammo, whereas the other holds 17 rounds by virtue of an extended baseplate/bumper pad. The pistol is 4.92 inches tall, 1.23 inches wide, and 7.96 inches long. It weighs 21.1 ounces. The pistol’s steel slide has wide grasping grooves at the front and the rear. It has glare-reducing striations on top. And it is finished in matte black nitride. The rear sight is dovetailed into the slide, and it has a U-shaped notch and fine horizontal striations. The front sight also is dovetailed into the slide. It has a single white dot, and it is angled to help facilitate a snag-free draw. By the way, the pistol fits holsters for similar-size Glock pistols, but CrossBreed, DeSantis, and BlackPoint already have holsters specifically for the new RM1C.

rost-martin-rm1c-9mm-pistol-03 — The RM1C comes with a striated U-notch rear sight. The pistol’s slide is optic ready and comes with a Trijicon RMR mounting plate.

The top of the slide is cut for installing a red-dot optic, which is de rigueur these days. The optic cut fits the Trijicon RMR mounting plate, and our sample came with an RMR already installed. The polymer frame has an integral accessory rail with three cross-slots. You can get it in black, Flat Dark Earth, and Stone Gray colors. Our sample is the black one. The frame has textured areas on the grip, the front of the trigger guard, and on both sides of the frame where the trigger finger can rest. Rost Martin calls the texturing pattern Responsive Grip Texture (RGT). It is a proprietary laser-stippled texture, and it is effective while not being too aggressive.

rost-martin-rm1c-9mm-pistol-04 — The polymer grip frame features Rost Martin’s proprietary laser-stippled Responsive Grip Texture. The gun comes with three interchangeable backstraps.

The backstrap of the grip frame can be switched, and the pistol comes with three different backstraps. They wear the RGT texturing. The bottom of the grip frame is flared for easier magazine insertion. Speaking of the magazines, the RM1C comes with two high-capacity magazines. The bodies are steel, the followers are synthetic, and the baseplates/bumper pads are synthetic. As I said earlier, one magazine holds 15 rounds of 9mm ammo, and with its extended baseplate/bumper pad, the other holds 17 rounds. The backs of the magazines have numbered witness holes.

rost-martin-rm1c-9mm-pistol-05 — The new Rost Martin RM1C is a compact polymer- frame, striker-fired, 9mm semiautomatic pistol with a 3.77-inch barrel and high-capacity magazines.

The trigger has a flat face, and the mechanism incorporates a trigger safety lever similar to other striker-fired pistol designs. However, unlike the majority of such triggers in other pistol designs, the RM1C’s trigger has a trigger pull weight less than 5 pounds. Most of the most recent striker-fired pistols I’ve handled have had trigger pulls quite a bit heavier than 6 pounds. The RM1C’s trigger pull averaged 4 pounds, 15 ounces over a series of five measurements with an RCBS trigger pull gauge. It had some take-up, but it broke crisply and consistently. The RM1C disassembles much like a Glock striker-fired pistol. However, the procedure does not require the trigger to be squeezed.

Commendable Accuracy

rost-martin-rm1c-9mm-pistol-06 — The pistol’s front sight has a single white dot, and the post is angled to facilitate a snag-free draw. Note the glare-reduc- ing striations on the slide’s top.

I put the RM1C through my standard protocol of firing five, five-shot groups from a benchrest at 25 yards with as many factory loads as I could get my hands on. Luckily, I was able to obtain six different loads, ranging in bullet weight from 115 grains to 147 grains. They are listed in the accompanying shooting results chart. As you can see, all loads averaged 3.50 inches or less. Overall average accuracy was 2.75 inches, and at 2.00 inches, my best average came with Nosler Match Grade 124-grain JHP ammo. That load’s average velocity was 1,111 fps from the pistol’s 3.77-inch barrel measured 12 feet from the gun’s muzzle with a Competition Electronics ProChrono Digital chronograph. My second-best average accuracy was achieved with some old Hornady Critical Defense 115-grain FTX ammunition. The five-group average for it was 2.25 inches. That load produced an average velocity of 1,061 fps. The third-best average accuracy came with Hornady Critical Duty 135-grain ammo. The five-group average for it was 2.75 inches, and the average velocity was 1,129 fps.

rost-martin-rm1c-9mm-pistol-07 — The trigger has a flat face, and the mechanism utilizes a trigger safety lever. Our sample’s trig- ger pull averaged 4.9 pounds, which is notably less than many striker-fired pistols on the market.

Two loads from Winchester averaged 3.00 inches for their five, five-shot groups at 25 yards. They were the Active Duty 115-grain FN FMJ and the Defender 147-grain JHP loads. Their average velocities were 1,300 and 952 fps, respectively. And bringing up the rear in terms of accuracy was the SIG SAUER 147-grain FMJ ammo. Its average velocity was 1,021 fps, and its group average was 3.50 inches. Still, that accuracy is well under the old, established self-defense standard of 4.25 inches at 25 yards. I also fired the RM1C at a self-defense distance of seven yards. At that short range, firing a full magazine of each factory load produced essentially one large, ragged hole in the man-size B27 target.

rost-martin-rm1c-9mm-pistol-08 — The compact RM1C comes with two steel magazines. One holds 15 rounds of 9mm Luger ammunition, and with an extended baseplate/bumper pad, the other holds 17 rounds.

Function was 100 percent throughout my entire shooting session, both for accuracy at 25 yards and rapid-fire at seven yards. Point of impact was right on the money at seven yards, and muzzle jump and recoil were easy to manage. A lot of situations call for a compact pistol with a high magazine capacity. The new Rost Martin RM1C meets those needs. It’s accurate, reliable, and comfortable to shoot. With its very reasonable MSRP of $459, it is a fresh take on the compact 9mm pistol genre, and Rost Martin is a fresh new gun company.