A Military 9mm Goes Sub-Compact: SAR9SC

If you aren’t aware of SAR USA’s SAR9 series of 9mm pistols, you are missing out on some of the best and best value personal protection handguns on the market. If these pistols were sold under the Glock brand name, they would be hailed as apex autoloaders and sell for 30 percent more than they do. Fortunately for you, the seriously discriminating and value-conscious shooter, they’re sold under the SAR USA brand name. “SAR” is more confidently pronounceable than Sarsilmaz, the actual name of the Turkish company that makes them. They are one of the biggest arms manufacturers in Turkey with an excellent reputation,145 years of experience in the trade, and are still family-owned. They make just about everything from handguns to machine guns for military, law enforcement and civilian customers in eighty countries. They developed the full-size, polymer-framed, striker-fired, 17-round magazine, 4.4″ barrel SAR9 pistol to NATO standards for military use, and it has passed tests that would lay low many modern commercial handguns.

A Family Affair

Knowing that American shooters expect options beyond the traditional “one-size-fits-all” standard issue military sidearm, new variants of the SAR9 were spawned. For suppressed shooting, they introduced two threaded barrel models in two frame sizes (SAR9 SOCOM). Their competition and target shooting model (SAR9 Sport) used the full-size frame with an aluminum flared magazine well, and a longer 5.2″ barrel and slide. For concealed carry, they added a compact model (SAR9C) with a shorter, 15-round flush fit magazine, grip frame, and shorter 4″ barrel and slide. For better concealability, a sub-compact model (SAR9SC) with a 12-shot flush fit magazine, much smaller frame, and shorter slide with a 3.3″ barrel completed their sextet of offerings. While the pistols vary in size, the magazine wells are identical, allowing for a lot of versatility in capacity. For example, the subcompact can use 15-, 17-, 19-, and 21-round extended magazines.

Continuous Improvement

SAR USA, the Miami, Florida-based exclusive distributor of SAR firearms, has listened carefully to the desires of its customers, and the SAR9 series has undergone what I call a “continuous feature enhancement process” over the last several years. The first-generation guns I tested were excellent. The present GEN 3 guns have retained all their original merit but now include Meprolight tritium three-dot night sights with 12-year Swiss tritium vials and the big dot on the front sight, lightening/cooling windows cut out at the front of the slide, more aggressive slide gripping grooves, and they come ready for RMSc footprint optics.

The SAR9 series pistols sell at what appears to be a suspiciously low, sub $500, price for their apparent high quality. That price point is possible because of the Sarsilmaz factory’s highly efficient production process and lower cost of labor. Don’t get spooked by their bargain price. There is nothing chintzy about these guns. They are ruggedly built with forged slides, countersunk muzzle crowns, steel sights, aluminum triggers and steel recoil spring guides.

Subcompact

Now that you know the SAR9 origin story, let’s take a close look at the smallest of the SAR9 clan, the sub-compact SAR9SC. Unlike its siblings, it has a unique polymer frame that’s notably smaller. The pistol is closer in size to a S&W Shield than it is to a SIG P365, measuring 6.1″ long, 5.1″ high from the top of the sight to the bottom of the magazine, and 1.1″ at its widest point across the slide lock release.

To slim it down across the grip, the sub-compact forgoes the customizable backstraps and side panels you find on the big guns. However, it is well stippled, but not so coarsely as to be uncomfortable against the body, and includes trigger finger tip and supporting thumb tip rest pads on the sides of the frame. The front strap has triple finger cuts, the lowermost ending with the 12-round magazine’s pinky rest floorplate. Like the big pistol, the sides of the grip are relieved behind the trigger to accommodate shorter fingers better, and the bottom of the triggerguard is undercut, which, along with a high and deep beavertail at the back, allows for a higher grip on the frame to improve recovery in recoil. I love this grip. It’s small, but seems to sacrifice nothing in terms of control. The GEN 3 SAR9SC also has a squared-off and grooved triggerguard face for those who like to hang onto it. There’s 1.4″ of integral accessory rail on the dust cover.

Controls and Operation

Controls include a user-configurable ambidextrous magazine release button that is about half as tall as the one used on the big guns. To my delight, it proved much less susceptible to accidentally releasing the magazine. The slide lock release lever operated smoothly with minimal effort, but it is for right-handers only. My test pistol had the usual two-stage trigger pull with a crisp break at 6 pounds on the gauge. I think the flat-faced trigger makes the pull weight feel lighter than it actually is.

A look inside showed it doesn’t use the sheet metal chassis style fire control unit the big guns do. To save space, the front and rear slide guide rail blocks are separate parts pinned into the frame along with their supporting parts, which, other than being slightly smaller, appear identical in operation to the larger gun. The sub-compact actually has more frame-to-slide engagement than the big gun thanks to the longer overall length of the rails on the frame side, and the greater depth of the mating cuts they ride in on the slide. Compared to the full-size gun, which had a really tight lock up when in battery, I noticed the sub-compact had a little bit of wiggle between frame, slide and muzzle.

On the Range

Later testing from the bench at 25 yards with identical ammunition showed the subcompact shot groups averaging about from 0.69″ to 1.34″ larger than the full size gun, but some degradation in practical accuracy is to be expected when you lose 0.70″ of barrel and sight radius. Overall, the sub-compact shot much better at 25 yards than you might expect an autoloader with a 3.3″ barrel would. In fact, it shot a lot better than a number of full-sized handguns from other big-name makers. Sarsilmaz seems to know how to make an accurate pistol.

Its tastes in bullets mirrored its big brother’s. Hornady American Gunner 9mm +P 124-grain, XTP JHP averaged 1,126 feet-per-second (FPS) and five-shot groups of 2.77″! Winchester Super X 115-grain Silvertip JHP averaged 1,087 FPS and groups of 3.21″. Federal Premium Personal Defense Hydra-SHOK Deep 135-grain JHP averaged 984 FPS and groups of 3.9″.

Confident in handling, pleasant to shoot and flawlessly reliable in testing, the SAR9SC is a great choice for concealed carry when a truly tiny gun isn’t required. I had a great deal of fun just plinking at soup cans at 25 yards from a standing, two-handed hold position after I finished my accuracy testing. All of the shooting was done with iron sights. Sized nicely for women and weighing only 21.5 ounces empty, my wife loved the SAR9SC, too, until she had to rack the slide. Shooters with limited upper body strength will have to use technique, rather than muscle cycle the action.

For more info: SARUSA.com