I bought a new KUSA KP-9, and took it out to the range last week for a test fire and sight in.  Here’s a range report.

The gun is the Kalashnikov KP-9, bought new, in braced pistol form.  The pistol had a few things I tightened up first – the brace was a bit loose, and if you unhinge it, you can get to the Allen bolt that tightens it up.  Also the top handguard rattled a bit, but a buddy had an KP-9 too and I swapped out the gas tube with his, and now it’s solid.  

I did my usual pre-fire clean, as the most important cleaning you can ever do is when the gun is new to you.  Often times the factory doesn’t lube them very well, or at all, or has machining grit and rubbish in things.

I greased up the bolt carrier and extension, and used EWL for the rest of the moving parts.  For accessories, I had four to install – night sights, an extended charging handle from KUSA, a Krebs safety with bolt hold open, and a HB combo flash hider and 3 lug mount for my suppressor.  

The handle attached easily, on the other two, it was more difficult.  The sear was holding the factory safety lever in place when I tried to lift it up, and didn’t seem to want to get out of the way, unlike my buddies that went right up and out.  I had to have both of them in front of me to see what the differences were, and finally figured out that if I manually moved the sear on mine back a bit (and not to the front as you’d think looking at it) then there was enough clearance for the extension on the factory safety to lift up and allow removal.  So if you have issues, move the sear both forwards and backwards and see which one works to get the safety lever out.

Once out, the Krebs one went right in.  It has a bit of a larger finger notch in the front, and a sort of swell towards the back, that’s supposed to let you flick it up or down, but I found you’re so far back on the lever you don’t have enough leverage to make it move without a lot more effort that you’d want to.  

Now the front sight was almost impossible to drift out.  I had an old sight pusher from another AK, but the KUSA front sight block is wider and doesn’t allow use of the normal sight pushers.  So I had to buy another sight pusher.  Even with that, the sight assembly needed me to hammer the long sight pushing lever to get it out.  Many swear words were spoken.  Once out (finally), the new night sight one was easy to install, and is both much better for night, and day with the big dot for worn out eyes.

The HB mount went on fine, and I lock-tighted it in place with some blue lock-tight, a three lug tool, and my homemade 8 ft-lbs torque wrench which was wrench and an 8.8 pound weight tied to the end of the wrench.  Primitive, but better than just “this feels tight”.  

I also bought some Russian mags for it from a guy here on AR – couple of black ones and clear ones too.  I’ve read if you want to you can cut the mag down and make it a 10 or 20 rounder, as there are slots pre-installed for putting the baseplate up higher on the mag body.  I might do so at some point to make one of them a 20 rounder, as those don’t get in the way as much when you’re sighting in using a rest.  

I also bought a Sig Romeo 5 red dot to use as my primary sight.  I’ve used them on 3 other guns and they’ve always worked well for me.  

Then off to the range.  It was a nice day and I enjoyed the shooting.  I fired 100 rounds of PPU gr. 115 FMJ, 100 rounds of Wolf steel case, 115 gr. FMJ, and 10 rounds of Remington Golden Saber JHP for a feeing test.

Feeding:

I had a single feed issue, and I’m not sure if it was the gun or mag.  With PPU ammo and the clear Russian mag, after firing 2-3 rounds of 5, the gun went click.  No round was fed into the chamber, and the other rounds were as they should be in the mag.  I think I just didn’t have the mag all the way in – the Russian mags are a bit wider and don’t go in easily the way the KUSA mags do.  I probably just didn’t have the mag locked in place, and after a few rounds it worked far enough down to avoid the bolt picking up a new round.  More firmly installing the mag fired off the other rounds in the mag, and that was the only time it didn’t go bang.

No issues with feeding the Remington GS rounds either.

Sight in:

I started out with sighting in the pistol at 15 yards, with the iron sights I was getting about 1.5 inch groups off a sandbag, and it would have shot better with a better pair of eyes – the front sights are sort of impressionistic at this point.  Was a bit off to the left but fine for a sight in, the Sig Romeo was going on for my primary sight.

15 yd, PPU, iron sights

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With that on, the grouping tightened up to all three shots touching.

15 yd, PPU, red dot

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I then tried it out offhand at the 15 yard plate range, and it shot very well.  Low recoil, accurate, and pointed well.  The plates stood no chance.  Now I will say that the trigger is possibly the worst factory trigger I’ve felt since when I owned a HK 91.  The KP-9’s is long, lots of creep, just not a good trigger at all, which was disappointing.

My buddies KP-9 is the same, while my old school Polytech AK-47 from the 80’s is fantastic.  So I don’t know why the KP-9 series is so bad, as the AK can have a good trigger right from the factory.  

KUSA is selling a drop in trigger assembly, but it’s 190 bucks (so more that 20% of the cost of the gun), and doesn’t look that easy to install, with lots of pins to move out of the way.  So I’ll probably just keep what I got – it’s not a sniper rifle or DMR, it’s a close in SMG and works fine in that role as is.

The extended charging handle worked well, and make it quite easy to reach over with my left hand to charge the action, or to hold the bolt open with my right side thumb, and then flick up the bolt hold open safety.  The Krebs safety was really nice, and I’d recommend that to anyone.  It allows you to lock the bolt open to safely go downrange with the gun on the bench, without having to fool with a chamber flag.  With a locked open bolt, the mags went in more easily, probably even more of an advantage with a full mag, which I never loaded up as I was shooting a few rounds then adjusting the sights so pushing the rounds down with the bolt wasn’t a problem at all.

Also as I found out, with a locked back bolt, it was very easy to flick the safety down and release the bolt – sort of a poor man’s bolt release feature, which made putting the pistol into action after putting in a mag as easy as with an AR.

I then mounted my AAC TiRant 9 on the pistol, using the HB mount, which worked well.  Accuracy opened up with the can on, but was OK.  Main thing was the gas.  Holy cow was the setup gassy.  Not sure why – it was a lot worse than my Colt AR 9mm.  3-5 rounds was about as much as you could take.  As short and handy as the pistol is without the can on, I think I’ll mostly use it like that, or maybe try the AAC 9s on it, to see if the shorter can results in less choking

15 yd, PPU, red dot, TiRant

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Then it was off to the 25 yard range, and some sight in work there.  It was about an inch group at 25, which I thought was fine accuracy for this type of firearm.  I did some offhand and moving shooting, and the gun performed well, easily keeping all the shots in the head area of a ¼ life sized silhouette.

25 yd Rem GS, red dot

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Overall, I’m very pleased with the KP-9, and recommend it to anyone.  It’s cheap at sub-1000 bucks with the brace, shoots and points well, feeds hollow points, and is a lot of fun to shoot.

Gun pics follow, the most important part!

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With clear Russian mag:

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With the AAC TiRant 9:

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All I did to mine was put in a polished up ALG trigger. I just use it to bumpfire and mag dump cheap Russian steel case ammo while I wait for my target gun barrels to cool down. Put at least two cases through it, runs great.

Lmfao this is the way.

I love my SBR KP-9

I'm going to install a 3 lug adapter on mine when it shows up. The Rugged 3 lug adapter calls for red loctite and 20-25 ft/lbs to install.

How do I support the KP9 to torque the muzzle device correctly? I have the Geissele reaction rod for M4 but I guess since the KP9 is an AK, do I just sit on it lol?

I see that you installed to about 9 ft/lbs. Is the Rugged torque spec overkill?

20-25 ft-lbs. of torque is what I've seen for flash hiders and such on rifles.  I'd read somewhere to put 9 ft-lbs. on the three lug - it's been months since I did it and I don't remember where I saw that number.

I also used some blue Loctight on it, and after 200 rounds, it's still on tight.

For a rifle can, with rifle pressures, I'd want the mount to be at the 20-25 range, but for a 9mm the 8-10 range should be fine.  You can check the tightness of the can while you're firing it, and see if there's any loosening.

For the amount of torque I put on, I just had the gun on my desk, with the 3 lug installation tool I also got from HB, a foot-ish long wrench, and an 8.8 pound weight, to give it about 8-10 foot pounds of torque.

I had some doubling issues with my KP9 as it came from KUSA. I sent it back and they sent it back with a new trigger. Clearly different profile and better feel. Also, I have a wolverine suppressor on mine and don't have the blowback overpressure.

Need a real stock OP, I could not stand that thing when I first got mine, I SBRed it a while back and stuck the metal triangle folder on it.

I stuck and ALG trigger in mine and it works great. I have a Wolfman on mine and it doesn’t have a ton of particularly noticeable blowback.



I’ve shot a about 300 Speer Gold dots(124) through mine and  has no issues with those hollow point profiles with the factory mags anyway

The brace works fine for me, though I may SBR it and put the real stock on.  Wonder what the solid folding one feels like too.  

Mine with my AAC Ti-Rant full size was making my eyes water from the gas.  Now I was shooting nasty Wolf for most of it, so that wasn't helping.  I may try it with my 9s, as the shorter can will have less backgassing I'd assume.

It's a super nice and handy gun, and I'm glad I picked it up.

Neat! Good looking gun.

Thanks for the review & pics OP.

This thing really is a dream with the ALG triggers, especially with their higher end one if you can find it. That said the whole back of the gun is open, with endless leaky areas around the dust cover. Also using a wolfman and 147gr subs, I was crying pretty quickly. It's one of the only subguns that I don't suppress because of it.

Same for me - the setup with my Ti-Rant 9 had my eyes watering, in a way that I'd not had before with other 9mm's.  But it's a great shooter without the can on it, and super short and handy, so I'll run it in that config most of the time.  I would like to try my 9s (5" can) on it and see how it works with noise compared to gassing.