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A passion and root of GBGuns has always been guns off the beaten path. New imports, young companies, and stuff you typically won't find at your local gun shop are the most interesting to me and, because they can't rest on their brand strength these offerings have to be competitively priced or featured. One company known for finding and building something a little different is American Tactical, Inc., more commonly known as ATI.
Made by Ogaoglu, the FXS-9 has a 4.1" barrel and runs on ubiquitous CZ-75 17-round magazines. Despite following the "mullet recipe" the gun looks and feels more balanced that other compact barrel, full-size grip options out there. I had to do some digging to on Agaoglu: They've been around since 2011 and seem to lack a company website, but do have a Facebook page.
MSRP is $349.95, but we found it for less on Guns.com with a listing of just $320.99 here. At that price you can't expect much, yet the FXS-9 includes interchangeable backstraps and steel sights with colored dots we found to be excellent on the range.
The Basics:
Barrel Length: 4.1"
Length: 7.45"
Height: 5.6"
Width: 1.4"
Weight: 26.5 ounces
Capacity: 17+1
Construction, fit, and finish are reminiscent of many other popular models of handguns leaving nothing to complaint about but also not much noteworthy. It appears that Agaoglu and ATI took the safe, middle ground with this pistol of just making a gun that works. How well does it work? That's where our range test and trademark What's For Dinner Test came in. We caught a break from Oregon winter rain and hit the range.
We're often asked where we get our non-basic ammunition. Some of it comes from our subscription to AmmoSquared, and recently we've found some fun stuff by the box through True Shot Gun Club.
Current Pricing:
Grabagun HERE
Guns.com HERE
Lowest price across the web HERE
As you saw in the video, we have three major take-aways from shooting the FXS-9 stemming from trigger, sights, and recoil.
Sights: These sights are excellent. Easy to spot, easy to align, and made of steel. The width and sizing grabs your eye and lines up sharply without being so fine you want to spend minutes aligning them.
Trigger: It's different. If you make a simple pull everything is fine, it's when making more controlled shots that it can be both tricky and nice. It feels almost as if the take-up weight is greater than the break weight. As a result it's easy to pull through smoothly, but can sometimes be tricky to time a shot. We can't call this a complaint as it's simply something that must be learned, but it is different from most triggers.
Recoil: The FXS-9 shoots very softly. Normally with Turkish pistols we can equate this to a recoil system intended for 124gr NATO loads, but the FXS-9 ate everything in our ammo test. Peeking under the hood there's nothing magical, it's just nicely done. The recoil impulse is very soft and controllable regardless of ammo type. This is a 4" gun that shoots more like a 5". This is likely partially in part to the FXS-9 being on the wider side of contemporary designs; more width = more surface area to distribute recoil.
Conclusion: For the price this is an excellent pistol. Much like when Canik was first seen in the US they had to price low to compete. Once word gets out that these are good guns I expect we'll see prices come higher. Holster support is unknown, but if you're looking for a good range, truck, or home defense gun we don't have any reason to not recommend the FXS-9.