Ruger American 9mm

Carry Comfort

I spent a day carrying the American in a Galco Yaqui Slide holster. It concealed adequately under a SIG-Tac vest, and felt about like carrying a Glock 21. No sharp edges snagged clothing or dug uncomfortably into the body.

Bottom Line

The “striker-fired 9mm pistol market” is the most hotly contested in the handgun industry today. I liked the speed of reloading and the short trigger reach afforded with the smallest of the optional grip inserts that come with the Ruger American. The latter feature will be particularly appreciated by shooters with shorter fingers. Curiously, when I held the gun hard I could feel a tiny “creak” in the grip sleeve, but it did not seem to affect shooting.

Accuracy was in the ballpark with the Glock, and better than I saw with early XD and M&P 9mms, though these brands are all in the same ballpark today. The Ruger American is also available as a 10+1 capacity .45 ACP, as well as the 17+1 capacity 9mm we tested. MSRP in either caliber is $579. This does not greatly undersell the competition, and somewhat loses a traditional Ruger selling point, which was often a dramatically lower selling price than other firearms in the same categories.

That said, the features mentioned above may make this particular Ruger the choice for a lot of people looking for a gun of this genre. My police department adopted the Ruger P90 .45 in 1993, and I used my issued P90 to win the state shoot for cops in New Hampshire in 2000. We went to the updated Ruger P345 in the same caliber in 2005, and I placed First Master against tricked out 1911s with mine in the Custom Defense Pistol division at the Pennsylvania State IDPA Championships in 2007, in each case drawing from Safariland 070 Level III security holsters on a duty belt. The P345 served us well until 2015. If my department issued me one of these new Ruger American pistols tomorrow, I wouldn’t lose a moment’s sleep over it. The Ruger American appears to be a stand-up piece of gear.

See the new Ruger American pistols at your gun shop, or contact Sturm, Ruger & Co., Dept. OT; Tel.: (336) 949-5200: Web: www.ruger.com