History
From the age of 14, Justin Moon enjoyed shooting guns. At age 18, Moon got a license to carry a handgun, co-signed by one of his older brothers, but he wasn't satisfied with the small calibers available in compact handguns. "I had been licensed to carry in New York State since I was 18 and had looked for an ultra-compact 9mm pistol," Justin later told American Handgunner. "To my chagrin, I could not find a pistol with the quality of construction and features in design which I felt were appropriate for a carry gun. Therefore, I decided to design an ultra-compact 9-mm. pistol that I could carry." By his junior year of college, he decided to design one himself.
In 1999, Kahr Arms bought Auto-Ordnance Company, not associated with the original AOC, maker of Thompson submachine guns, then owned and operated by Numrich Arms who had bought the crated assets of Auto-Ordnance started by General John T. Thompson and his investors. Now Kahr manufactures Auto-Ordnance's line of semi-automatic weapons, including a long-barreled rifle version of the famous "Tommy Gun."
Kahr offers its line of compact pistols at a time of significant liberalization of concealed weapons laws in many U.S. states. Since the 1990s, many states have passed "shall-issue" laws, as promoted by the American National Rifle Association and other gun rights organizations. Such laws mandate that state authorities must issue permits to carry concealed weapons to all law-abiding applicants who met certain conditions set forth by state law, including passing a comprehensive background check.
In 1994 the U.S. government banned manufacture and importation of pistol magazines with more than a 10-round capacity. These were the so-called "high-capacity" magazines, which again became legal to manufacture and import in most states in September 2004, after the relevant federal law expired. This change in federal law rendered many staggered-magazine pistol models (commonly with magazine capacities of 15 or more rounds) less popular in the American market. They were now overly large in light of their newly mandated 10-shot limit. Kahr was at the forefront, offering relatively small, well-made pistols with magazine capacities of up to eight rounds of 9mm or .40-caliber ammunition. These single-stack magazines allow for slender, compact pistols that have proven popular with the buying public.
Since late 2003 or very early in 2004, Kahr has changed from offering a Limited Lifetime Warranty on their pistols to one of only five years' duration. In 2003 the New York Daily News reported that the Kahr K9 was popular as a back-up weapon with New York City police officers, who called it the "Moonie gun".
In June 2010, Kahr bought Magnum Research, which markets the Desert Eagle.
Read more about this topic: Kahr Arms
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“This is the greatest week in the history of the world since the Creation, because as a result of what happened in this week, the world is bigger, infinitely.”
—Richard M. Nixon (1913–1995)
“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)