Pawn Shop Pieces – The TEC-DC9

The TEC-9 has one of the most interesting, convoluted, and controversial backgrounds out there. Its portrayal in TV and Media made it the de facto bad guy gun in shows like Walker: Texas Ranger, Miami Vice, and a handful more. The weapon became the bane of gun controllers, who would ban it by name, only for it to appear again in the same configuration, with a slightly different name and maybe some configuration changes. In fact, the TEC-9 shown in this article is a TEC-DC9.

The TEC-DC9 and Beyond

Intratec released the TEC-DC9 in response to a by name ban by California. DC stands for Designed for California. Intratec produced several variations of the base TEC-9 series, including guns like the AB-10, which circumvented the AWB of 1994. The DC9 featured a threaded barrel with a removable shroud, unlike the fixed shroud of the original TEC-9.

The TEC-9 started life as a submachine gun. George Kellgren designed the gun while he worked at Interdynamics in Sweden. Initially, the weapon was intended to replace the Carl Gustav M/45 submachine gun. The gun didn’t sell as an SMG, and Kellgren and Interdyanmics brought it to the United States. They converted the weapon to a pistol, originally an open bolt design known as the KG-9 and KG-99.

These KG models were popular with film armories because they were quickly converted to full auto. The ATF came down on the KG series and forced them to be converted to closed-bolt guns. After that, the Intratec TEC-9 became the most popular model. Intratec produced the weapon, or variations of it, from 1984 until 2001. They were constantly targeted by gun control lawfare and fended off several bans and attempts to ban the weapon.

A Fun Find

I found this Intratec TEC-DC9 at a gun shop on consignment years ago. It sat for months with the consignee’s price on the high side of crazy. I knew the gunshop’s owner and asked him if they ever decided to lower the price to something reasonable. After about a year of sitting, they must have seen the light, and for 350 dollars, I had a TEC-DC9, a barrel shroud, one magazine, and an original box.

I knew of the TEC-9’s controversial history and that the gun was a paper tiger. While the weapon did look big and scary, it’s still just a straight blowback-operated 9mm handgun. It’s arguably less effective than a standard Glock 19 but twice the size and weight. It’s a silly little gun that admittedly has a frightful look.

Intratec did have some interesting ideas, and George Kellgren, now the owner of KelTec, has always thought outside the box. The TEC-DC9 and the TEC-9 series were early adopters of the polymer frame idea, which was still new and even controversial in 1984. Intratec used polymer to drive the price down and create a very affordable series of firearms.

While gun control advocates made the gun out as some devastating weapon, I’d instead a bad guy be armed with a TEC series pistol than any other weapon. After owning one, I’m confident in saying this might be one of the least effective 9mm handguns ever produced.

The Problems With the TEC-DC9

Using a straight blowback system is cheap but also has its own problems. The first is excessive recoil. Straight blowback throws it all at you and throws it hard. The straight blowback system also requires you to use a heavy-duty bolt and stiff springs. This makes the weapon heavier than necessary and challenging to rack and operate at times.

The TEC-DC9 isn’t all that different in design than the STEN gun. It’s just a simple tube gun at the end of the day. It’s overly large and heavy, with a terrible balance. The great big shroud makes the gun front heavy and difficult to aim. The magazine well offers a second space for a second hand and it’s needed.

The TEC-9 series are cheap guns. The sights are very small, open sights that are both black and have zero contrast. The charging handle doubles as the manual safety. It has to be pressed inwards to deactivate the gun. At the back, we have a single sling point, which is one of the few amenities you get. Things like a last-round bolt hold open aren’t present, and the only ambidextrous control is the magazine release, which sits behind the magazine.

It’s very simple and very plain. It was never made to be fancy and certainly isn’t.

To The Range

I’d love to give you this long range report complete with drills run, shots fired, and similar, but getting through a hundred rounds would probably take a few hour’s worth of frustration. The TEC-DC9 can hardly be called a semi-auto. It’s supposed to be semi-auto, but it rarely fires more than one round without some form of malfunction.

Lots of failures to feed, and plenty of double feeds, and failures to eject. It might be the magazine, but I only have one and don’t intend to buy another. The magazine is an original Intratec, and it just plain sucks. One issue I caught onto quickly was the lack of magazine over-insertion stop.

You can push the magazine in too far, which creates issues. The best way to rectify that is to push it in and pull it down slightly. That helps a bit. Also, only use good-quality ammo. Apparently, the gun is very ammo-sensitive, and it seems to run best with 124-grain ammunition.

When the gun runs more than a few rounds before jamming, you’re greeted with high recoil and the sights coming off target quite a bit between shots. Getting fast, tight groups isn’t exactly straightforward. The TEC-DC9 can fire somewhat adequate groups when done slowly. It’s still less accurate than any other semi-auto handgun when fired slowly.

The trigger pull delivers a fairly long pull. It’s almost as long as a double-action revolver. The trigger is pretty smooth but heavy. It’s certainly not impressive or necessary for a semi-auto pistol. The recoil impulse is heavy, but the gun is comfortable to operate, and that’s the only nice thing I can say about it.

So Why?

Great question. To me, it was a curiosity. The fact that it was so upsetting to gun control advocates made it appealing to me. It’s an icon, even if its performance makes it more like a single-shot pistol than anything intimidating or effective. It’s likely there are plenty of reliable TEC-9s and TEC-DC9s, but this model certainly didn’t make it up to snuff.

About Travis Pike

Travis Pike is a former Marine Machine Gunner, a lifelong firearms enthusiast, and now a regular guy who likes to shoot, write, and find ways to combine the two. He holds an NRA certification as a Basic Pistol Instructor and is the world’s Okayest firearm’s instructor.