In this column, I have looked at the practical and the tactical. I’ve also written about oddball guns. Today, I am going to review the Taurus 905, a 9mm revolver.

Ummm… did you just say a 9mm revolver? Yep.

A 9mm revolver sounds like an oxymoron, right? Not hardly. There have been a variety of rimless cartridge revolvers over the years. In recent times, revolver master Jerry Miculek put the .45 ACP revolver on the map with various national championships and world records.

Revolvers are perfectly capable of shooting rimless cartridges such as the 9mm, .40 S&W and .45 ACP. Heck, until recently, Smith & Wesson even sold a few different 10mm revolvers. 

Shooting a rimless cartridge in a revolver isn’t a new idea, either. Colt and Smith & Wesson both made .45 ACP revolvers to supplement the M1911 pistol during World War I. Later, Brazil ordered thousands of the S&W .45ACP revolvers for their own military.

And Brazil is where this week’s review takes us. Taurus is a Brazilian arms manufacturer who has proven to be an innovator, creating a wide variety of niche guns for the US market. Taurus is probably best known for the Judge line of revolvers, and Rossi (owned by Taurus) has made a splash with the Ranch Hand line of guns.

The Taurus 905 is a steel framed, compact revolver made to chamber the 9mm cartridge. The cartridges are held in place by the use of a full moon clip. The 905 ships with six clips.
If you have never used a moon clip (yes, clips…not magazines), it is a circle of thin sheet metal that the cartridges snap into. Then the whole clip and ammunition drops into the cylinder as one unit. Since the cartridges do not have a rim, extraction is made possible by the clip.  All empty shells extract at one time.

The sights on the 905 are fixed and plain, but very useable. The front ramp is black and serrated to help prevent any glare in harsh lighting conditions. The rear sight is a notch cut into the frame, similar to other compact revolvers.

The hammer is exposed, allowing the user to shoot double- or single-action. For a purely defensive handgun, I prefer a “hammerless” model like the old Smith & Wesson 940, which was a 9mm Centennial. 

The double action trigger pull was heavy, but smooth. The DA pull exceeded the 12-pound max on my Lyman scale. A lot of people will not like that. However, I did not find it to be a problem.

The single action pull was very nice. There was a lack of any take up, and the trigger broke cleanly at a touch over five pounds. The single action trigger was very pleasurable to shoot.

The 905 has a 2” barrel and a full underbarrel lug. The lug shrouds the extractor rod, which is an appreciable feature, and adds a little bit of extra weight to help absorb recoil. Overall weight is 22.2 ounces (unloaded.)

Recoil is not bad. The 9mm is a high pressure cartridge (especially when compared to the .38 Special typically found in small revolvers.) Higher pressures tend to create more recoil than lower pressure rounds. So, the steel frame and full underlug help to reduce the felt recoil. The recoil isn’t nearly as sharp as a .357 Magnum, but it is more than  a .38 Special +P.  The grips on the 905 are a hard rubber, but do not absorb as much recoil as I would have liked.  The gun is fun to shoot, but you won’t want to put several hundred rounds through it on each range trip.

The accuracy was good and the functioning was near perfect on the Taurus. I experienced only one problem with the 905. A single round of Remington 9mm 115 gr JHP failed to fire. The primer was dented, though the dent seemed shallow.

I ran about 100 rounds of the Remington through the revolver and none of the other cartridges had any problems. I also ran six other loads of ammunition through the gun, and had no problems with any of them. I do not know if the problem was with the gun or ammunition. 

I think the Taurus 905 makes a great self-defense or back up gun. It is relatively easy to conceal and is chambered in a respectable cartridge. An added benefit of carrying the Taurus 9mm revolver is you can choose self-defense ammunition that is not available for the .38 Special.

MSRP on the Taurus is $433.00, and I have seen them going for as low as $333.05 on the Internet.