I bought the Taurus 709 a month ago in stainless steel black. Great looking gun and conceals nicely. For having big hands, I was surprised how well it felt in my grip. On the first day of shooting it, had some bad luck. On the 20th shot, the gun appeared jammed. Upon investigation, I found that the reason it jammed was because the spring mechanism broke. Not the spring itself, but the round metal lip that holds the larger spring at tension. I was a bit disappointed as you could imagine. I took it back to the place of purchase and they were nice enough to swap out the spring mechanism from another new 709 they had, so it was back to the range to finish up my ammo. I like the way the gun shoots, nice recoil, decent accuracy. But before I finished shooting 100 rounds, I had 3 times where the slide would stay open and not feed the last round. This seemed to happen with the same magazine each time. Also, I noticed that the main screw on the spring mechanism was almost all the way backed out. A few more shots and it would have fallen out and disassembled the springs completely.
After cleaning the gun, I used some medium strength Loctite to keep that screw in place. I then checked out the magazine that I suspected was causing the failure to feed the last round (which seems to be a common problem from what I understand). Sure enough, the yellow plastic pusher was binding on the way up a little bit after I pushed down on it. I ended up using the handle end of some pliers to reshape the inner walls of the magazine so that the yellow plastic pusher moved freely. These magazines are thin and can get out of shape easy if hit or pressed the wrong way.
So I think I worked out the bugs on this gun. I still need to go to the range to test it out and to rebuild my confidence in this gun, and then I'll use it as a carry. I really want this gun to work out.
