Micro 9 Sales on the Rise in a Big Way

Written By

Michael Crites

Licensed Concealed Carry Holder

Reviewed by

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Updated

Jan 2023

The National Association of Sporting Goods Wholesalers, kind of the smaller, quieter brother of the NSSF, has crunched the data and found that sales of “Micro 9” pistols– you know, the Taurus GX4, Springfield Armory Hellfire, Ruger MAX-1, and so forth– are steadily climbing the charts.

scope-micros-1

Sig launched the trend with the P365 series in 2018 and now there are no less than 20 similar Micro Compact 9mm pistols on the market with the standard being roughly a gun that is no bigger than 1-inch wide and with at least a 10+1 magazine capacity, typically with an optics cut slide. It has now gotten to the point where such tiny pistols represented a full 25 percent of the 9mm semiautomatic guns shipped to distributors in 2022, often at the expense of sub-compact and compact models that used to be more popular.

Jason Cloessner, Vice-President and Product Development Manager at Lipsey’s, said, “The SIG P365 continues to be very popular with SIG leading the innovation in the Micro category… The Glock 43X has taken over the G19 as the most popular Glock for a lot of dealers…Springfield’s Hellcat series remains a strong seller and Taurus has made a lot of headway with the GX4 series.”