Pardini USA
Pardini Armi develops and specializes in a range of sports firearms used in many international competitions including the ISSF World Championships and Olympic Shooting events. The company was founded in the beginning of the 1980s by Giampiero Pardini, one of the most prominent marksmen in Italian target-shooting. Pardini USA imports and supports the Pardini brand in the United States.
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As I begin to think through the details of using my new GT9 in NRA Action Pistol events, I realized that the magazine capacity limitation imposed by my home state of Colorado was a significant obstacle for me. Since Colorado imposes a 15 round limit on magazine capacity, it would seem that the only solution I would have for my Pardini GT9 would be to buy 10 round magazines. Within the context of NRA Action Pistol competition, this would equate to needing 8 magazines, so I would be purchasing 6 more magazines, in addition to the two provided with the gun, for over $600. I was not excited about that prospect.
What I really needed was a magazine for my GT9 that would hold 13 to 15 rounds. This would allow me to participate in NRA Action Pistol competitions with just 4 magazines total. (The reason this is so, is because an individual NRA Action Pistol event typically involves shooting 48 shots. There are 4 stages per event so each stage is 12 shots. If your magazines hold at least 12 cartridges you can get by with 1 magazine per stage and 4 magazines total for the event; if your magazine capacity is anything less than twelve, you will use 2 magazines per stage and 8 magazines total for the event.)
Now Pardini makes a 17 round magazine for the GT9, but Colorado legislators in their infinite wisdom have declared this dangerous and illegal, so what to do? Fortunately, there is a way to limit the capacity of this 17 round magazine so that it is legal in my state and yet will still meet my Action Pistol requirement of a13 to 15 round magazine. And thank you to Alexander and Vladimir of Pardini USA for being willing to work with me on this.
The solution I applied is described below.
There are companies like Magblocks (magazineblocks.com) that make magazine limiter kits for various handgun magazines. Although their inventory of handgun magazine solutions is impressive, Pardini is not a common handgun, so they don’t make a magazine limiter specifically for Pardini magazines. I did happen to have several of these limiters for my Springfield XDM, which I found I could fairly easily adapt for the Pardini 17 round magazine and limit it to a “Colorado compliant” 14 rounds.
XDM 15 round limiter
The base of the limiter doesn’t fit within the recess on the
underside of the follower, so adjustments (via dremmeling )
are required.
After dremmeling each end of the
limiter base and rounding the corners, it fits into the recessed base of the Pardini magazine
follower (left side picture). The very top section of the limiter also had to be cut away to
achieve 14 round capacity (original limiter is on the left in the second picture and modified
length limiter is on the right)
The base of the limiter can be glued to the recessed
area of the follower for a permanent solution. This picture shows the follower / limiter
piece installed on the magazine spring and ready to be reinstalled within the magazine
body. The reassembled magazine is now capable of holding only 14 rounds.
B O’Boyle
I had the incredibly good fortune of winning this firearm during a raffle conducted at the 2025 Bianchi Cup Awards dinner. I was definitely excited about winning a gun when my ticket number was called, but I wasn’t familiar with Pardini, so I had no idea how special this was. It wasn’t until I was approached by a few people after the Awards dinner who congratulated me on winning “the prize of the evening” that it began to dawn on me that this wasn’t your typical handgun.
A few weeks later when I made my first trip to the range with the GT9, those congratulatory comments, as well as what I had read during my own research, were convincingly confirmed. The GT9 is the heaviest of my competition pistols, but this is not a drawback; the weight, balance, side porting on the slide, and the angle of the grip, which drives more of the recoil straight back through your strong side arm, makes this the softest shooting 9mm I have ever shot. The weight of the trigger pull is appropriately light for a competition pistol (right around 2lbs) and there is minimal trigger reset travel, which will make follow up shots or rapid strings easy to execute. And the fact that these trigger parameters are easily adjustable via the two screws that can be accessed via the cut out in the bottom of the trigger guard is a real plus.
(A friend of mine, who is a long time competitive shooter, and who also likes to pull my chain, asked if he could dry fire my GT9 to see what the trigger was like. I obliged him and after he tested the trigger and trigger reset, I saw a slight smile before he turned to hand the gun back to me and remark with a now somber expression, “Well it’s not the greatest trigger I’ve ever experienced…. “ And then as I stared at him in disbelief, he concluded, “It’s just the best damn trigger ever!”)
The performance and accuracy of the GT9 are also impressive. The smooth operation of the slide is well beyond what I’ve experienced with any other semi-auto pistol (one reviewer characterized it as being like “ a glass moving across Teflon”). Racking the slide requires little eAort and standard factory rounds have reliably cycled and ejected.
Out of the box with no sight adjustments and using standard factory ammo (CCI Blazer 115 grn FMJ), accuracy was excellent. (If there are misses on my target when I use this gun, it will be me, not the gun.) Recently I shot 35 rounds at a standard AP1 target (used for NRA Action Pistol , 4 inch diameter X ring inside of an 8 inch diameter 10 ring). My shots were from 10, 15, 20, and 25 yards, with over half of the rounds (about 20) being shot from 20 and 25 yards. All shots were done free style. Results: 16 – X; 16 -10; 2 just outside the 10 ring and 1 errant shot that occurred early when I was getting used to the sensitivity of the trigger. I like this gun a lot! Kudos to Pardini for creating such a fine handgun.
B O’Boyle
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