AllOutdoor Review: Lionheart Industries USA Vulcan 9 – Double Action Plus
Eve Flanigan 11.08.23
Updated November 10, 2023 with direct quotations and input from Lionheart Industries.
Georgia-based Lionheart Industries USA has a new 9mm carry pistol named Vulcan 9. It was the most-talked about gun among those in attendance at the 2023 Outdoor News America Gun Writers’ conference. The event was held in October at Texas Gun Experience, where writers got a thorough orientation to the history of this new handgun and were also able to experience it on the facility’s first-rate indoor range.
Lionheart Industries USA Coverage on AllOutdoor & TFB
- [SHOT 2023] LIONHEART Industries NEW Vulcan 9
- The Path Less Traveled #075: NRAAM 2023 Preview Part 3
- [TriggrCon 2023] A Modernized Daewoo K5 Pistol: Lionheart Vulcan 9
- Review of Lionheart Industries’ LH9C
Lionheart Industries is under new ownership, having previously acting as importer of a pistol that started out as a South Korean Military sidearm, the K5 by Daewoo. The commercially available version was called the DP51 and it came to the U.S. market in fits and starts over the years by way of several importers starting in the early 1990s.
In 2011, Lionheart Industries made an agreement with Daewoo (now known as SnT Motiv) to became the exclusive American importer of the K5/DP51 pistol. The pistol was popular enough that Lionheart established a stateside operation to manufacture an updated version in 2016. The pistol was wholly redesigned and newly branded as the Regulus.
Specifications – Lionheart Industries USA Vulcan 9
- Cartridge: 9mm
- Capacity: 15 +1 Standard (10 Round Magazines Available)
- Material: 7075 Aluminum Frame | 4140 Alloy Steel Slide
- Sights: Fiber Optic Dovetailed
- Action: Double-Action Plus
- Barrel: Black Nitride 416R Stainless Steel – 3.7″ Standard | 4.3″ Threaded
- Height: 5″ (Not Including Sights)
- Length: 6.9″ – Standard Barrel | 7.5″ – Threaded Barrel
- Width: 0.96″ Slide | 1.19″ Grip
- Weight: 28 Ounces with Empty Magazine
American consumers liked the new Regulus so much that Lionheart established a stateside plant to manufacture them. The company took to heart the surging popularity of modular handgun design. Soon there were a staggering number of optional configurations (slide length, capacity and finish combinations for starters), around 26,000 according to Lionheart Industries Marketing Director Rob Curtis. But this new take on customized manufacturing begat a new problem: other than the Browning-style action, the Regulus lacked a real identity of its own and attending to orders was cumbersome due to an overabundance of options.
Trouble in one business is just opportunity for another, and that was the case when Lionheart was purchased by a brand new team and relocated to Georgia. With modular options shaved down to a manageable handful of variants, the Regulus was re-launched in 2019. The forward-looking new team understood their product must continue to evolve with recent changes to typical handgun features, most notable being optics compatibility. Thus the Lionheart Vulcan 9 was born. It’s a match for RMSc and RMRcc red dots, and has a lower-third witness with its dovetail-set front and rear sights, but that is just the beginning of what’s new.
A ”J” trigger combines the best features of flat-face and curved models for maximum sensitivity and control. The 7075 aluminum frame is fitted with right- or left-hand-specific, highly textured G10 grips that include a ledge for the support hand thumb to push on as a recoil tamer. Metal MecGar mags are also brand new. It is with the mags that Lionheart took another step away from tradition and toward convenience. They are available with an optional baseplate that includes a tiny multi-tool embedded in it for easy optic adjustments on the range. It doesn’t interrupt the profile of the gun with its flush-fit mags.
In the face of these radical updates, Lionheart designers felt compelled to stay true to the platform’s Browning style action and to what must be a significant following among South Korean customers. There is a cultural expectation, Curtis explained, that the hammer of a carried sidearm be in the forward position to connote peace of mind regarding prevention of unintentional discharges. And this is what drove them to retain a special feature inherited from the K5 in the new Lionheart 9mm, called the Vulcan 9, that makes it very different from a customary double/single action with a decocker and long, heavy initial pull for the first shot. Though Daewoo initially called it a “fast action” (and it was also called “triple action”), the moniker Lionheart uses to promote the system in today’s Vulcan 9 is “Double-Action Plus.”
Factory-recommended operation of the double action plus is unlike that which anyone with formal training on DA/SA or single action-only platforms has experienced. As either of those platforms do, the hammer cocks and the gun is apparently in single action mode via the act of inserting a magazine and closing the slide. If a person wanted, they could stop right there, engage the ambi, 1911-style thumb safety, and holster the gun in ready, single action condition. But that entails keeping the “dangerous” appearance of a cocked hammer. Instead, the double-action plus is engagged by pushing the hammer forward with the thumb for carry. This has the effect of also pushing the trigger forward into what looks like a tradtiional double action position, yet it’s essentially a light double-action. With just a few pounds of force, the trigger is staged back at its single-action wall where it requires just 4.5 to 5.5 pounds of pressure to fire.
It was a treat to be among the first members of the media to shoot the Vulcan 9. By design, pushing the hammer forward is an administrative task that’s not done under any sort of stress, so the learning curve is best taken methodically, as with, say, a Beretta 92F that has both a thumb safety and decocker. Especially once I got my support hand thumb properly seated on the integral ledge, the little gun ran easily and was very controllable. It didn’t strike me as heavy; in fact it’s just four ounces heavier than the universal comparison compact gun, a Glock 19.
With good cause, this is the gun most reviewers left the conference talking about reviewing in depth later. It’s built with exacting tolerances entirely in the USA and is truly new in its manner of operation. Holster fits are already on the way also, including some that’ll accommodate a light on its rail. Blackpoint Tactical and Black Arch Holsters will offer products making this gun ready to carry as soon as it’s available for delivery in November 2023 at a base price of $1,299. Color schemes include black/black, black/gray, and gold/black, with left- and right-hand options. The Lionheart Vulcan 9 is available for pre-order now at the Lionheart Industries website.
Note: This article was updated on November 10, 2023 with direct input from Lionheart Inudustries.
