Trailblazer Pivot Review: A Compact 9mm Glock-Mag PCC

I enjoy weird and different guns. I should own stock in KelTec at this point for that reason alone. I have a particular interest in guns that fold, or in this case pivot. A lot of times the names of certain guns mean absolutely nothing, but with the Trailblazer Pivot, the name tells you everything.

The upper receiver of the gun pivots around the lower receiver. I mean that literally; it’s like a fidget spinner for grown-ups. The Pivot can pivot in either direction with the push of a button and the push or pull of the upper receiver.

Besides being a gun with a pivoting upper, it’s also a 9mm, direct blowback pistol caliber carbine, and yes, it takes Glock magazines.

Why Pivot?

What’s the point of a pivoting upper receiver? Much like the folding PCCs out there, the general idea is to reduce the size of the rifle when stored. It does that quite well. When pivoted into the closed position, the Pivot is 20.9 inches long overall.  When unpivoted, it’s 29.7 inches with the stock fully extended and its 16.1-inch barrel.

When you close the Pivot, the gun is perfectly safe. The bolt has to be locked to the rear to pivot, and you can’t load a magazine on the closed firearm or pivot the gun with a magazine in place. Plus, it’s not like the hammer pivots with the gun. If you want to quickly ready the gun, a magazine can be held in the stock for quick access.

The stock has multiple positions to adjust the length of pull, and when fully collapsed, you can fit a Magpul 21-round magazine in place. Possibly longer, but the 33-rounders are too long to fit with the stock fully collapsed. You can still use a 15, 17, or similar capacity magazine as well. The gun’s grip is Glock 19 length, so Glock 19 mags and up fit.

Live Inventory Price Checker

	Trailblazer Pivot 9mm Semi-Auto Rifle 16" 19rd, Black - P9-BLK	Palmetto State Armory	$ 2514.39 $ 1616.99
	Trailblazer Firearms Pivot Rifle 9mm - 16" - ODG	Primary Arms	$ 1579.99
	Trailblazer Firearms Pivot Semi Automatic Rifle 9mm Luger 16" Black Threaded Barrel Black Frame Black Folding Stock	MidwayUSA	$ 1616.00

Deploying The Trailblazer Pivot

Going from closed to open and firing the gun takes a little effort and practice to do it quickly. I practiced a lot to get the deployment time down to what I consider somewhat acceptable. I practiced both starting with the gun in my hands, picking the gun up from a table, and from a bag.

I found that it worked best to position the magazine in the stock with the rounds facing upward. My dominant hand keeps a grip on the pistol grip. My support hand presses the release button, pushes it away from my body, and guides it to the locked position. My support hand then retrieves the magazine, inserts it into the magazine well, and racks the charging handle.

It felt clumsy at first, but after practice I learned a rhythm to pivot, deploy the stock, load and fire the gun. Finding the unlocking button is easy because it’s fairly large. The upper pivots incredibly smoothly around the lower. It locks in place as soon as it lines up with the rest of the gun.

I feel a bit like a nerdy John Wick deploying the gun.

Controls and Construction

The Pivot features an ambidextrous AR-type safety that sits flush with the receiver. The safety features a press-up-to-fire design that makes it easy to use. When folded, I leave the safety off since the gun’s perfectly safe regardless.

Up top, we have a non-reciprocating charging handle that locks into an upward position when you fold the gun. You do get to give it the old HK slap.

Trailblazer threaded the barrel for muzzle devices, and the stock has an ambidextrous, bottom-mounted stock release for LOP adjustments. There are three positions for the stock, and only the third position felt comfortable for me.

The magazine release is where you expect it to be, and it’s quite Glock-like. The grip itself does feel short in my hands, but so does a Glock 19 grip.

The grip module and stock are the only portions of the gun made out of polymer. The rest is machined metal. This includes both the upper and lower receiver. It’s quite nice looking and feels fantastic in the hand.

Trailblazer Pivot at the Range

When I was setting this rifle up for the range, I had plenty of room for all sorts of accessories. I needed a red dot and opened my box and ran into an old friend, the Bushnell TRS-25. I’ve had this classic budget red dot forever, and since it has a built-in low mount, it worked perfectly with the Pivot.

Since the gun doesn’t use an inline stock with an AR, you need a lower mount that AR height to maintain a good cheek weld on the stock. The TRS-25 dropped on perfectly. I’ll admit it took me a little longer than I would have liked to zero the rifle, but from the first group fired at 25 yards I could tell it was quite accurate.

From a rested position, my projectiles were touching for nearly every group as I slowly walked the gun into the center of the target. Most PCCs are accurate enough, but the Pivot certainly rises above accurate enough.

Close and Far

After zeroing, I was hitting small steel targets as fast as I could pull the trigger. I could make shots in 3×5 cards with ease, and turn the Q on an FBI Q-target into one big hole. Beyond 25 yards, I went to 50 yards and began shooting at a 33% reduced-size IPSC target.

I could land my shots with boring regularity. Sometimes I’d press a little too fast and misjudge the target swinging on chains, but if I waited, it was an easy hit every time.

At 100 yards, hitting full-sized IPSC steel was easy. It doesn’t swing when hit with 9mm, so it’s super easy to hit repeatedly. I didn’t look into 9mm drop, so I just aimed at the neck and head area and made my hits. I set up a few poppers of varying sizes and was able to drop each of them with ease.

While the gun’s accurate, the trigger is average at best. It’s quite a long pull, and there is a false break about 75% through the pull that threw me off for the first few shots. It’s not bad, but it won’t be mistaken for a match trigger by any means.

Run and Gun

I went from shooting an AR in 9mm to shooting the Pivot and noticed a difference in the recoil impulse almost immediately. The recoil isn’t as violent as a blowback AR, and it’s certainly lighter than the SUB-2000 and Scorpion. It’s a push, not a shove.

There is more muzzle rise with the Pivot than the AR-9. The AR-9’s inline stock keeps things fairly flat. I did notice more muzzle rise with the Pivot than the AR-9. You see the dot rise quite a bit compared to the AR-9 design.

With that in mind, it’s not going to slow you down all that much. You can still complete a Bill Drill in less than two seconds with ease. I did the standard run of Failure to Stops, target transitions, and even an El Presidente drill with ease. I, of course, started the El Presidente with the gun folded and unfolded it as I turned to engage.

The muzzle rise and recoil were never enough to slow me down more than a few fractions of a second.

Does It Run?

The first magazine I loaded had me nervous. It was a magazine of hollow points, and I kept getting failures to feed. I switched to ball ammo, and the gun ran fine. Then I grabbed a different magazine of hollow-point ammo, and it worked.

The gun isn’t ammo picky. It turned out to be magazine picky. As I shot throughout the day, I had issues with KCI and Rattlesnake Tactical magazines. With KCI magazines, I was getting failures to feed where the round slammed into the chamber. I got fewer issues with the Rattlesnake Tactical magazines, but had a handful of failures to chamber.

I used Glock OEM, Magpul, ETS, and SGM magazines without an issue. With those magazines, I went through over 600 rounds of Ammunition Depot reman 9mm and 60 rounds of various hollowpoints from Winchester, SIG, Speer, and Remington without a problem.

Shooting Ergonomics

The Pivot handles well in terms of ergonomics. The charging handle is well placed and easy to reach. It’s surprisingly large, making it easy to grip and rip when you reload the gun. It’s smart to make the charging handle a little on the large side because the gun does lack a last-round bolt hold open.

The safety is small, but it’s easy to deactivate. The press up to fire feels natural, and the safety is ambidextrous. Turning the safety back on takes a more dedicated motion, but that’s fine because if I’m going on safe, I have time.

You could argue the stock is minimalist, but it doesn’t feel minimalist. It feels solid, giving you a good cheek weld and shoulder purchase. It locks up well with minimal stock wobble.

I did attach a suppressor, and while it sounds good suppressed, you do get a lot of gas blowback that leaks out of the gun into your face. We can’t really be surprised that a gun that pivots in half has plenty of room to leak gas. I didn’t enjoy shooting it suppressed, so I didn’t suppress it very much.

Trailblazer Pivot – More Than A Party Trick

The Trailblazer Pivot design makes it easy to turn a full-sized rifle into a compact platform. This makes it easy to store and travel with. For me, it’s perfect for camping; I can toss it in the pack and keep it out of sight until needed. As a man in a rural environment, it’s not a bad choice to toss on a UTV and ride around with for pest removal.

I applaud Trailblazer for thinking outside of the norm. That seems to be their bread and butter. Anyone brave enough to do something different in a stale industry is good to go with me. The Pivot has some quirks, but ultimately fulfills its goal of being a compact, easy-to-store, easy-to-shoot PCC.

About Travis Pike

Travis Pike is a former Marine Machine Gunner, a lifelong firearms enthusiast, and now a regular guy who likes to shoot, write, and find ways to combine the two. He holds an NRA certification as a Basic Pistol Instructor and is the world’s Okayest firearm’s instructor.