In 1993, Justin founded Kahr, taking for the name a made-up word that combined his affection for German engineering and fast cars. It is unclear what role his father had in the formation of the company, but many people familiar with Kahr believe the True Father was at the very least consulted. “I used the connections I had,” Justin replies when asked what part the church and his father had in the formation of the business. “I borrowed money.” What is known is that in his early twenties, the son of the True Father morphed from Kook Jin into Justin Moon, and right away his objective was clear. “I wanted to create the ultimate line of concealable pistols,” he tells me.

Justin’s prototype became Kahr’s first gun, a double-action steel 9 millimeter he called the K9. It weighed 25 ounces and was six inches long, about as big as a wallet. Although the world had seen small guns before, it had not seen small guns that fired large-caliber bullets and fit snugly, almost invisibly, in the pocket of a pair of beach shorts. Gun folks called it a pocket rocket, and some considered the design the closest thing to a Platonic ideal. “It was one of those hand-to-the-chin moments,” Greg Jones, a gun critic, says. “You see it and think, Why didn’t I think of that?”

One spring morning, Justin sends me out to shoot with Frank Harris, Kahr’s vice president of sales and marketing. We go to the Firing Line, a dingy basement shooting range under a general store in the hamlet of Pearl River, New York. Dimly lit, the range feels like a bomb shelter—low ceilings, gunpowder-blackened walls, damp air that reeks of cordite.

Harris is dressed like a movie commando, in black fatigues, black combat boots, and a black shirt. Before shooting, I put on safety goggles and earplugs while Harris sets up a paper bull’s-eye target five yards out. He hands over a .40-caliber subcompact Kahr. It feels like a toy, not much larger or heavier than my BlackBerry.

After 10 seconds or so, I raise the gun and aim at the target. “In a gunfight or survival situation,” Harris instructs, “you want to have both your eyes open.”

I squeeze the trigger. Time bends. The gun cracks, fire explodes from the muzzle, a bullet shell kicks out, and the gun’s recoil nearly knocks out my right shoulder. I squeeze the trigger four more times, the gun flaming and kicking, two of the bullets catching paper. It’s thrilling. My adrenaline is flowing. But when the smoke settles and silence returns, I can’t help thinking that such a small object can actually be used to kill someone—with ease. I tell Harris that the sound and violence of the gun’s action are much more dramatic than anything I’d seen on TV. “It’s very intense,” Harris admits. “I mean, I’ve taught women to shoot, and they would literally start crying afterward because they would realize how powerful this thing is. This definitely isn’t television.”

When Justin talks about his guns, he is calm and proud, like a professor eager to expound a bold new theory. Generally, he says, his guns are a reimagination of firepower. “They are designed for a specific application: self-defense. I mean, we don’t have a lot of excessive levers. The safety is internal. The only controls we have on the gun are the trigger—to fire the gun—and the magazine release. Any unnecessary features are removed.”

The design of Kahr’s line of pocket rockets is complicated, but basically it involves five patented methods of arranging the gun’s internal parts, reducing empty space and allowing the gun to contract in just the right places, while maintaining enough room for a larger-caliber bullet. Because of all the patents, it is difficult, if not impossible, for others to replicate its design.

When the K9 first appeared, critics of the gun industry howled. They considered the pocket rocket to have little value. Other than criminals sticking up liquor stores, who would need a gun so small and potent? Yet the K9 earned almost immediate cachet with the gun crowd, a difficult group to crack. Users tend to be resistant to change, and heavyweights like Smith & Wesson, Ruger, Colt, and Glock make up the bulk of the roughly 1 million handguns produced each year.

Kahr’s break was partly due to timing. In the late 1980s, America had entered a new age of hidden firepower, thanks to a movement led by the National Rifle Association championing self-reliance, freedom, and Second Amendment rights. It began in 1987, when Florida enacted laws allowing people to carry concealed weapons. Forty-one states followed suit, driving up the demand for smaller weapons. The market grew again in 1994 after a federal ban on the manufacture of guns that hold more than 10 bullets. (The prohibition expired in 2004.) As a result, guns shrank, and Kahr was there to take advantage of that trend. Justin’s guns had no pretense of being sporting weapons, Greg Jones says, “and this transparency of motive sits well with the pro-gun folks.”

In 1995, the K9’s first year of limited production, Kahr sold as many of the tailor-made guns as it could churn out, about 3,000. One magazine described the gun, which held seven bullets, as “short and light enough to permit excellent shooting, especially in fast combat-style scenarios.” That gun would later evolve into lighter and more lethal versions—.40 and .45 calibers. In 1998, the New York Police Department approved the K9 as a backup pistol. “People suddenly wanted to carry portable killing machines,” says Tom Diaz, author of Making a Killing: The Business of Guns in America, “and Kahr cornered that market.”

Despite the buzz about Kahr the newcomer, questions began bubbling up. There was something suspicious about Justin Moon, though no one could immediately put a finger on what it was. “I knew there was someone behind Kahr,” Jones says. “There was no way that [Kahr] was self-supporting.” Massad Ayoob, a writer for the trade magazines American Handgunner and Gunweek, wondered at the time if Justin was “gonna get a ton of prepaid orders, cash the checks, and disappear.”