Quote:
Originally Posted by dragoon500ly
Hummm, there is one handgun that does make you wonder just what the designer was thinking....the P9S is a decent little pistol, but the mag release is on the bottom of the grip....little hard to do a rapid mag change!
I'll stick to my old Colt Mark IV Series 70......
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Mmmm... the P9. One of the first HK Pistols, with the P4 being first. Its action was, and is, unique - basically the G3 roller lock system shrunk down to fit in a 9mm pistol. This is one I always wanted to get my hands on, but never had the chance - or when I did, the pistol was junk and not worth the money.
The P9 was Single Action with an exposed hammer during the Prototype stage, though when it entered production the hammer was no longer exposed. Also, a small number of select fire versions of the prototype was built, as far as I know none was actually produced commercially - you can tell if its a select fire version by the lever mounted on the frame underneath the slide mounted safety. Less than 500 P9's was built: making them quite rare.
As an aside on the P4: It has a interesting lineage. Its based heavily on the Mauser HsC: which shouldn't be surprising. The main designers of the pistol was Alex Seidel and Tilo Möller. Seidel, in addition to founding HK, was one of the major designers of the HsC, Möller later on developed this 9mm Roller Locked Submachine gun for HK that had some minor success....
The P9S was a double action version, and made up the bulk of all production. In addition to the basic P9S, there was a few selective fire prototypes made, that used a stock design that later saw the light of day with the VP70. Also built was a number chambered in 7.65x21.5 for sale in Italy, as well as sport and target models. There is talk of a .22 conversion kit, but the only time I have seen pics of one was of factory prototypes.
Also on the statement of unsafe guns because of the lack of an external safety and double action designs... well... lets just say the P7 has a rep for being *very* safe, and falls into that category - though you could argue that the cocking lever counts as a safety after a fashion.