Finally, as befits pistols designed for police service, all six have rails for mounting lights, lasers and other tactical accessories, and they all weighed less than 30 ounces unloaded, making them comfortable for all-day carry. While the manufacturers offer various sighting arrangements as options, the Glock, Sig and Walther stood out with their AmeriGlo, SIGLITE and TruGlo tritium sights, respectively, making them highly visible in low-light conditions. You can also transform the pistol into carry, compact and subcompact configurations with the right grip module, barrel and slide.įive of the guns have magazine releases located in the “proper” position and are either ambidextrous or could be easily switched from left to right sides, but again, the HK differs in that its release is an ambidextrous paddle located under the triggerguard. For the P320, Sig offers three different full-sized grip modules, allowing you to replace the entire frame. To safely lower the HK’s hammer on a loaded chamber, you depress a serrated decocker on the backside of the slide.įive of the pistols come with interchangeable backstraps, and the HK goes one step further by allowing shooters to replace the side panels as well for a truly customized grip frame. This means that the HK is the only gun in the shootout with an external hammer. In terms of operation, five are striker-fired designs while the HK P30 follows the beat of a different drummer with a traditional double-action/single-action (DA/SA) trigger system. The HK and Walther pistols use 15-round magazines while the rest use 17-round magazines. Right off the bat, all six test guns have polymer frames and steel slides. The guns included the FN 509, Glock 17 Gen5, Heckler & Koch P30, Sig Sauer P320 Full-Size, Smith & Wesson M&P9 M2.0 and the 5-inch-barreled Walther PPQ M2. Which brings us to the subject of this “Battle Royale.” I decided to pit today’s most popular 9mm duty pistols against each other to see which one would come out on top at the range. 40 is the most widely used police handgun cartridge in the nation, although it appears that situation is changing. Introduced in January 1990, it quickly displaced the 9mm pistols used by most departments, and the. law enforcement agencies.īut dissatisfaction with the performance of early 9mm hollow-point ammunition led to calls for a more authoritative round, which resulted in the development of the. The simplicity, affordability and practicality of polymer-framed pistols have made them the handguns of choice among U.S. The introduction of the Glock 17 began the so-called “polymer revolution,” and today, just about every handgun maker of note offers a “plastic pistol” suitable for police and military service. It wasn’t long before duty revolvers became quite scarce, replaced by “wonder-nine” semi-autos from Beretta, Sig Sauer, Smith & Wesson, Walther and other companies. Much to the dismay of the traditionalists among us, this encouraged American police agencies to ditch their wheelguns and adopt higher-capacity 9mm pistols. Army adopted the 9mm Beretta 92 pistol as the M9. While some dared to suggest that semi-automatic pistols might be more practical police sidearms, these calls were considered so radical that they were generally ignored. Then, thanks to growing urban violence in the 1960s, many police agencies switched to more powerful. It would have been a blued Smith & Wesson, Colt or Ruger wheelgun in. Before we do, I can remember a time when if you saw a police officer, you could have bet that their sidearm was a revolver. What’s the best 9mm pistol when talking about modern police sidearms? We’ll get there.
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