Better

Yesterday I decided to try my new Girsan Hi-Power clone, the MC P35 Match. I took it to the pasture and put 50 rounds of Aguila FMJ through it. I shot 25 rounds at steel and the rest at a Shoot-n-See target.

Some people are reluctant to buy Turkish weapons. They seem to think Turkey is like Mexico or Iran. In reality, there are a lot of sharp, responsible, capable people in Turkey. It’s pretty much like Western Europe. Shopping malls. Good roads. Good public transportation. Extremely clean restaurants. Much cleaner than restaurants here in Florida. Definitely cleaner than New York restaurants.

I have no problems with this gun. At 10 yards or so, it appears to shoot very accurately. I am rusty, so I think any disappointing shots are my fault. Here is the target. I shot at 5 different points because I am too cheap to shoot only at the center and waste the rest of the target.

I’m not exactly sure how far away I was. It appeared to be farther than 7 yards, but I did not measure.

I missed a couple of gongs at 30 feet. It took me a few rounds to remember how to shoot.

Every round fed perfectly. In all likelihood, every shot flew where it should have. My trigger pull is not quite what it used to be, and my grip seems inconsistent. I need to shoot more often.

It looks like I am consistently low and to the left. If memory serves, shooting to the left is not new to me, so it’s probably not the gun. I should go look at the Wheel of Misfortune.

I have seen people say this gun, or at least the slightly-cheaper variant, does not shoot very accurately. Well, I did just fine with ammunition I bought for $7.31 per box. Give me two days to practice, and I’ll do better. It’s hard for me to believe there is anything wrong with the gun. My other pistols don’t shoot any better. Maybe the problems pop out when you use a rest at 25 yards, but how would that be relevant to real-world shooting? I mean, if you’re sitting behind a rest with a death grip on a $620 pistol, using cheap FMJ, looking over iron sights, trying to get within 2″ at 25 yards, you should be shooting rifles. And if your gun can do 3″ at 25 yards, a good shooter armed with your gun will be able to kill any home invader that ever lived.

I’m consistently inside a circle smaller than a burglar’s head, so there is that.

I don’t really understand people who worry a lot about super accuracy at long distances with Bass Pro or Rural King pistols. It’s like they’ve never heard of rifles. I would never, ever use anything but a rifle for self-defense unless the only alternative was a carrot peeler. Rifles hold a lot of ammunition. Rifles defeat body armor and walls. Rifles are easy to shoot accurately. They hold all kinds of optics and lights. They let you shoot pistol-packing burglars pretty easily at distances at which their pistols are not likely to be useful. Shooting a drugged-up burglar with a pistol is like eating peas with a crab fork.

The trigger is stiff, so it invites flinching just to get the round out of the barrel. I have read that this gun loosens up a lot after a few boxes, though.

The grip is wonderful, but I suppose every textured G10 grip is wonderful. It wraps around the back of the butt so almost every part that touches the hand grabs the skin.

So is it a good Hi-Power successor? It had better be. The Hi-Power is not coming back. FN created a new model which is not the same.

This gun’s slide and frame are forged and cold-drawn, whatever that is. I can’t remember which is cold-drawn and which is forged. Anyway, it’s not cast. It should be just as good as the Springfield clone, which is also Turkish in spite of the deceptive ad talk.

I don’t know what to say about the recoil, because I didn’t notice it. I guess it must be soft. This gun isn’t plastic, so it has mass to soak up momentum.

Is it a good gun for self-defense? Yes. Definitely. Would I use it for that? Not unless I couldn’t reach a better gun. It can’t be trusted with +P ammunition. My opinion is that ammunition improvements have changed the capabilities of certain cartridges to the point where we should all reevaluate our choices. There are 2023 9mm rounds that do things 2000 9mm rounds could not. If you’re going to use 9mm to protect yourself, why not insist on a gun that uses top-notch ammunition?

Example of changing cartridge capabilities: I like 10mm, but the .40 S&W round has been improved so much, I think it’s a better choice for most people. It zips along pretty fast now, ammunition is easier to find and comes in more flavors, and guns are common and therefore easy to buy and maintain.

I didn’t buy the Girsan for self-defense. I bought it for fun. I wanted a Hi-Power-type gun because I was never given a fair chance to get the one my grandfather had. Now I have what appears to be a superior version.

Plastic guns are wonderful for escorting burglars to the hereafter, but when it comes to the range, give me steel. Steel guns are neat. Nobody wants to see John Wayne shoot Comanches with a Kel-Tec. Steel feels better and looks better. It links us to the past, when Milton Berle was the only man who wore a dress in front of kids.

People love to say, “A gun is not a toy!” Sure it is. If you bought it for fun. Airplanes and helicopters can be toys. Parachutes can be toys. Motorcycles are almost always toys. The fact that something is dangerous doesn’t mean it can’t be a toy. For me, steel guns are generally better toys than plastic guns.

My big complaint about the Girsan is that it only comes with one magazine. It’s a Mec-Gar product, and it comes in blue and nickel. The blue ones are hard to find. I had to pay $63 for two, including shipping and taxes. They hold 15 rounds, or two more than a Hi-Power magazine, so that makes the Girsan better than a Hi-Power in a self-defense situation. Like if you’re attacked at the range, and your AK-47 is in the truck. I believe you can use these magazines in Hi-Powers, though. Supposedly, just about all the parts are interchangeable.

Nice gun. Maybe I’ll get the trigger worked on some day, but that’s about it. Okay; maybe I could dig up some abalone grips. But that’s all. And a red dot. But nothing else.

I wonder what nitride coating costs.