Tuesday, February 14, 2017

Browning Hi Power

I love many aspects of history and I love modern military and firearm history. The History Channel and a friend of mine got me turned onto John Browning, and my first in this line of firearms was a FN FAL. Though not a Browning design directly, it is a Fabrique Nationale design which John Browning worked with from 1895 until 1926. Eventually I bought a Browning Hi Power since it is a Browning/FM design.

The design, its elegant look and its history is what attracted me. A brand new Hi Power will be one expensive 9mm, but very much worth the money. But I got lucky and found a series of them being retired from Israel Law Enforcement. I thought why would you discard such a reliable sidearm? Israel decided to adopt their home grown Jericho 941, and I can understand. I'm just glad there were people like me to give these excellent pistols new homes. I bought mine for nearly half the price of a brand new one.

My Hi Power was manufactured in Belgium at Fabrique Nationale in 1969, has a commander style hammer and a factory 13 round magazine. In a lot of ways it's like a European 1911 but in 9mm and filled to the brim with ammo. How does a 45 plus year old pistol function? Flawlessly. Right out of the box and for 6 years has not had a single malfunction.

I'm not the only one to say it has one of the best grips for a high capacity pistol, and the design is 80 years old. When you fire it, it has an awesome feel. It feels elegant, yet has authority. It has a reasonably simple disassembly. Some people may bad mouth the heavy trigger and the magazine disconnect, but I like the trigger. It did not take long for me to become accurate with it. The magazine disconnect is something the European countries are strongly in favor, so it was put in since the beginning, but it is well made and I don't mind it. It's side effect is the magazine partially removes and hangs. It's not drop free, but you just grab it. No biggie.

If you've never shot one and have had all modern pistols from the last 15 years so so, seriously try one. This 9mm taught the modern ones how to walk and talk. But as a word of caution, since the early '90s, there are converted models into .40 S&W. I shot one and it was as accurate as a laser beam, but it felt overpowered to where it lost feel and character. It felt vague. I felt this defeated the original intent of the Hi Power and was aiming to sell the look of this pistol to a bigger market. It would be better to go to an FN FNP40 instead. Make sure you try a 9mm Hi Power first so you understand what its about.

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