Bring on the PEW!!

It's at least a million degrees here today, and no doubt upwards of 90% humidity... so what better way to spend the morning than sweating outside at the range? None that I can think of :)

A couple of weeks ago, I picked up a new toy. It's an FNP9 pistol, made by the fine folks at FN. FN is short for "Fabrique Nationale de Herstal", but who the hell wants to wrestle with THAT mouthful?

She's a great pistol, right out of the box. Polymer frame, and steel slide. Mine is the flat black stainless model. The FNP9 comes with a hard case, interchangeable backstraps (arched and flat), and three 16 round magazines... oh, yeah ! :)

Fit and finish are really good, IMO. I like the fact that she's SA/DA instead of DA only like so many modern pistols are today. I like being able to shoot SA - although I was happy to find that the DA trigger pull on this gun is pretty damned good.

There is NO SAFETY, which I love. There's no point to having a safety on a gun that you can't carry cocked. I've always thought safeties on DA pistols would be right up there with putting a safety on a DA revolver. The decocker on the P9 just safely drops the hammer. I swapped out the grip backstrap to the flat one, 'cuz I have relatively short fingers and the flat one felt better.

I put 100 rounds through her today. The first box was to break us both in. Had a couple of FTFs, but that was probably due to the crappy (yet wonderfully affordable) Brown Bear ammo I was shooting. It took me a bit to warm up to her. I was all over the place with that first box, and it took me most of those 50 rounds to figure out what I was doing wrong.


You see, the gun I've shot the most recently is the P64 that I use for hot weather daily carry. While the P64 is fairly accurate, reliable as hell, and easy to conceal - it quite frankly SUCKS TO SHOOT. I've shot it quite a bit, because its important to be comfortable and capable with whatever weapon you carry - but Man, it ain't a lot of fun. I get hammer bite virtually every 3rd or 4th pull of the trigger, to the point where it will draw blood.

Apparently, my reflexes had grown to expect that discomfort. I found that I was flinching, almost imperceptibly, just as I would break the trigger - causing the gun to jerk. I was anticipating the recoil, and twitching it instead of just letting the happen as I squeezed the trigger. As you all know, it doesn't take much of a twitch at the muzzle of a pistol to translate into several inches at the target.

Anywho... I finally had a DUH! moment and fixed the problem (me). I put up a silhouette target and put 50 rounds of Wolf ammo through her just to get the bad taste of my previous performance out of my mouth:

Not too bad, for me. This is 50 rounds at 7 yards. I was still twitching from time to time, as you can see from the 9 ring shots. However most of my rounds stayed pretty well bunched up in the center. I had zero feed problems after switching from the Brown Bear - even though I was still shooting the inexpensive Wolf Ammo.

I'm digging the FNP9 MUCH! She's a might big for Concealed Carry, but under certain circumstances with the right holster I'll probably carry her this winter. She'll definitely be fun to "run & gun" with along side the WASR, and I'll no doubt take her along as a truck/motorcycle pistol on our road trips this fall.

Oh... and to top it off, I got her for a pretty good deal too. I found her for sale, NIB, on Gunbroker. She was listed by a local gunstore (Dallas), so while I had to pay sales tax, I didn't have to pay shipping or transfer fees. My total price out the door was $487.13.


Not too shabby...