New Pistol - Walther PPQ vs. H&K P30

[Art]

Our son is going to buy an new handgun and this will be his carry weapon when he gets his CHL soon. He carries a Baretta M9 every day at work and his current privately owned pistol that he basically takes with him on trips is a Kimber Pro Carry. He dosen't want either as his concealed carry weapon.

He has narrowed it down to two choices: Walther PPQ or H&K P30. He asked for my input but I know absolutely nothing about these two pistols. Any input from you folks would be appreciated .

[da gimp]

never ownedor shot either Art sorry... Red carries the H&K .40 & loves it........ another old fart around here does too.......SIG is making some damn fine handguns if he can afford them....

[Art]

Gimp, apparently there isn't much ownership of either of these pistols on this site. I did some checking though and +P ammunition is not recommended by the manufacturer for use in the Walther pistol due to increased wear. This is an important issue to me in any 9mm Parabellum or .38 Special handgun and I am going to pass that on to our son.

Both are pricey pistols and the H&K is very pricey indeed but fortunately for him the cost isn't the absolutely determining factor for him and he intends to be packing whichever he buys when he's off duty for a long time.

[RED]

I've never shot a PPQ but I have shot the P-30 and other HK's and they are great pistols. I would add that the Hk's will handle any commercial ammo on the market today including the +P. I also question the Glock style trigger and the +P warning may mean the Walther's chamber may be like Glocks and doesn't adequately support the head of the cartridge. You can take from this that I really like the HK's and highly reccommend them as well worth the price.

(added) In addition the Walther uses standard rifling and not the polygonal barrel of the Glocks and HK's.

[Fishnerd]

I have an H&K USP Compact in .357 Sig. It is the finest pistol I have ever owned.

[Art]

Well the winner is the H&K P30. Our son was in town for the weekend and we went to a gunshow. He got an excellent price on one of the H&Ks and paid for it right there. It's a DAO version but the double action pull is pretty short and very sweet, as good as I've ever felt on an auto pistol.

[Art]

OK, range report

We took the H&K to a local indoor range. We had a box of Com Bloc steel case 115 gr FMJ. A box of Winchester surplus 124 gr NATO ball (very hot stuff,) a little bit of Rem 115 gr FMJ and about 10 rounds of mixed Remington Golden Saber and 124 gr. Speer Gold Dot +p.

The controls are completely ambidextrous and very easy to access. The sights are very easy to acquire and the pistol points wonderfully. Recoil with all the loads was very manageable. It does shoot straight and puts them where you point. After a couple of magazines to familiarize ourselves we had no trouble obliterating the 10 ring on a PPC silouette at 15 yards. Everyting cycled flawlessly as should be expected since most of the ammo was FMJ. However with the Com Bloc ammo the slide failed to lock back a couple of times after the last shot . The Com Bloc stuff seems to be loaded to very modest velocities, perhaps the slide went back enough to extract and eject but not quite enough to overide the slide stop everytime.

Now for the fly in the ointment. This is not a fun pistol to disassemble. I assume it gets easier with practice, but the takedown button on the right side of the frame that has to be pushed in when the appropriate notch is lined up with the slide stop is in a recess and very difficult to depress. Once it's pushed through disassembly is a piece of cake, it's just pushing that tiny button through far enough to release the slide from the frame.