Les Jones

Guns > Quickie Range Report: Two 9 MMs

After work today I shot a couple of inexpensive 9 MMs. I fed each gun 25 rounds of Atlanta Arms reloads and Sellier &Bellot factory loads, both in full metal jacket.

First up was the Hi-Point, a semi-automatic that sells for a bit over $100, which is an amazing price point.

The magazine is a bit odd. To load a round, you have to use one hand to depress the magazine the full height of one round, then use your other hand to push in the next round. It's odd, but it works when you get used to it.

The sights are high-visibility red dots, and offered a good sight picture. The trigger was rough but serviceable. The manual safety doubles as a manual magazine catch. The slide locks open after the last shot, but it doesn't have a slide release: to release the slide you jack it back and release.

Reliability wasn't so hot. In 50 rounds the gun had two stove-pipe jams and two double feeds. This ain't the gun I'd want to bet my life on.

For two hundred dollars more you can get the Ruger P95C. I've shot the range's copy before and liked it. The magazine release and decocker are ambdextrious. The one thing I would do if I owned this gun would be to buy replacement sights. The factory sights are so small that I had trouble focusing on the front sight.

The gun never jammed, but in 25 rounds of Sellier and Bellot it mis-fired eight times. The Hi-Point never hicupped with this same batch of ammo, so obviously the ammo wasn't bad. The Ruger apparently had a light hammer strike that couldn't ignite the hard primers of the S&B.

Of the two guns, I'd spend a couple hundred more bucks and buy the Ruger. Just try your ammo to make sure it ignites reliably. In between their prices I'd buy the $250 Kel-Tec P11. And if I could rub enough pennies together I'd buy a Smith &Wesson revolver or a Glock. Guns that go bang every time are good.