The devil on your shoulder

I received a text yesterday from my brother asking if "any reasons come to mind as to why I shouldn't go buy it [a Walther PPQ]?" Hmmmmmm. . .what to do. . .what to do. What would I do in his situation? Firearms being a major investment and all, and spendy at that, I knew I needed to give this question my complete and total consideration, so I allotted a good .087 microseconds out of my not very busy day to respond in favor of the acquisition of said pistol. I mean, there's no way I was going to give my own flesh and blood bad advice. Truth be told, I had already read lots of forum threads and reviews on the gun and all of them held it in high regard. It's a sexy looking handgun too.



It's virtually the same size as the P30, with a .15" longer barrel. The grip feels a scootch shorter than the P30, but still retains a 15-round magazine capacity.




Holding the gun, there is almost no discernable difference between the feel of the grip between these two pistols. The angle and size are the exact same, with the P30 feeling more scratchy with its texture and the PPQ feeling a little more sticky. I think the PPQ's grip alleviates the main complaint of the P30's: the P30's grip tears and scratches the skin, making you wear an undershirt to prevent it.


The striker fired PPQ has a gorgeous trigger. I agree with the reviews I've read calling it a much improved Glock-like trigger; it has not a lot of takeup before the sear engagement, with a clean and predictable break without much or any overtravel. Reset is short, crisp, and tactile. Since the gun is brand new, there's a touch of grittyness in the takeup, but I've read that that goes away. The takeup is not heavy, but it's not light either like the HK's LEM trigger. I think that Walther did it right with this one.

While my brother was over, I made a trashy holster for it with the sparse materials I had lying around. With the last little piece of .093" kydex I had left, my intent was to make a riveted IWB/OWB holster with belt slides for OWB carry and pull-the-dots for IWB carry, but I didn't have enough material to do it. I ended up turning the abomination into the worst looking AIWB holster I've ever made, with the promise that when my kydex shipment comes in hopefully today or tomorrow I'll make a better one. He still needs to put a gizzilion rounds through it and test out some carry loads anyways, so we have time.



This whole ordeal is not the same as, but not quite unlike buying your spouse a Benelli shotgun or something and then innocently trying to tell her that one day she'll warm up to it, and until then you'll just keep is safe and maintained. My brother has a keen eye and is very informed when it comes to firearms, and putting myself in his shoes told me that I would request his council to give me that last 5% that I needed to commit to a gun purchase in a heartbeat. He wasn't asking because he didn't know if it was a quality piece; he was already writhing on the hook and wanted to see if I would pull him off for any reason. So if you look at it that way, I'm not really an enabler. He did tell me that I need to come over and shoot it most ricky-tick. Oh the things I put up with to appease my brother. . . . !!