Dear Gentlemen, thanks a lot for your information and thoughts. I agree that the HK45 pistol is still a bit too new. Heckler & Koch ain't aggressively marketing this pistol. It's relatively high price in comparison to its direct competitors does not help things a great deal to accomplish broader acceptance by customers. After having shot the HK45, HK45 Tactical and HK45C, I bought my own copy of HK45 V1 (full size regular model/black polymer frame), as I strongly believe that the HK45 in its various configurations might be the very best modern .45 auto pistol and a worthy successor to the M1911, which I happen to love just as well, if not more so.
As popular as the 9 mm Luger cartridge has become in the U.S. (again) and worldwide over the last decade, it remains to be seen how the future of modern .45 ACP duty pistols such as the HK45 or M&P45 will look like… That's unfortunate, as the .45 ACP was always a great caliber and it can still be considered "somewhat effective", even with the worst bullet profiles. I know that the .45 ACP is my personal favorite auto pistol cartridge. For the airman/marine/sailor/soldier (in alphabetical order) limited to ball ammo I cannot imagine a better gun/ammo combination than the HK45 (or USP .45 or even the M&P45) and some 230 gr. FMJ "Hardballs". Any way you cut it, in ball ammo the .45 ACP trumps the 9 mm Luger. It's really unfortunate that the U.S. Armed Forces didn't seriously considered to switch from their current sidearm to either one of those superior pistols - at least for their front line fighting units.
@nyeti: I remember your alias and have read your interesting review of the HK45CT in Tactical-Life Magazine a while back. In fact, I've enjoyed your posts a great deal over at the Tactical Forums. I've always considered the S&W M25-5 in .45 Colt a great duty revolver and I well remember your personal opinion on its terminal effectiveness years ago.
Yes, the information would be required for a certain shooting sports discipline. While I have my own copy of HK45 (I got that for practical shooting "Standard - Major"), I'd like to help to get this fine weapons on that duty gun list, so that others who are not practical shooters have the opportunity to buy and use it for their preferred shooting sports disciplines as well. One of the requirements is to list at least one military unit, LEO agency or similar that is officially issuing them. Right now, I see that only for the HK45CT which was publicly adopted by NSW. I didn't get the chance to ask the 5th Special Forces Group soldier whether he carried a privately-owned HK45 on his own discretion or whether it was an officially issued gun. Certainly, active members within the special forces community certainly have quite a bit more leeway in their firearms choices than conventional military forces.
@ohio: That's good advice. I am not a member over there but perhaps I can find something using the search function first.
@Arik: Thanks for pointing me in that direction. I need to look more into that. Being that this particular PD is located in (a not particular pro-gun state) New Jersey I don't know how they react when I write them, asking what kind of duty pistol they're officially carrying… They might become suspicious even though it's a fairly "innocent" question.
Besides the famous (or notorious) HK P7-series, I am familiar with the HK P30 (L), P2000 and USP-series of pistols, incl. "our" army's standard sidearm, the P8, which is basically a HK USP with a rifled barrel, some unnoticeable internal changes and an absolutely idiotic arrangement of its combined safety/decocking lever, as it works differently (fire-safe-decocker) from the regular USP (which works "safe-fire-decocker"). After you have decocked the hammer on the Bundeswehr-P8 the spring forces the lever automatically up to the "safe" position. If you have to fire again, you got to remember to flip the lever up from "safe" to "fire" position again. Word is that when Bundeswehr made the switch from the P1 (which is basically a Walther P.38 with an alloy frame) to the P8 in the late 1990s, they wanted to continue with the (unergonomic) manual of arms of the P1. However, as you know, the P1 has its safety lever on the slide (like your M9), not on the frame. I have spoken to young Bundeswehr soldiers during a military shooting match recently and most of them complained bitterly about the P8's arrangement of controls as it continues to lead to a lot of confusion in shooting exercises, especially when under stress. Interestingly, our navy boarding teams (similar to your SEALs) and Bundeswehr's elite special unit Kommando Spezialkraefte have acquired the P8 in the "Combat" configuration where the frame-mounted lever works as a decocker only - and they train and shoot much, much more with their firearms than regular soldiers. Obviously, those highly trained operators do not have much time to BS around with stupid stuff like that. I feel that the P8 Combat (or better yet, the P30L V3) should be the way to go for universal issue to grunts - or at least the regular USP with its much more logically manual of arms. Alright, that was pure rambling but nevertheless I hope you guys found that information interesting.
The USP-series pistols are good guns (the P8 ain't bad either, with the exception of how the control lever operates), no doubt about that, but the HK45 and P30's grip frames are so much more comfortable, IMHO. I clearly consider them superior to most other pistols, and through my job I get my hands on a great many other models.
@g8rb8: Thanks a lot for your kind words. Yes, I am a native German. Our national gun law is very bizarre, but there are other countries in Europe who have it even worse (Great Britain!). You're pretty much correct on how things go over there and what kind of steps you have to take when you'd like to own firearms legally. Without belonging to a shooting club and being a licensed member of a big national shooting sport association or a hunter or a licensed gun collector, you can forget about owning guns, even if you're a sound person otherwise. For each single gun you want to own you are required to present a cause why. That's the reason why we have such a vast number of different shooting disciplines. If there is a reasonable shooting discipline within the sports program of the big shooting sports association, then you're fine. There is full licensing and registration of firearms, as you've guessed, and sport shooters are somewhat limited on how many firearms they may own, especially handguns, semi-automatic rifles, semi-automatic and pump-action shotguns. Fully automatic weapons are banned. You got to have your guns stored away in a gun vault of an approved, specific level of security. In order to maintain your firearms licenses you got to actively use your firearms in competition matches. That kind of activity you might have to prove to your local gun granting authorities, which often is the municipal public order office or the local police agency responsible for the jurisdiction you live in. Otherwise, you may risk to have the permit revoked if you don't compete with your guns. Of course, self-defense is not accepted reason why you'd like to own and carry firearms, except when you can prove that you're a more endangered person than the other person across the street. That's just impossible for the average Joe Citizen.
Many countries like Canada, Australia, Republic Ireland etc. have adopted a similar stance when it comes to civilian ownership of firearms. What bothers me is the fact that gun ownership is considered legal for sporting and recreational use only. It was the same thing in Great Britain, but after that madman who killed pre-school children in a town in Scotland, with the election right at the door, politicians quickly jumped on the bandwagon of "handgun prohibition" with the consequence that poor British shooters who had nothing to do with that cowardly act of that killer were forced to turn in their handguns to the authorities in year 1997. Lesson is clear: Whenever such a massacre occurs and the wind blows quite right for the radical leftist, then they'll act really quickly and strip us of our freedoms.
In Germany we have learned to live with that gun law. What other choice to we have, as it is literally changed and forced down our throats each time a madman opens fire onto his fellow citizens?
As you can see, I am one of the few, the proud foreign NRA life members as the RKBA is holy to me - not just in the U.S., but worldwide. It's indeed more about freedom than about guns. Given that the American population owns tens (hundreds?) of millions of firearms I absoutely cannot understand why the NRA has merely 4 million members? If gun owners would take that all seriously NRA would have ten to twenty times as many members!
You all know about Germany's history and what extremely cruel things we have done to minorities and other people that we have arrogantly judged to be not as "worthy" as we thought we were. The day I was born was more than three decades past those dark ages, but I won't ever try to escape my responsibility about what we have done to unarmed, defenseless fellow citizens - women, men and children (!) - who have never done us any harm. In fact, I am very ashamed when I think about that. Therefore, resisting to tyranny and brutality is the obligation of any person raised in Christian faith.
@inspcalahan: Yes, I agree. It's very difficult to get hold of a name of a PD that universally issues the HK45 in either one of its many variants. Quite likely, these are not big department and won't get much of publicity. I suppose if you could combine all those officers who have bought their HK45 as a personally-owned duty or off-duty weapon, the number might be MUCH bigger than the manpower of one, single PD that officially is issuing them. I am just not sure it's sufficient for that German shooting sports association if a specific model just show up on any police department's list of privately-owned sidearms which are approved for duty carry by its members of service.
Thanks a lot, gentlemen. It's been an educational discussion so far.
If you have further questions, please don't hesitate to ask.
Good night!
