Heckler & Koch VP70

What are we supposed to use, man? Harsh language?

I bought one this week for a price I couldn't turn down (speaking of that, these are not valuable guns--if you can live without an original box you can get one for around $500.) It's extremely cool but there's nothing it does well other than hold 19 rounds. I can't see why I'd seriously use it if I had a USP, Glock, Sig, etc available. And I don't even like Glocks. Keep in mind this thing wasn't designed as a superior example of German engineering that HK is usually known for. It was designed to be a super cheap backup weapon in the event of the Cold War kicking off. One thing that gets overlooked while everyone's talking about the trigger pull, is that it reduces muzzle velocity (via oversized rifling) in order to work as straight blowback. You lose significant energy that way. And regarding the trigger, many of these guns have terrible machining in the striker channel. Really rough. I'm going to see about polishing mine slightly and see how it improves the situation.

Something I found very interesting was Ian actually taking the VP70M machine pistol out to the range. It appears to be just as bad a machine gun as it does a semi pistol.

Wolff makes a reduced power striker spring for the VP70Z - https://www.gunsprings.com/HK - HECKLER & KOCH/VP70Z/cID1/mID26/dID135

Watch the two Forgotten Weapons videos. The first one discusses operation and the second is shooting. Ian talks all about the 3 shot burst version which was intended to be handed out to auxillary forces in the case of a Soviet invasion.

I had one right after the model was introduced. I lived in Vegas at the time, and it was a totally impulse buy after I won $1000 on a poker machine. I didn't keep it long. Terrible trigger and I liked my Beretta 92 bought about the same time a lot better. It did get attention anytime I took it over to the range to shoot it. I even carried it at work as a security guard once. Got a lot of weird looks.

No, but I do want an HK P9S .

Just came across this in a e-magazine article today by Will Dabbs, one of the few gun writers that I respect their opinion.

Quote:

HK technically precipitated the polymer pistol revolution in the first place. Their fatally flawed VP70 really should have shaken the world. The gun was cheap to make, sported a double-column 18-round magazine, and arrived in 1970 at the apogee of the space age. However, the massively leaden trigger was not designed for real humans, and the revolutionary people’s pistol died of natural causes as a result.

Unquote

Could not have said it better.

I handled one when the GLOCK 17 first came out and was really interested as I liked the 9m.m., but the trigger was the worst I ever tried on a semi-auto. I passed and have not regretted it. It had no advantages over say a GLOCK 17 or 19 and has a slower reload due to the heel type magazine release and again, that just awful trigger. I really believe that the trigger is what kept this gun from being a success.

Jim

You won't mind the trigger pull if you're facing hordes of zombies.