I was asked my opinion on Walthers. I don’t own a Walther at the moment, but that doesn’t mean I’ve got anything against them. Far from. It just means my Gun Budget is too low.

Walther’s PDP has quietly and not so quietly become the Gun Guy’s If you know, you know gun. My Mom even has one. Lots of my friends have one, and those that don’t, many are saying they too want one. The PDP is now coming in a number of different variants, and each one is an outstanding pistol. Universally, they come with stellar ergonomics, great sights, and what is considered to be one of the very best triggers in the market – if not the best trigger on the market. The accuracy is right up there, and the reliability has proven to be exceptional.

The PDP is an evolution of the Walther P99, a gun that Walther put all its chips into and it paid off. BIG TIME. Before the P99, Walther was in serious trouble. I even said at the time that they were “Struggling to find relevance.” They had no presence in the US Market except for their skinny Importation deal with S&W, which gave S&W permission to make their own version of the P99 for a while.

Then Walther got SERIOUS. There was a PDQ pistol and some effort was made there… and then they finally developed the PDP and they really hit on something. The PDP has been developed with more focused engineering than almost any other pistol on the market… and it shows. Do this… Go to your Local Gun Store – your LGS – and examine a PDP first hand. Hold it. Ask to dry fire it just once… and while you do that… Watch those sights very carefully as the trigger breaks. Notice how the sights don’t even twitch? Not even slightly? That’s what I look for in a handgun – right there. HK, CZ, Echelon, and few others can match.

What’s the downside to the Walther PDP? Well, being out of the Market’s Mainstream means you’re going to have a lot fewer options for Holsters. Most LGSs won’t even have a holster for the PDP in stock, and if they do, it probably won’t be a good one. Pricing has the PDP at the more expensive end of factory production duty guns… right next to HK, if not more, depending on the version of PDP you’re looking at. And that’s another happy little problem… Picking which version of the PDP. And that’s a personal question nobody else can help you with. The last Downside to the PDP, is that if you take it to the range… Everyone there is going to want to try it. Whatever you do… don’t rent one at the Range and actually shoot one. Because if you do, you will end up buying one. It becomes fate to do so… and admittedly, I am destined to do so myself.