I decided that I would start with renting the 45 caliber handguns from the range first.  Starting at the bottom right of the display case at the range, I rented the H&K USP 45 Compact.  The range gun comes with an 8 round double stack magazine and 3 dot sights.

At first glance, the gun isn’t very pretty as aesthetics are rather important to me, but I have heard that HK’s are good pistols.  So out to the range I went, and overall the gun felt pretty good in my hands.  Even though it is rather compact, it didn’t seem too small, and I didn’t have any trouble gripping the pistol like I do when shooting the Taurus 380. 

It didn’t take much to pull the trigger, and it didn’t have any noticeable hard kickback when firing.  The one thing that I thought was weird and a bit tricky at first, was the magazine release.  Instead of being a round button that you push to release the magazine, it’s this small knob thing at the base of the trigger guard that you push down rather than in.  That took a little bit of figuring out how to work, but after a few minutes standing there looking like “uhm, how does this thing work??”, I finally got the magazine out.

The other thing that I am not fond of (but I realize this is in a lot of pistols) is the double stack magazine.  They are just hard to load ammo into, and I usually end up hurting my fingers a little bit.  Obviously, that shouldn’t be a deciding factor in the overall performance of the pistol, but it is a little bit annoying to me.

Overall, I enjoyed shooting this little USP, and it was pretty accurate at 7 yards (see pictures below).  Due to the weird magazine release, I would rate this pistol as an A-, and if I concealed carry, I might consider one of these.

I have in recent weeks acquired a Springfield 1911 GI as well as inherited my grandfather’s Taurus PT58.  I had never in my life even seen a gun in real life until 2 months ago.  I took my niece to a handgun beginners safety class at my local gun range for her birthday.  It was a 3 hour long instructional on safety, laws, guns, and how to properly shoot.  We had a blast taking the class and I would highly recommend a similar class to anyone who knows nothing about guns.

Due to my recent love of shooting, I have decided that my first project will be to rent all the handguns at my local gun range, and provide pictures and reviews of each gun.  The reviews will definitely be from a beginner’s point of view, but I will research and strive to give honest reviews.  This project might take me a little while to complete since ammunition is rather costly and there are about a 100+ guns to rent.

And just to get this out there, I don’t care about the politics of guns, owning guns, gun rights, gun oppositions, and gun legislations, etc.  I leave those discussions and arguments to the rest of the websites out there.  I enjoy shooting and the thrill of getting a bullseye, and if you don’t like it, there are plenty of other websites for you to visit.