In my view John M. Browning was the most amazing designer in the entire history of firearms. When you study the long list of handguns, rifles, shotguns, and machineguns he designed, you can see that my statement is a pretty safe one to make. I admit a certain loyalty to his 1911 .45 semiautomatic, but his last handgun deserves the title of classic, too.

John Browning finished the design of the 4.75-inch-barreled, 13-round, 9mm Hi-Power pistol shortly before his death in November 1926.

The autoloader we call the Browning Hi-Power was designed in the last years of Browning's life. Using the same short-recoil operation, locked breech, and exposed hammer of the 1911, Browning developed his new handgun for the 9mm cartridge. In doing so, he did away with the swinging barrel link of the 1911 and replaced it with a fixed-cam lockup that was less prone to wear. He also did away with the grip safety. In fact, it has been said that Browning only put a grip safety on the 1911 pistol because the military requested it. The Hi-Power pistol also did away with the 1911's removable barrel bushing. It had a 4 3/4-inch barrel. The grip frame was enlarged to allow for a 13-round magazine.

A patent for the new Hi-Power pistol was granted to Browning on February 22, 1927, just a few months after the inventor's death. In those last years of his life, Mr. Browning had begun to carry more and more of his gun designs to the Belgian firm Fabrique Nationale. Fabrique Nationale began to distribute the Hi-Power in 1935, and it was called the Model 1935, or P-35. In those disturbing days prior to World War II, numerous countries around the world began to outfit their armies with the new Browning pistol. Among these countries were Canada, China, Denmark, Great Britain, Estonia, Holland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Romania. Even the German army carried Hi-Powers, after it occupied Belgium in about 1940. In addition, numerous law-enforcement agencies and unofficial mercenary groups quickly developed a fondness for the Hi-Power because, like the rest of Browning's designs, it was reliable and dependable. And those are essential characteristics that any fighting gun must have.

As good as it is, however, the Hi-Power has had its drawbacks. One of these is that the trigger pull just can't be tuned quite as nicely as that on a 1911. The reason for this is that in order to accommodate the larger magazine, Browning had to use the transfer-bar trigger system instead of the stirrup arrangement of the 1911. The less-than-desirable trigger pull of the Hi-Power is made worse by the fact that the gun incorporates a magazine-disconnect safety that is integral to the gun's trigger. This magazine disconnect can be removed, lightening the trigger a bit, but this removal will also void any warranty that the manufacturer might offer.

Another drawback for the Browning Hi-Power has been that it has made use of the 9mm cartridge. With full-metal-jacketed or early hollowpoint ammo, the 9mm just was not a reliable man-stopping round. Some 30 years ago, a Texas Ranger friend of mine matched his pair of .45 ACPs against some outlaws who were hiding behind a homemade barricade. He was pretty upset that his 230-grain hardball ammo wouldn't penetrate the barricade to his satisfaction.