Even the so called experts get it wrong

[ScottRiqui]

I cannot see how it costs that much to manufacture a pistol that isn't so much different from pistols that cost half as much.

It's not the manufacturing that costs so much - it's the R&D costs that have to be recouped. There's a lot of design and testing that goes into making a semi-automatic pistol that small that's also reliable and accurate. If it were easy, someone else would have come out with one that's smaller or cheaper. As it is, the R9 is probably close to the limit for how small a 9 mm can be.