The first 9mm I fired, in fact, the first and one of two pistols I have in my lifetime, was a HK P30L V3, for my 14th Birthday "present" of a few hours out of town in the Los Lunas, NM desert where using the desert as ad hoc firing range without Range Officers beyond adults as people with gun rights and ownership (Obviously most people there at the time of this day, me and my younger sister were among the few, if any, children as young as we are in the grand scheme of things, me being currently 18.) present and prone as they might be to scrutinize rules such as 1 pull of the trigger per second, so on and so forth.
That said, I've become of the opinion in about five years since then that the P30L, while a fun gun back then, and good for the LE use HK developed it originally for, is too long and too front heavy for use as a general purpose/first handgun, (The so-called premium on German engineering that dictates HK's general markup compared to Walther, SIG, and most American companies that are comparably well renowned.) a bad idea. Plus, given the years it's been since I've held, much less fired or had control of a loaded, firearm, (Five years at the most, about a year at the least for holding or controlling unloaded firearms.) I do not have the self-instilled trust that I not accidentally violate one of the four gun safety tenets with irreversibly horrible consequences without some form of manual safety, the V3 having none, afaik, given the fact the P30 and P2000 had the decocker button rather than the decocker/safety the USP, HK45 and MK23 had at their initial release in most models, and HK deemed it not a crucial feature on a decocker-featuring handgun to have a manual safety. Especially with manual safeties somewhat controversial for concealed carry or home defense given Murphy's Law's inherent assumptions about what a mechanical device having more parts makes more likely to fail, if nothing else, on the part of operator error if there exists a binary switch with can decide if a gun fires or not depending on a given gun owner's own muscle memory and training.
Basically, if you own or have owned the P30 or its various variants, including the SK despite me not being personally a fan of that or the P2000SK for various reasons, go ahead and let me know here and now.
Cheers.
That said, I've become of the opinion in about five years since then that the P30L, while a fun gun back then, and good for the LE use HK developed it originally for, is too long and too front heavy for use as a general purpose/first handgun, (The so-called premium on German engineering that dictates HK's general markup compared to Walther, SIG, and most American companies that are comparably well renowned.) a bad idea. Plus, given the years it's been since I've held, much less fired or had control of a loaded, firearm, (Five years at the most, about a year at the least for holding or controlling unloaded firearms.) I do not have the self-instilled trust that I not accidentally violate one of the four gun safety tenets with irreversibly horrible consequences without some form of manual safety, the V3 having none, afaik, given the fact the P30 and P2000 had the decocker button rather than the decocker/safety the USP, HK45 and MK23 had at their initial release in most models, and HK deemed it not a crucial feature on a decocker-featuring handgun to have a manual safety. Especially with manual safeties somewhat controversial for concealed carry or home defense given Murphy's Law's inherent assumptions about what a mechanical device having more parts makes more likely to fail, if nothing else, on the part of operator error if there exists a binary switch with can decide if a gun fires or not depending on a given gun owner's own muscle memory and training.
Basically, if you own or have owned the P30 or its various variants, including the SK despite me not being personally a fan of that or the P2000SK for various reasons, go ahead and let me know here and now.
Cheers.