The Interloper
Steyr had to market their gun in the shadow of all that. Both companies hailed from Austria, and everybody everywhere already spoke GLOCK. Steyr cemented its reputation arming the Nazis during WWII, and the AUG is a household name. However, they had a long row to hoe to break into the modern combat pistol market.
Steyr’s effort was the M9. Introduced in 1999, the M9 sports an aggressively raked GLOCK-style grip-to-frame angle, a steel 17-round box magazine, and scads of innovative bells and whistles. The gun has evolved through four generations as well as both compact and long-slide versions. Steyr has offered the pistol in 9mm, .40 S&W and .357 SIG, though the .357 SIG and .40 S&W versions have apparently been discontinued.
There is some common DNA to all these guns. For starters, the M designation comes from the gun’s weirdly unique sighting system. They describe it as a trapezoid. The front sight is a white triangle, while the rear is a pair of angled lines that run parallel to the edges of the triangle. If you squint just so and use a little imagination, the end result looks a bit like an “M,” hence the name. The end result is easily acquired and no-snag.
The gun has scads of safety systems. There is the obligatory tab safety in the trigger face. However, unlike that of a GLOCK, this tab is wide, flat, and comfortable. Pressing that button automatically deactivates both the internal firing pin and drop safeties. First-generation guns all came with a separate manual safety, but this was offered solely as an option for subsequent variants.
There is a key lock safety that deactivates the gun and locks the slide. In civilian examples, there is a special key that ships with the weapon. Cop versions used a standard handcuff key, which was cool. Use it if you want; don’t if you don’t. The option is there.
The chamber is fully supported, and there are three different loaded chamber indicators. The state of the gun can be assessed by sight or by feel in any condition. The takedown drill is unique but easily mastered. Like the GLOCK, the trigger must be pressed to strip the gun.
Steyr describes the trigger as a double action-only Trigger Reset System with a pre-set mechanism. I can’t tell its personality much apart from other striker-fired designs. However, trigger travel is just stupid short at around 4mm, and the pull weight is slightly north of 5 lbs.
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