Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns Browning HP

I'm embarrassed to have to ask this, but is a Browning HP single action or DA/SA? I haven't shot one in a few years, but I remembered it as single action like a 1911. Others at my gun club today insisted it was like an M9 or Sig 226.

Relax and enjoy being right. SA only.

Thanks. I thought I was too young for dementia.

Like the 1911, it was designed by John Browning, so, what do you expect?

That was good.

His last great design!
Unfortunately he died before it was completed.

Like to have one, but geez are they expensive.

Missed the window, I think.

I don't recall them ever being really inexpensive. The clones can be but real Brownings not so much.

I've had an ongoing search running for a T series for quite a while on Gunbroker. They always wind up $1500 and up.

i found at a gun show two "T" series consecutive serial numbered hi powers for 1000 for both of them.
Unfortunately i pointed it out to a worthless relative who didn't know zit about them.
Later fired the relative,.
One of those things i shouldn't have done.

Yep, same action type as a 1911 (except linkless), but the thumb safety isn't positive like on the 1911, i.e., no click on and off, since no spring plunger and detent. A little disquieting in that respect.

Its still a cool 9 milli

Sure like mine, shoots every type of handload I've tried though it without a glitch.. Mostly powder coated cast HP's. Made in the 80's.

Dick

Great pistola.
Bob

Sweet custom.

You know, I've shot many thousands of rounds through various Browning Hi Powers, and I don't believe I've had jam one with any of them. I had one back in the late 1980s through the 1990s, a Mark III. I've had three since, totaling four. Today I just have one, a polished blue one with fixed sights, made in Belgian but assembled in Portugal.

My first experience with one was back in the late 1980s. Myself and a couple of friends went to the range to do some shooting, and a friend of mine brought along an old friend of his that I'd never met before. He brought along an old Hi Power (along with a little Beretta 950 of about the same age and condition). It was one of those nice polished blue Hi Powers, with the factory fixed sights, likely made in the 1950s. Very nice gun, and lots of honest wear on it, but I was impressed as hell with it in terms of how I could shoot it. It was based on that that I determined to buy one.

My friend told me that this Hi Power was somehow illegal to own, or something. Not sure as to why. Can't remember, but I remember there was something illicit about it. I'll have to ask my friend (currently living in Idaho) if he remembers why.

All this Hi Power talk, in fact, is causing me to want to dig that gun out and shoot it.

PS My friend later told me that his friend that came along with us that day later went on to become an FBI agent.

RGK that’s a beauty of a HP.

The BHP is my favorite auto pistol. We have a couple here, I have a 1980 production that I worked over and the Mrs has a beercan sighted target model thats stock aside from a trigger job and mag safety delete. They’re both very reliable and pretty darn accurate, they won’t shoot with my accurized 1911 but they’re close enough. Someday I’ll run across a deal on a Practical and grab one in .40.

Here’s mine.
In action yesterday morning

My BHP is one of my favorite handguns. I don’t carry it much as I have sank a lot of money into it but it’s definitely a favorite.

The traditional Hi Power was a single action design, but there was a bastardized SA/DA Hi Power that was marketed for a short time by FN/Browning:

https://www.handgunsandammunition.com/general-semiautos/4362-cold-reception-fn-herstal-hp-sa-da.html