The Itch…
I don’t shoot as much as I used to. Hell, I even own several firearms I’ve never shot at all (gasp!). Some years back, I had a friend I went shooting with regularly. We used to rent out an open “tactical bay” (basically, an indoor range, but without being subdivided into individual shooting lanes). No limit on fire rate, no rules against drawing from the holster, just two guys practicing drills with our respective Glocks… Well, it was more precise to say one [experienced] guy practicing drills and getting trigger time while I tried to follow along and tried to learn as much as I could… 🙂
At one point, we talked about getting into some 9mm AR PCCs since the range we frequented only allowed pistol calibers, and the ammo is cheaper than 5.56 or .300 Blackout, but we stopped shooting together because of conflicting schedules. Just as well, that range eventually closed permanently soon after because of financial difficulties.
Fast forward about 4 years, and I once again got the itch… no, not that one, they make cream for that! I mean, I have more money than sense itch, and half the fun is deciding what to get!
Personal Defense peWs (PDWs)
My first ever firearm was a Hi-Point 995TS, almost 20 years ago…
I wasn’t wholly unfamiliar with firearms, having shot a few .22LRs as a kid. My friend Tom suggested it as an inexpensive carbine (I paid $225 out the door for mine). It was chunky, unrefined, had terrible ergonomics, and was difficult to disassemble. I remember the charging handle came off a few times for want of some Loctite… Nevertheless, it went bang every time I pulled the trigger (so long as you’re using factory mags*), and was accurate as my skill (or lack thereof) permitted.
*I made the mistake of using 15-round ProMag magazines early on, which damaged the weapon, causing failure to feeds with both ProMag and Factory magazines. Hi-Point repaired this for free, all it cost me was time, some embarassment and shipping.
Several years after I sold mine, Redball released a 20 round “Hi-Point Approved” magazine in 9mm and .380 ACP (as if it wasn’t fugly enough)…
To my surprise, they’re still making these, but there are better options for the money these days (e.g., the Extar EP9). Now I’m no gun snob, and I feel sure that being shot with a 9mm bullet from a $225 Hi-Point would have the same effect as one fired from a $5,000 HK SP5, but as my years and disposable income have increased, I find I don’t mind spending a little more on the finer things in life, focusing more on value than price tag.
Decisions, Decisions!
I knew I wanted…
- A compact braced pistol (~15″ or less OAL without the brace deployed),
- Chambered in 9x19mm,
- Threaded for 1/2×28,
- With a simple/reliable gas system,
- a well-supported aftermarket for magazines and parts,
- In the $1,000-2,000 price range
Some options I considered were…
- B&T GHM9 Compact
- CZ Scorpion EVO 3+
- Grand Power Stribog SPA3S
- MKE AP5 Navy (or PTR or Zenith)
- Springfield Kuna
I like MP5s, I do! I’ve even shot one full-auto once… But I’m allergic to Turkish firearms. I’ve experienced everything from peened firing pins that weren’t properly hardened to handguards slipping off the barrel to the fuckers actually falling apart in my hands during competition (worse, because it didn’t even belong to me). Besides, if I wanted another gun with no LRBHO, I’d have bought another Hi-Point :P.
As to the rest, I don’t really know anything about B&T, I’ve heard they’re nice, and if I wanted a range toy or (another) safe queen, I might have considered it… I’ve heard mixed reviews about Stibogs, and I have moral objections to buying Springfields, even though they don’t make the Kuna…
Czech, Please!
I’ll admit it, I’m biased! Back in the day, I played some CoD4, and even helped run a very popular private server for a few years, so I knew the “Scorpion” by name (vz. 61 Škorpion), chambered in 7.65x19mm Browning (.32 ACP):
In 1982, the Škorpion vz. 82 was released with a few notable changes: a thermoset plastic grip, a single charging handle (albeit reversible), and a straight box magazine chambered in 9x19mm Makarov:
In the 1990s, the Czech Republic began looking into NATO-compatible weapons to replace its aging arsenals, including a submachine gun chambered in 9x19mm and a rifle chambered in 5.56x45mm. Their first efforts to modernize generated this monstrosity, the Škorpion EVO 2 (XCZ 868):
This looks a lot like something out of my Tacticool phase… LOL!
It was expensive and outdated, so they started looking for alternatives. In the early 2000s, Laugo (yes, the one that sells a stupidly nice, but also stupidly expensive pistol) was working on a submachine gun prototype that caught their attention. So they hired Laugo and its co-founder, Ján Lučanský, to build what would become the Scorpion EVO 3 A1, released in 2009:
It would be another six years before the US saw a civilian semi-auto stockless pistol version at the 2015 SHOT Show. Before long, people were slapping pistol braces on them, and by the end of the year, SBRing them.
The EVO 3 got a PDW facelift, with the S2 Micro featuring many of the upgrades people were making on their own, including a faux suppressor and an aluminum M-LOK handguard, but keeping the awful pistol grip:
Many shooters replaced the ambidextrous safety with a right-hand-side delete kit or extended controls to keep the pointy nub from digging into their finger during operation. CZ USA caught on, and in 2022, they released the 3+ series, featuring a carbine, pistol, and micro variant (16.3″, 7.8″, and 4.2″ barrel lengths). Each included an AR-style mag release, an improved pistol grip, and a polymer M-LOK handguard, reducing both weight and heat. Pictured below is the ‘Micro’ (4.2″ barrel) variant:
Unfortunately, these upgrades came at a cost… There was a time when you could get an S1 for $600, but that was without a brace and with only two 20-round magazines. My research seemed to suggest that the 3+ Micros were going for around $900 at one point, but these days, MSRP is around $1,300 for a braceless pistol with two mags.
Aside: The 7.8″ 3+ “Pistol” version was about $100 cheaper, and I debated which to get, given the only about 1/2″ difference in overall length between the two. I owned a couple of hush puppies, purchased before eForms, and paid my $200 tax stamps (lucky me), so there’s no reason not to run quiet. That settled it – the 4.2″ Micro won out.
I paid $1,480 plus shipping, but mine included five 20-round magazines (currently about $42 each on MidwayUSA), plus an SB Tactical SBTEVO-G2 pistol brace ($125 MSRP, but you can find them for $70). Not an amazing deal, but as Dave on the Couch once said, “If it doesn’t matter in 20 years, it doesn’t matter!” So I pulled the trigger on one, expecting to get it sometime the following week…
Guns.com’s 800 Mile Mixup
About a day before it was scheduled to arrive, I got a call saying my CZ had arrived and was ready for pickup. The problem is, it wasn’t my FFL! In fact, it was some outfit 800 miles away. My paperwork and order number matched, and when I verified my order on Guns.com’s website, sure enough, it showed that my local FFL was the pickup location…
While Guns.com has a toll-free number, it isn’t staffed and only directs callers back to their website :|…
The only way to contact them is to submit a helpdesk ticket, and even then, their responses are slow, vague, and heavily AI-enshitified. It took two days of back and forth for them to acknowledge:
A. What actually happened…
B. What they were going to do about it
As far as I can tell, the selling dealer swapped two orders, sent my Scorpy to buttfuck USA, and someone else’s order to my FFL. Guns.com claims they were contacting both FFLs to provide shipping labels… to be continued…
