There’s something to be said for “classic” things in different areas. After all, there are reasons that those things are considered “classic.” Maybe it’s the styling that people like (that’s common in cars), maybe it’s the universality of its use (like classic fashions that can be worn over different decades of time), maybe it’s the dependability of the design.

For firearms, dependability is often the go-to reason for why something is considered a classic design, and that’s a great reason to decide to buy one firearm model over another: you feel like you can depend on it consistently.

For one classic firearm design, though, there may be another reason that you want to buy one of these pistols (or one of its clones): safety in an active shooter or high stress situation. Travis Pike gives us the details that we’re talking about. Pike writes,

Leading the list [of underrated guns] is the Walther P99. At first glance, the P99 appears to be a fairly average polymer frame, striker-fired handgun. It’s just like any other gun on the market since Glock, right? Oh no, Walther wouldn’t do that. The P99 utilizes a DA/SA design with a striker-fired weapon. That’s unusual to an extreme. The first trigger pull is a double-action trigger with a full cycle of the striker. After that, the weapon becomes a single-action design with a fully cocked striker. 

This results in a very light trigger that took Glock until their fifth generation to achieve with the Glock Performance Trigger. Walther realized that light triggers might not be great in stressful situations and created an anti-stress mode. This is effectively a two-stage trigger. The first stage is the same distance as the double action but ultra-light. Once you get past the first stage, it locks into a single action. If the AS mode isn’t for you, you can just press a button on top of the slide, and it decocks the gun to double action once more. 

The Walther P99 was such a cool pistol and such a unique design. Smith and Wesson worked with Walther to produce the SW99, a P99 with the slide produced by S&W. They teamed up with Magnum Research for a similar pistol. Canik made its name by cloning the P99. It was even a Bond gun, but it never achieved much success. Luckily Walther is giving potential owners one last chance with one final Legacy run of the P99 before it kicks off into the sunset. 

The thing that I want to focus on here is the two-stage trigger that Pike mentioned. Think about the situation: If you get the sense of imminent danger and you have to pull your firearm, you want it to perform quickly once you have to start firing, so, the performance trigger is useful at that point.

But you don’t want to be too jumpy with that first shot right after the adrenaline dump into your system when you have that feeling of real danger. No, you want something to keep your jumpy nerves from unintentionally jerking that trigger causing an unintended shot and much less accuracy on that first shot (and you really want the first shot to be as accurate as possible so there are less chances of the attacker getting another chance to attack and less chance of accidentally hitting a bystander).

So, Walther’s trigger on this pistol could make it ideal for concealed carry purposes to maximize safety while also providing optimal efficiency in use when the bullets start to fly.

If that interests you, then, getting a Walther P99 may be something to consider for your next purchase.