Heckler & Koch's USP (the initials stood for Universal Self-loading Pistol in German, "Universelle Selbstladepistole") hit the market in the early Nineties.
In some ways it was forward-thinking. It used a polymer frame, which HK had pioneered with its VP70 pistol, and was designed around the .40S&W. That latter trait, as well as the hammer-fired traditional double action were both because the goal of the pistol was big sales in the U.S. law enforcement market.
HK fans at the time tended to be attracted to the quirky engineering of pistols like the roller-delayed blowback P9S and the squeeze-cocking gas-delayed P7, so the USP, with its conventional Browning tilting-barrel short-recoil setup felt like a bit of a betrayal. I remember referring to it as the Ultimate Sellout Pistol on forums in the Nineties, because I was a big ol' gun nerd who worshipped at the altar of the P7.
The date code on this one indicates a 1995 production gun. This one being a .40S&W piece, plus the fact that it only had two ten-round magazines in the box, meant it was dirt cheap, at least by HK standards, so I thought it might be fun to play with.
Alas, standard capacity USP40 full-size magazines are sheer unobtainium right now, but that's not that urgent a problem. Besides, HK's ban-era mags work fine, unlike the 10-round Glock mags. (Glock narrowed the mags internally, while HK just plugged them from the bottom, retaining the standard double-column internals.)
