Getting Hammered

There's nothing inherently more modern about a striker-fired design.

"Indeed, John Browning’s first commercially successful semi-automatic pistol design, the FN Model 1899, was striker-fired. There’s nothing new except what’s been forgotten.

Here’s a thing that you had to be around in the 1980s and ’90s to really appreciate: Back when it was new, Glock received nearly as much pushback from traditionalists for the striker-fired action as it did for the polymer frame, and the reason for that is the same reason Glock used a striker in the first place. They’re cheap to make.

I was thumbing through a 1992 firearm-buyer’s guide annual from some magazine or another the other day, and it was notable just how few pistols used strikers back then. Other than the Glock and H&K’s weird platypus P7 series, striker-fired operation was pretty much the sole province of inexpensive zinc-alloy blowback guns from the sort of manufacturers at which brand-conscious buyers would turn up their noses. Because striker-fired pistols are cheap to make."

The FN1899 on the right is striker-fired. So's the Savage 1917 on the left. That thing that looks like a hammer spur is just an external cocking lever.

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