High Point .45cal. pistol: Worth the price?

[Music] [Music] hi we're out on the range today so please bear with gunfire here in the background today we're talking about high point pistols specifically this jhp model but before we get started there's a few things I want to cover first for everyone who watches these presentations on an almost weekly basis my apologies that the lateness of publishing this one we've had a couple of setbacks in the last couple of weeks also in the last couple of weeks we've had a very high number of new subscribers and with that they've asked a lot of questions and I need to take just a moment to address two of those one this is an earplug case I wear ear plugs with every shot I take also a lot of people have asked about my shooting jacket it has a Sears label as far as I can tell was between 40 and 50 years old and finding jackets like this one these days can be very difficult and when you find them of contemporary manufacturer they are often grossly overpriced and all too often they're made more for fashion than they are for function and I'll discuss this jacket in a little more detail in the near future when we do a presentation on hunting clothing and one other thing I want to cover is I was able to purchase this High Point pistol because of donations to the patreon account so again thank you everybody now in looking at this High Point pistol some things you might notice immediately is that it seems very wide it's a very big bulky handgun it's front heavy the grip actually I like the way the grip fits my hand but I don't really like much else about it and to be blunt it's an ugly pistol so the question would be why would anyone buy this well probably for a lot of reasons but the biggest selling point of High Point handguns is a very low price tag in a world where guns like this beretta or this Glock can cost five hundred to a thousand dollars the low price tag the high point can be very appealing I bought this one last week for $200 and that is a big selling point but saving money you're not saving much unless it's also a good handgun but that brings up the question good handgun compared to what well this model is a full-size single action 45 acp with a single stack magazine so what I would want to do is compare it to another model that's perhaps more established or well known that's also a full-size single action 45 acp with a single stack magazine well the gun I have that fits that bill is a Colt government model now this might not seem like a fair comparison but this is the gun I have so let's shoot these two side-by-side and see how they compare first we'll compare just slow fire accuracy I'll shoot from 25 yards and I'll shoot the target on your left with the high point and the target on your right with the Colt government model well with the cold I got one shot low that was a flier that was just me other than that not a bad group certainly a lot better than I did with the high point but that does not necessarily mean that the pistol is inaccurate it means that I can't shoot it accurately and that has a lot to do with two things one a trigger pulled that is amazingly long and rough for a single action of autoloader and two the sights on this pistol the rear sight is surprisingly narrow given how wide the slide is so I'll put up a couple of new targets I will go back and shoot from 25 yards again but this time from a rest taking as much of me out of the equation as possible and then let's see how the accuracy compares [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] so what does this tell us well mainly two things one tells us that I can't shoot very much better from arrest than I can offhand and the second thing here is there is not much difference in the size of these two groups but that's slow fired now let's try shooting fast now I'm at seven yards and I'll shoot the target on your right with the Colt government model but this time I'll shoot as fast as I think I can hit it then we'll repeat that with a high point and see how they compare let's take a closer look well the difference is obvious and again this does not mean that the high point is inaccurate it means when trying to shoot fast because of the poor trigger I can't shoot it very accurately but there's two things one could it be fired accurately by someone who spent a lot of time mastering the trigger I'm very confident it could and - given what it's designed to do this level of accuracy at 7 yards on a man-size silhouette is probably going to be sufficient for the task at hand so far our High Point seems to be performing well but there are some definite downsides to a high point and we could be here all day if I wanted to go into that subject in depth so let me hit just a few of the high points or perhaps low points one of those is selecting a holster now you see my lb V here and you can see the m9 holster attached to it but I also brought along a few other holsters so let me go through these and see what I can come up with I'm wearing my obv that I used for at least part of the time that I was in the army and this is an m9 holster and it's made to accommodate an m9 or a beretta 92fs and that's what's in it right now now some holsters like this Galco holster are very specific about the type of handgun that in this case in 1911 others like this one even though they're made for a particular type of gun they're not that picky about what pistol you put in there for example sty RGB that's just fine 1911 it's just fine even this Glock model 22 fits just fine but the highpoint doesn't quite make it and that's one of the biggest problems with high points is finding a holster to fit them in now let me show you another type of holster now here's another gun belt use occasionally and this holster accommodates my 92f just fine I actually don't even know what type of pistol it was originally designed for but it'll fit several models sty RGB just fine 1911 just fine guac model 22 again just fine but try to put the high point in it and it doesn't quite make it now let's try one more type of holster now this is a very generic holster but again we see fits the 92f just fine the sty RGB just fine the 1911 just fine and yes it does cover the manual safety a Glock model 22 that's probably the best of the bunch but again with the high point not quite there pretty close but not quite and although there are high point holsters out there that you can buy it's kind of a downer to have a big box of generic holsters that will fit almost anything and to go to that box and still not find one that can fit a high point another downside of the high point pistol is the disassembly and reassembly procedures and again I'll compare it to a 1911 now you get out of remember that the 1911 is a design that is over a hundred years old most modern automatic pistols are a lot easier to take apart and put back together than this one is and as much as I would love to tell you that I can take this apart and put it back together in ten seconds line folded yeah I really can't do that and we won't take the firing pin out for the purpose of this demonstration and then to put it back together you just do the same procedure in Reverse when putting the 1911 back together one of the tricky parts is making sure all your holes line up so you can get everything back where it's supposed to be and obviously doing this something that takes a little bit of practice but with a little bit of practice it can be done pretty easy and then of course you do a function check and there you go Oh comparing that to the high point and taking the high point part the first thing you do is lock the slide back and then it requires a tool that comes with the gun to punch out a retention pin [Music] mallet sold separately once you get that out you lift the slide [Music] and slide it off the front now you see it has an action spring under the barrel and that's pretty common in modern automotive pistols unfortunately when taking this apart sometimes that spring shoots across the brain bad enough when you're at home definitely not something you want to have out here now this pin right here is what actually holds the slide to the lower receiver and this hole is where that retention pin that I'm alloted out went through now this pin has a nub on it that's actually bilateral and a lot of people mistakenly think that's a cocked hammer indicator no it's just a nub now the real trick of this is putting it back together the traction spring back in and then try to put the slide back on the pistol and when you do that now this pin didn't exactly get in the right place so we'll try that again and in we went locked slide back and then we put this pin back in the same way we got it out with a mallet problem is that even though it's not marked there's only one way that it will go in and so you've got to remember which way that is and mallet it back down until it's flush then do a function check which we can't do because the high point as a magazine safety then when you push the slide back it locks to the rear and there is no magazine excuse me no slide release have to take the magazine partially out let it go back forward put the magazine back in to complete your function check you can see the safety concerns of having to have a magazine in while you're doing a function check you can also see how difficult the highpoint is to take apart and put back together and to be perfectly honest I tried that about 40 times off-camera and that's probably the smoothest I've ever done it it's actually kind of difficult to do the highpoint also has a feature that I have great disdain for in handguns and that is these plastic grips they're not just grips they serve to hold certain pieces on so if you take this grip off there's a couple of pieces that just might fall out of there another bad thing about this is you'll notice with the 1911 it didn't require any tools to take it apart neither do most handguns the high point does require tools to take it apart one that comes with it and one that doesn't one of the reasons guns like high points get judged negatively is because they're ugly and a lot of people equate aesthetics with effectiveness let me show you what I mean this is a Colt Mark 4 80 series in caliber 45 acp it has genuine Colt wraparound Rosewood grips it's polish stainless steel and I'm wearing the requisite bling to shoot a pistol like this but does the fanciness really make it shoot any better not bad but let's see how that compares to the high point shooting does not have to be a fashion show I couldn't see much difference could you and I'll bet the targets couldn't feel the difference in effect so downsides yeah quite a few but as we just saw whatever you're shooting at probably won't care let me tell you an anecdote we went rabbit hunting we've just gotten there first rabbit we saw first round that went down range Kyle shoots at this rabbit hits the ground about ten feet in front of it bullet ricochets off the sand hits the rabbit dead center kills him that rabbit did not get to say that doesn't count because it was a ricochet and as we just saw whatever you shoot at with this high point is probably not going to say that doesn't count it was only a high point now there are some downsides to this one of the nitpicky ones I have is if you buy something like this block it comes in this nice hard sided case it's padded inside to get some accessories you get a magazine when you buy something like the high point it comes in cardboard box and you don't get an extra magazine they're available I saw one at a store a couple of days ago for $19 but still that's what happens when you buy a no-frills gun but despite all the downsides if a high point is what you have you know I think it's gonna get you through but really a bottom line to this if I could be long-winded about a bottom line is that if you can afford to buy a more expensive gun that's really what I'd recommend for a lot of people their best bang for their buck is a good used gun but that's not an option that's available to everyone depending on your local laws and what's available in your area and your financial concerns if a high point is what's available well go with it and I'm very confident that it'll work just fine for you now at this point the question comes up about rely well we weren't really able to demonstrate that but in terms of reliability there's two facets to that there's one how reliable is the pistol right now and two how reliable is it expected to be ten twenty thirty thousand rounds from now well I can't speak to that because I haven't had this gun long enough to put even close to that many rounds through it I'm sure there's people who have but I haven't but in the short term I can tell you in preparing for this presentation and what we shot here today I put about a hundred and fifty rounds through this pistol and the total number of malfunctions I had was three now that might not seem like a lot but when you put it in the perspective of I've had this gun for six years in the total number of malfunctions I've had with this is I think none then three all of a sudden becomes a large number but on the other side of that for no frills guns like this they can be rough around the edges and you can feel some of that roughness in it and what I would recommend doing is as soon as you get one of these take it apart clean it put it back together and then just sit there and work the slide thousand times literally a thousand times and that will help work a lot of that roughness out now did I do that with this one no and I expect as this gun progresses through its break-in period it will become more reliable now that's another thing I have to cover that partially has to do with today's subject and partially doesn't today is a real red-letter day for us first and foremost I've just been informed that we went over fifty thousand subscribers today so thank you everybody secondly and in a distant second is and this does have to do with the high point that disassembly reassembly thing I feel like I achieved a personal goal by not succumbing to my great temptation to use the qolt to shoot the high point it was that frustrating taking that thing apart and putting it back together and that's something you might want to think about before you run out and buy one of these so as always don't try this at home on what you call a professional and thanks for watching the high point video [Music]

Channel: Paul Harrell

Views: 847,044

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Id: fA1QQYCLMaY

Length: 20min 15sec (1215 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 31 2017