Forget Glock: Could This Gun Be the One To Take On the Firearm Champ?

Charlie Gao

Security,

Check out the FN 509.

Fabrique Nationale (FN) Herstal is known worldwide for their rifles and machine guns. But they haven’t reached wide success with a pistol since the FN Browning Hi-Power, a design that originated from before WWII. But with their new FN 509, FN Herstal is again aiming for the lucrative civilian, police, and military pistol markets.

Could it succeed? How does it build upon more than 100 years of pistol design at FN?

For the majority of the twentieth century, FN built pistols that derived from the designs of the legendary American gunsmith, John Moses Browning. Dissatisfied with his deals with Remington, Winchester, and other American firearms companies, Browning turned to the Belgian company around the turn of the century and began working for them, though he also maintained a working relationship with Colt in the United States.

At his time there, he produced several pistols for them: the M1903, M1905, and M1910. These were all relatively successful in their era, seeing use through WWI and WWII. But Browning’s most successful design at FN would be the Browning Hi-Power. Unfortunately, Browning died before finishing the design in 1926.

Dieudonne Saive, another master designer continued work on the design, and it was completed in 1935. Almost immediately, it was adopted by various national militaries, including multiple nations in the Commonwealth. It is considered by many to be the best pistol of WWII. The Hi-Power remained in constant production until 2017, and is still used by the Canadian Armed Forces today.

But later browning designs would mostly derive from the Hi-Power. When the pistol needed refreshing to stay competitive, FN released a Mark II and Mark III variants with updated sights and safeties in the 1980s. FN also released the Browning BDA in the 1980s to compete in the U.S. military XM9 pistol trials. The Hi-Power was always a single-action only design, and the BDA updated it to become a double-action/single-action design, while retaining the locking mechanism, layout of the frame, and magazines.