If you had to chose one or the other?

[zukiphile]

Originally Posted by Frankenmauser

If the P95 were a car,...

My aircooled VW in the 70s used the spare tire's air pressure to push wind screen washer fluid. The one I got last year has a sensor that tells me when the computer thinks I am going to rear end someone, but it goes crazy in ice storms.

Ruger knows how to make arms that work. We didn't realize how great our MKII 22lr pistols were until the design was "improved". My P345s are quite accurate (when my eyes were better, I could put five rounds into a two inch group at 20 yards - just as well as I could shoot a 22lr), but someone thought a magazine disconnect prone to failure would be a good idea. The P95 didn't suffer that indignity.

Now Ruger introduces whole new centerfire pistol lines too often for me to keep up. I understand the marketing appeal of "New and Improved!", but I regret that the old P series development and refinement didn't continue.

[FrankenMauser]

I, too, wish the P series could have continued.
But I understand why they killed it. The P95, in particular, was a fairly ugly, bulky beast of a 9mm; and the prevailing derogative at the time was that it looked like a "space gun".


And, yep. Technology is wonderful and useless at the same time; and our memories of the old technology can fade quickly.
There's a '70 Nova in my garage. One day, my wife and I got caught in light rain after a date. Out of nowhere, she smacked my arm and asked, "Why do you keep messing with the wiper switch? Why don't you just leave it on?"
I replied that it only had three settings, Off, Low, and BREAK STUFF.
"There's not the one where it waits a little bit and then goes?" she asked.
"The driver is the intermittent setting," I told her with a smirk.

Kids these days (including my generation) have little to no idea what it's like to set the choke, learn the 'perfect' pedal pump for starting a carbureted vehicle, clean points, or drive slow for a while to wait for the flat spots in your tires to smooth out.

...Much like many of them don't know what it's like to own a gun that actually has good wood and quality blued steel.
I like my P95 and my Marlin XL7. They're good tools.
But my Hi-Power and Winchester Model 25 are more than just tools. They have souls.

[Dufus]

Kids these days (including my generation) have little to no idea what it's like to set the choke, learn the 'perfect' pedal pump for starting a carbureted vehicle, clean points, or drive slow for a while to wait for the flat spots in your tires to smooth out.

I still have my old '55 Chevrolet 3100 on the carport. Manual choke, 235 CID engine, wide rear window and all.

My son drove it years ago, but daughter wouldn't touch it.

Now my grandson wants it after we "clean it up".

I will move it into the garage when all that begins.

I guess you would say that is the P95 in my arsenal.

[FrankenMauser]

Have the grandson "clean it up".
If he doesn't, he may not respect it.
But if he does... He'll know what it means to keep the old stuff running, and have a greater appreciation for the tool (the car).

One of my brothers recently gave the majority of his firearms away to his kids (most of them coming of legal age, and the rest not far behind)..
Because he (possibly "we"?) had done our best to teach them about the importance of maintenance and initial quality, none of them wanted the polymer/plastic wonders. They wanted the old stuff - even if of no real value - because those were the "good" guns.

I really like my P95. I'd take it over any SD9 variant any day.
But it makes me happy to see that not all of the kids that will lead this country into the future will be forgetting about what everything they know now was built upon.

[JohnKSa]

A small rental range in the area started up some years ago. He bought several P95 pistols as range rentals. Over the years, he sold them most of them to customers who liked them after shooting them. When he finally closed the range he kept the last one as a home defense gun.

I don't have any experience with the S&W pistol in question, but I've owned several P95 pistols and they definitely work and keep working. I have no problem relying on one as a self-defense pistol even though I have a selection of "more refined" designs in the safe.

[jzieba]

Ruger over the S&W all day long!

[Walt Sherrill]

I've heard that the SD9's trigger, which is so-so, can be greatly improved (either by sending it back to S&W, or by getting an APEX kit for the gun.) Except for that, they seem to be OK guns.

Some parts for the P95 are now starting to be hard to find -- there are no recoil springs available from Ruger, last I heard, unless you send the gun in for warranty work (they have a small supply of recoil springs for THAT type of problem) -- and I don't know of any after-market sources for that part. (I owned a P95 for a while and I had no problems with it, but eventually sold it in search of something better. I've done a lot of THAT over the years.)

Both guns seem to be pretty good in terms of reliability/durability -- so concern about parts might be unwarranted, but I'd probably go with the S&W because the S&W SD9VE is still in production and you can find them NEW (i.e., with warranties) for very low prices.

[Big Shrek]

In just about every pawn shop in town there are around 3-4 Ruger P95's.
Why? Freeking heavy...and Uglier than a Hi Point.

On the upside, if you get one at a pawn shop, you can usually get a sweet deal,
most are priced at $200-300. At that price they make for a good tacklebox gun.

[JohnKSa]

Some parts for the P95 are now starting to be hard to find -- there are no recoil springs available from Ruger, last I heard, unless you send the gun in for warranty work...

On the good side, it takes a lot to wear one out and they're quite inexpensive up front.

But it is disappointing that Ruger chose to go this route. Time was you could depend on them to support their products, even after they discontinued them. I saw them dump a lot of parts onto the clearance market some years ago and realized that if you own a discontinued Ruger product these days, you shouldn't expect that you'll be able to buy factory parts for it in the future.

[FrankenMauser]

That's the funny thing about the P95, Big Shrek...
Some parts of the country have a fair selection available at any given time. But other areas almost never do.
In my neck of the woods, they rarely come up for sale; and when they do, they sell fast and high ($300 minimum - the last one that I saw was rusty, really rough, and badly abused, and still went for $375).
In some ways - based on pricing, demand, and the way people talk about them - it actually feels as if they're becoming collectible. ...Particularly the earlier versions with the simpler safety, or decocker-only.

But it is disappointing that Ruger chose to go this route. Time was you could depend on them to support their products, even after they discontinued them. I saw them dump a lot of parts onto the clearance market some years ago and realized that if you own a discontinued Ruger product these days, you shouldn't expect that you'll be able to buy factory parts for it in the future.

About five years ago, some one pointed out to me that Ruger quietly stopped supporting quite a few older designs, so I set out to make sure I could keep a few of them running if I did have issues.

For the P95, in particular, I watched classifieds and auctions for several months. Out of the blue popped up three auctions that were running side-by-side for "demilled" P95s seized by LE agencies. I waited for other bidders to fight over the first two lots, and then took the last lot with a starting bid.
It included everything but the barrel and frame, for $35 plus shipping ($5 SFRB).
Dirty. Nasty. Dried blood in some nooks and crannies of the slide. (The company selling the parts, at least at that time, was only destroying murder and suicide weapons...)
But, minimal wear, fairly easy to clean, and the parts were in good shape.