I generally enjoy Guns America's email updates as a quick look at a few new products, but I cringed at least three times reading their review of the FNS-9.
The author mistakenly refers to the pistol's manual safety as a "drop safety." I think he's using the term "drop safety" as some kind of slang term to describe a 1911 style thumb safety since it is disengaged by a downward motion of the thumb. A drop safety is a mechanism that prevents the firing pin from striking a chambered cartridge's primer when the striker is influenced by gravity or G-forces such as those encountered if the pistol is dropped.
He later says "there is nothing like the confidence of a manual safety to protect you from shooting someone unintentionally." Two points here. One- let's not point our firearms at anybody we aren't ready and willing to kill. Two- When drawing a firearm, the last thing you should need to feel confident about is not shooting someone. The only thing I want to feel confident about once a pistol is pointed at a threat is that it will fire when the trigger is pulled.
Lastly, he writes that a 2" group at 10 yards is "as good as we have seen from an out of the box pistol." Unless the gun is in a stationary rest, or the shooter is at the very least shooting from a rest, do not talk about a pistol's accuracy. 2" at 10 yards? I sure hope a $650 pistol from an accomplished firearms manufacturer groups better than that.
I don't have an FNS-9 and don't have any plans to review one. But I will look to this 250 round "review" as a reminder that credibility and authenticity go hand-in-hand. Product news is one thing, but putting out opinions when you're unclear on the difference between a drop safety and a thumb safety will surely have readers looking elsewhere for credible firearm evaluations.
