I played basketball at college and can palm a basketball easily. I've also been a powerlifter for 25 years. It's unlikely the folks who love the grip have much larger hands or more grip strength (or more joint/ muscle pain that goes with the sports/ lifting. Lol)
I didn't mean to challenge your strength or impugn your manhood!
I'm sure you're stronger than I am, especially after two years of sitting on my ass after having my right shoulder rebuilt. While I lack your collegiate basketball pedigree I too could palm a basketball in HS, for whatever that's worth. But I'm not sure what that means. Are you implying I'm only
imagining that my USP fits me perfectly? If so this is quite a surprise to me!
USP fans have always thrown off in the Glock calling it a brick or 2x4 while the usp is very much more brick or 2x4 shaped in the grip. Measure it and see. Later hk were far better in the ergo arena.
Nowhere here did I malign the Block, er, Glock.
But even if I had, it's unlikely that HK fanboys are the only people to mock Gaston's "perfection", now in it's fifth iteration. Undoubtedly the USP is quite blocky, as was the fashion of the time.
In a way it's natural to compare the two as they're products of the same era but in philosophy they were quite different. Glock recognized the failings (or at least disadvantages) of SA/DA guns of the time- difficulty in transitioning from the 12 lb DA first round the 5 lb SA second round being chief among them. The USP on the other hand appealed to those folks like me looking to transition from 1911s and BHPs to a more modern design while keeping the same manual of arms. Every USP I owned always had the detent plate switched out to remove the decock function to facilitate carrying cocked-and-locked. Of course, many folks have owned Glocks & HKs, myself included.
If the USP were so great in the eyes of HK..... the later guns grips would not look so different.
That's a leap that's not necessarily supported by reality. An explanation for the changes would have to touch on dozens of sometimes unrelated disciplines ranging from industrial design to marketing. In the past it quite common for a given firearm to be offered with little to no alteration from year to year or decade to decade. Aside from a gradual lowering of QC standards an 870 from 2010 is nearly unchanged from one sold in 1950. But in our current location on the timeline of late-stage capitalism corporations seem to have succeeded in installing a "model year" model ported from the auto industry. I first noticed this in the early 90s when Infinity would tweak the shape and cosmetics of their SM150 (and related model names) speakers every year or two. They were virtually identical internally and sounded the same but each tweak was touted as "revolutionary" somehow.
Now of course, the ideal American (ie cutting edge consumer) must have the latest iPhone or Android, the latest sneakers, the newest car, etc. To a degree that kind of makes sense with, say, a computer where a two year old machine maybe can't run the newest games at an acceptable frame rate. But marketing aside, I'll contend that true revolutions in firearms are pretty rare and occur at fairly widely spaced interval. A gen 5 Glock isn't much different than a gen 1 except in trade dress, and maybe in some ways is inferior as evidenced by their release of a "throwback" model. The biggest revolution in handguns in the 2nd half of the 20th century was probably the use of polymers (can't say strikers as they dated back almost a century before they got truly popular). It seems clear that the most seismic revolution in handguns in the early 21st century is the RDS optic.
So the actual improvements/changes. As Western civilization attempted to shrug off the misogyny and troglodytic behavior of centuries past, there was a big move to open up participation in society to the half of the population that's
not male. Saint John Browning only needed to concern himself with the anatomy of military age males of Western extract. As it became possible for women to participate in military service and work in LE jobs, it became clear that a one-size-fits-most approach to weapons design was outdated. This kind of coincided with a general increase in the exploration of ergonomics as a function of industrial design. You've probably known some women in your life that could shoot pretty well (my mom was a farm girl and pretty handy with a shotgun or rifle). But it's much harder to shoot well with a gun that doesn't fit you at all.
In the modern day most guns have some design elements centered around ergonomics and fit. Obviously this a good thing. When my dad was a kid, if you were left handed you were simply forced to do stuff right handed and that was that! He was pretty excited anytime he actually found a left handed gun! Ergonomics and a design philosophy of adapting the machine to you instead of forcing you to adapt the machine was a great things (and a linchpin of Travis Haley's company). Handgun designs changed a lot in an attempt to accommodate a wide range of users. HK maybe didn't invent the interchangeable grip panel although I've personally never seen one with as much configurability as the VP9 or P30 guns. But by around 2000 most companies were at least doing back strap panels that you could swap for a better fit. Is this a good thing? Yeah, I think it is. And just like we're not likely to ditch cell phones to go back to land lines neither HK nor any other company in a market economy is going to turn the clock back to a previous century unless consumers demand it.
Still, is all of this purely unmitigated progress? For some reason people still seem to buy millions of 1911s despite them having zero concessions to the last century of industrial design revolutions. Oh yeah, they'll add MIM parts to save money and maybe a rail to add a light. But there are still $3,000 1911s that you could give to a grunt in 1940 without him batting an eye. Despite the success of a gun company that got its start making plastic shovels, S&W still sells millions of wheelguns. Despite them being "obsolete" the revolver is popular enough today for Colt to resurrect their classic snake monikers. Humans are a weird animal!
Over the years I've owned a fair number of HKs, a partial listing including three USPf9s & USP40s, a USP45 Tactical, a USC carbine in .45 ACP, three USPcs in 9mm & 40, four P30s in various calibers and configurations, a P2000 (my primary EDC to this day) and a VP9. Probably I'm forgetting at least one or two. Of all those guns, certainly the P30 is a marvel of engineering and ergonomics. With the supplied grip panels you can create 27 different grip configurations! Yet at the range, I can still shoot my USPf9 the best of all my HKs due to the serendipitous fit of the gun to my hand and even more due to the fantastic Match Trigger. In fact, if HK would spruce up the USP line with a standard 1913 rail and a factory optic cut I'd probably bump it to the top of the carry rotation. In fact, rumor is that HK refused to do so because they've invested a lot of R&D into their newer guns with are reported to be cheaper to make (at least in the case of the VP9), and they don't want to risk cannibalizing sales of the new guns.
Sorry for the long winded answer, but I think the topic is pretty interesting.
