I grew up around men from the Korean and Vietnam War generations and vividly remember their near-love affair with the 1911 handgun. I remember them laughing at those ‘plastic guns’ that began showing up in the 1980s and telling me nothing gives you confidence like reaching onto the night stand and wrapping one’s hand around the handle of 1911 after hearing weird sounds in the house.

They always seemed to point to the heft of the gun and of the .45 round as the confidence builder.

To be honest, all the talk was lost on me. I was drawn to smaller guns under the conviction that a gun too bulky to carry is likely a gun someone would eventually begin to leave at home. And a gun at home serves little purpose if the gun’s owner is under attack at church or the gas station or school.

Then I picked up an Heckler and Koch VP 40. My immediate thought, “This is what those old-timers were talking about.” The VP 40 is hefty–it weighs 28.9 ounces with an empty magazine–but it is also very refined. It is striker fired with a trigger that is short and smooth. It holds 13 rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber (for 13 +1).

When you hold a VP 40 there is no doubt about its quality and when you shoot it, the accuracy is superb. Moreover, because it is a Heckler and Koch, the dependability of the firearm is a given.

I like to hand my VP 40 to military and law enforcement friends just to watch the way they react when they feel it. When I handed it to one of my good friends who was a Navy Corpsman in Iraq, he immediately spread his feet to shoulder width and got into shooting posture by pushing the pistol directly out from his chest. He froze in that position, smiled, and said, “What a great gun.” I could not agree more.

To put it simply, after all those years of not understanding how anyone could love one gun so much I find myself loving the Heckler and Koch VP 40.

A brand new VP 40 can be acquired for $680-$700.

AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of Bullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.