Rifleman Review: EAA Girsan MCP35 PI Ops

Those who are familiar with the high power market of the last few decades, there was a high power that came out of Argentina. It was made by a company called FM and they called it the Detective. So the PI name is a little bit of a play on what we've got here, which is a shortened slide compact high power. This is the MCP35PI Ops. Now, Gerson is the first company to come to market with a shortened up high power since the Argentinian company FM made their high power way back when. But Gerson being Gerson, they couldn't just leave it there. They had to take it up yet another notch. So in addition to this having the shortened slide and shortened barrel, this is also an optic ready gun. So you've got a cut here that is designed to accept shield RMSC footprint micro red dots. If you don't want to have a dot on your gun, the gun ships with a cover plate that has an incorporated rear sight and that's held in place by a single screw. They also added a three slot accessory rail up front. So you can put your light, you can put your laser on it, makes it a really capable, versatile gun. It doesn't stop there. They also put a really nice flat bladed trigger on this gun. And man, I mean that, that flat blade just breaks. And also if you'll notice, I just fired that gun without the magazine in there. So unlike all those high powers of old, this does not have a magazine disconnect safety. And let me tell you, it really shows in the trigger. This one's got the Rowell hammer, but that doesn't really matter all that much because it's got this really awesome beaver tail back here. Now I'm a big fan of the high power and I love high powers, but man, if you wanted a high power that had that, you'd had to spend a whole lot more money on getting one worked over by a custom shop. When you can just buy this one right out of the box. It's got a really nice set of G10 grips on it too, which make it really comfortable. It's got a really nice extended slide stop, slide release lever on the top there. I mean, you can just get right on that thing. It's right there. It's also got a bilateral safety on it as well. So gone are the single sided safeties that you'd have to replace when you were working with the original high powers. It's got the single sided push button magazine release. Speaking of the magazine, Gerson ships all of its guns, all of its high powers with the 15 round Metgar magazine. So that is a boost over the original 13 round capacity of the high power. So there's just so much going on in this new MCP35. It's basically all of the big high power upgrades that people have been building into high powers for decades and spending a lot of money to do it. When you can buy this Gerson for a really affordable price right out of the box. For more on firearms and shooting gear, go to AmericanRifleman.org.