Ruger P89

The P89 is recoil operated, locked breech semi-automatic pistol, manufactured by Sturm, Ruger & Company. William B. Ruger and Alexander McCormick Sturm founded the company in 1949.

The P89 is among the 'P' series of weapons offered by the company. These are centerfire semi-automatic pistols and all of them are double action, short recoil operated in designs. These are mainly used for military, police, and civilian self-defense and also for recreational use. It is considered to be rugged, reliable and very accurate. The first of the P Series pistol was the P-85, developed in 1985.

Though it was tough and fairly reliable, it was not without its share of problems. The safety levers were mounted high on the slide and were too small, so that they could not be reached easily. Besides many also felt that it did not match up to the reliability of the earlier guns, as there were safety issues and could accidentally discharge. One of the main problems was that if the firing pin broke in front of the firing pin block, applying the safety, it dropped the hammer. This could transfer enough energy to the broken firing pin to cause a discharge.

The gun was recalled and the new model, the P-85 Mark II, was offered with larger safety levers, improved accuracy, and the option of a stainless steel slide. Finally the P-89 was released in 1989, with all the improvements. The P89 utilizes a 1911 style-tilting barrel, which has a lot of pretravel and overtravel. The gun is known for its accuracy, and there are three variations available are the manual safety model that decocks the hammer when the safety is engaged, a decock-only model, and a double action only model. The P-89 standard model uses a decocking manual safety. This when applied, blocks the firing pin, disconnecting the trigger, and dropping the hammer. The safety has to be removed; before firing and it was only then the trigger can be pulled. One the hammer is cocked and released, the first shot is fired in the double action mode, while the shots after that are in the single action mode, until the hammer is decocked. In these models the firing pin is blocked and the hammer is dropped when fired. It then springs back to the ready position. The pistol is left in a safe, hammer down position, ready to fire with a double action trigger pull.

The double action only model has a spurless hammer, and no manual safety. It always fires in double action mode, and upon firing the hammer is automatically decocked. In this every shot is fired from a hammer down position. The Ruger P89 uses a 9 mm Parabellum pistol cartridge The length of this gun is 200 mm or 7.75 inches, the barrel Length: 114 mm or 4.5 inches. It weighs 1080 grams or 2.4 lbs and the magazine capacity was a 15 standard/10 during the Assault Weapons Ban. The Ruger P89 is a seen as an affordable self-defense pistol.