HK's P7 Squeeze Cocker Pistol
Die Hard Villain Hans Gruber's Sidearm of Choice
A good action movie stands or falls on its villain. Think Darth Vader, Hannibal Lecter, or Heath Ledger’s Joker. Alan Rickman’s Hans Gruber was legit perfect in Die Hard. Gruber commanded the bloodthirsty team of Eurotrash thieves who took over the Nakitomi Building on Christmas Eve, precipitating a veritable storm of gunplay, suspense, and witty dialogue that defined the classic seasonal action film. Gruber demonstrates wit, intellect, refinement, and cunning as he deftly navigates the narrative, never once losing his dark-hearted charm. Die Hard is my favorite Christmas movie.
Alan Rickman died in 2016. A classically trained Shakespearean actor renowned for his refined diction and broad dramatic range, Rickman trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and toured with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Die Hard was his big-screen debut.
In the movie, Rickman’s Gruber and most of his team are Germans. The hard guttural language ignites subconscious biases in the viewer dating back to the Second World War. Die Hard reminded the moviegoing public why the Krauts make the world’s best bad guys.
The HK P7 was a strange gun. Featuring a delightfully thin chassis and scads of groundbreaking features, the P7 was the perfect complement to Alan Rickman’s Hans Gruber character in Die Hard.
Gruber & His Guns
Die Hard is a gun movie, and there is plenty of exotic iron to go around. However, the movie’s producers needed something special for Hans Gruber. A villain of such exceptional breeding demanded a bespoke combat pistol befitting a man of his status and station. The end result was an HK P7M13 equipped with a removable sound suppressor.
Die Hard, like most classic movies, was based on a pretty decent book. In 1979, a former private investigator named Roderick Thorp published an action thriller novel titled Nothing Lasts Forever. This was a sequel to his previous 1966 work The Detective. In Nothing Lasts Forever, the villain is a man named Anton “Little Tony the Red” Gruber. He was armed with an unnamed Walther pistol, presumably a PPK. Though the PPK was obviously cool enough to equip Ian Fleming’s 007, the HK P7 was a huge improvement in this case. It was the optimized European villain’s gun.
Die Hard was a great gun movie. The HK P7, Beretta 92F and Walther PPK all figured prominently in the narrative.
The P7
Back in 1979, Heckler and Koch marketed the P7 with the tagline, “Why the P7 is the Most Expensive Handgun in the World.” That’s fairly bold. You’ve got to be pretty confident in your position in the market to brag about how much your ridiculously high-end gun costs.
Featuring a radical gas-retarded blowback action and a unique squeeze-cocking mechanism, the P7 was purported to be the combat pistol for the gunman of distinction. The gun came in either 8- or 13-round versions and was produced in 9mm, .40 S&W, .22 LR, .32 ACP, and .380 ACP with either black or nickel finishes. The chamber was fluted like that of the MP5 submachine gun.
The P7 featured polygonal rifling and fixed sights. The chassis was trim and packable, and the execution was, as expected, flawless. However, it was the weird squeeze-cocking action that really set the gun apart.
When riding about in a holster, the P7 was completely inert. Upon presentation, pressure on the front strap of the grip compressed the striker. Relaxing pressure on the front strap automatically rendered the gun safe. With the grip compressed, the trigger was unusually crisp and smooth. However, managing that exotic squeeze-cocking mechanism was an acquired taste.
The HK P7 is the combat pistol for the gunman of distinction.
Big Screen Details
Like many to most stylized, sound-suppressed Hollywood weapons, the example used in the film was threaded inside the barrel so as to avoid the aesthetic baggage of an extended, threaded tube. When deftly wielded alongside Gruber’s high-brow dialogue, that P7 formed an integral part of his cultured yet heartless persona. The synergistic combination worked beautifully.
The suppressor on Gruber’s P7 was a fake made up specifically for the film. If you look closely, Rickman is not shown actually firing his pistol. According to the director, this was because the actor seemed unable to resist flinching badly when he touched off a blank round. He did fine in the movie with his MP5. I doubt it made quite so much noise. Given that the man came of age in England, he obviously had very little experience with firearms.
One of the most compelling scenes in the film is when Gruber falls to his death while holding John McLane’s wife Holly hostage. The look of shock and surprise on Rickman’s face seems quite sincere as the fall unfolds in slow motion. This was because the director dropped him unexpectedly without calling “action.” Despite being rigged with wires so he wouldn’t die, the discomfiture on Rickman’s face was genuine.
Squeeze ... And Shoot
Running the HK P7 is actually quite the unique experience. Squeezing the action requires a bit more intentionality than I had anticipated. However, once you compress the squeeze cocker, the mechanism seems to find its level. You can even relax your grip on the lever to a degree.
Fully releasing pressure on the cocking lever safes the gun, but it makes an audible snap. I had read about these guns my entire adult life. Actually shooting one was not much like what I had anticipated.
The trigger is divine, and the ergonomics are well-reasoned. However, I did not much care for the weird action myself. The gas-retarded operating system keeps things compact and comfortable, but the squeeze cocker just never captured my fancy. I’d much prefer a Canik, GLOCK, Springfield Armory Echelon, or a Shadow Systems gun, should I ever need to use it for real.
Apparently, the rest of the world felt the same way. The German Polizei purportedly liked theirs. However, the combination of the atypical operating system and the gun’s rarefied price doomed the P7 from the outset.
Denouement
The P7 was produced from 1979 through 2008. Vintage examples nowadays bring truly astronomical prices. I haunted GunBroker for a couple of months, seeking this one. I would have preferred the M13, but the M8 was all my budget would bear, particularly with the nickel finish. Regardless, the lofty purchase price was a small sacrifice to pack heat like the exceptional thief Hans Gruber.
