The public face of firearms development usually follows one of two arcs. Either a big announcement is made at SHOT Show to gauge interest in the new Blastomatic 2000, with the product eventually making its way to market after a couple of false starts and several months of thumb twiddling. Or we’re let into the secret a few months in advance of the launch date on pain of excommunication and then run the review when everyone else does once the embargo has been lifted. The Angstadt Arms MDP-9 followed neither of those protocols, probably because they’re a small company unburdened by a big marketing department’s prelaunch checklists.
We first encountered the pistol at SHOT 2019, when we stopped by the company’s tiny booth, manned by a couple of engineers and their founder, the fresh-faced Rich Angstadt. We tend to seek out
