The gift of a gun from father to son represents a time-honored tradition of handing the rights and responsibilities enshrined in the Second Amendment to the next generation. For one father this past spring, that rite of passage has even greater significance, because his gift of a handcrafted, finely finished Walther Arms “We The People” PPQ to his son is a one-of-a-kind representation of American values.
“How do you better instill the importance of the Constitution in our young than with that?” said the father, who is a business executive. “I thought it would be a good memento as he progresses from his college years into adulthood.”
The buyer and his wife, both U.S. Military veterans, agreed that this special, one-off Walther embodied the principles they wanted their son to carry into the future as part of a new wave of Second-Amendment advocates. The hand-engraved, gold-plated Walther PPQ Q5 Match SF is the result of more than a year of work for one master craftsman at Walther.
“For Walther to build a gun celebrating our Constitution, I think it shows how important it is,” the buyer said. “America is the greatest country in the world.”
The “We The People” Walther started life as one of the company’s new, steel-framed Q5 Match models, launched early in 2019 as a purpose-built competition gun. The large slide flats and frame made a ready canvas for one of Walther’s in-house engravers, who relief-cut an American Eagle standing out from an American-flag background. The “We The People” engraving that gives the gun its name is centered in a parchment-scroll frame on the left side of the slide.
On the right side of the gun, there’s a relief cut of an American Eagle in flight, standing out among a background of mountains and pine forests. The rest of the gun is engraved with intricate scrollwork, and controls are treated with a 24-karat gold finish. The grips are carved from highly figured French walnut, and the entire gun features a polished-steel finish.
Of course, the competition lineage of the Match SF handgun is still present in the form of a flat-faced trigger, as well as a milled slide cut that accepts today’s popular red-dot optics. True to Walther’s goal to provide competition- and range-ready guns at any level, this “We The People” PPQ shipped with an empty cartridge case that proves it was safely test-fired at the company’s facility.
The buyer first ran across the “We The People” Walther at the IWA Trade Show in Nuremburg, Germany, where the pistol was displayed in the Walther Arms booth as a symbol of the company’s skill and craftsmanship. As a one-of-a-kind display example, the gun was not for sale and was initially slated for a lifetime behind glass in the Walther Arms museum. Then, he attended a reception with Wulf-Heinz Pflaumer, President of PW Group, the parent company behind Walther Arms and Umarex Sportwaffen.
“I spent the whole dinner telling Wulf how much the gun meant to me and how much it would mean to my son,and his wife turned to him and said, ‘You have to sell it to him,'" the buyer said. "It’s a great symbol of America.”
