The Hi-Point YC9 Yeet Cannon 9mm Pistol Review: Yeeeet!

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The Hi-Point YC9 Yeet Cannon is the next generation of the basic Hi-Point unlocked blowback semiautomatic pistol. Featuring upgrades like textured polymer grips, a more angular gun-looking slide, a grip safety, a threaded barrel, and a proprietary double-column, single-feed magazine, the Yeet Cannon takes everything about the no-frills Hi-Point C9 and bumps it up a notch. New options also include a Glock-style replaceable front sight, optional mounts for optics, and a user-installable rear ghost ring if desired. The YC9 brings the basic Hi-Point C9 into the Information Age.

Ballistic Philosophy

The combination of low cost and good performance sells a lot of Hi-Point pistols. Along the way, it also arms a lot of young dads just starting out. I have a buddy who worked an entry-level job at a local machine shop. He had a young wife and a newborn at home. They didn’t have two dimes to rub together. However, he lived in a sketchy neighborhood, and he’d sooner not feel defenseless. He saved his pennies and picked up a used Hi-Point for about nothing. That Hi-Point pistol was reliable, low-cost protection. He actually stripped the gun down and spent some time with it in the shop. By the time he got done working his magic, that cheap Hi-Point pistol had a trigger that was just to die for. However, even it is stock state, that Hi-Point C9 was a proper tool to protect his family in a crazy dangerous world.

The Hi-Point is personal defense for the masses. That is their niche. Where a top-end Glock or SIG might set you back $600 or so retail, I bought my basic Hi-Point C9 several years ago unfired and without a magazine through a Law Enforcement seized gun auction for, wait for it, $46. I picked up a magazine at a local pawn shop and got into the gun all up for markedly less than a c-note. The MSRP for the new upgraded YC9 is still only $229. Street price will likely be lower. I was skeptical until my first trip to the range. Hi-Point pistols are bug ugly. That’s just a fact. Not unlike Aerosmith’s Steve Tyler, The Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger, and yours truly, ugly is pretty obvious when you see it. However, it is a reliable axiom that the folks who will denigrate the effectiveness of the Hi-Point pistol have likely never actually fired one. The striker-fired trigger is entirely serviceable, and the gun shoots exceptionally straight.

Are You a Bigot?

Intolerance. It’s the unforgivable sin in the Information Age. The quickest way to torpedo the career of a prominent conservative is to hallucinate up some credible accusation of bigotry. By contrast, Canadian PM Justin Trudeau and Virginia Governor Ralph Northam can be photographed wearing black face at parties and still thrive. That’s because Trudeau and Northam are both liberals. The rules are different. Get used to it. The truth of the matter is that everyone harbors preconceptions to one degree or another. It is the very nature of life. Lions chill with lions, and hyenas hang out with hyenas. Housecats kill anything they can catch for fun. Left-wing social justice warriors hate me simply because I disagree with them. I get it. Left, Right, or Center, all carbon-based life forms are innately tribal.

The cool bit is that we humans can still nonetheless come together despite our innately insular proclivities. As a soldier, I didn’t care what color you were or where you came from. I just expected you to do your job. We kept each other from dying and built some unbreakable bonds along the way. However, the key to societal harmony is to recognize the innate predilections of human nature and work around them. So why all this vapid jabber about social justice in the hallowed pages of this esteemed gun magazine? Because I’d be willing to bet that most of you out there, like me, are actually closet gun snobs. We pass judgment and form opinions based solely upon appearances and reputation. It turns out that in the crucible of real world performance, the inexpensive Hi-Point YC9 is actually surprisingly effective. You just have to overcome your natural prejudices to appreciate it.

Tactical Etymology

Yeet Cannon? What the heck? What does that even mean? Well, I did a little homework. The origins of that curious moniker are actually pretty fascinating. Hi-Point makes the People’s Gun. Their product line is aimed squarely at the blue collar market, and they own it. As a result, when it was time to conjure up a name for their new and improved tactical handgun, they just reached out to the folks who used them. It turns out that was a mistake. This was, after all, the Internet. They hosted a “Name the 9” contest. I’m sure they had hoped for something awesome like Plasmatron Evil-Buster 9000. What they got was Yeet Cannon. Down here in the Deep South where I live, “yeet” is an accepted way to inquire as to whether or not a friend, relative, or acquaintance is feeling peckish. The proper way to use the term in a sentence might be, “Yeet yet?” To which they might respond, “Nope.

But momma’s fixin’ some collards and biscuits for dinner later if y’all wanna join us.” Yeet is an acceptable Southern contraction for the proper English query, “Did you eat?” Everybody who lives down here knows this. In the digital world of cyber slang, “yeet” actually means to throw something forcefully with a lack of concern for the consequences. If some drunk guy throws a beer against a brick wall just to see if it will explode then he has nominally yeeted it. It was honestly inevitable that the Interweb might coopt this term to walk away with the “Name the 9” contest. Yeet Cannon won by a landslide. As Hi-Point is a notoriously good-natured employee-owned company, they just ran with it. The new YC9 can be had either with or without “YEET CANNON” prominently laser engraved across the slide.

What Really Makes the YC9 Different?

All Hi-Point weapons fire via unlocked blowback, like a typical open-bolt submachine gun or a Ruger 10/22. To do so safely requires a pretty massive slide to counteract the recoil forces of the cartridge as it’s fired. In the past, the slides on the Hi-Point C9 looked more like door stops than gun parts. That of the YC9 is still cast from a big chunk of steel, but it is contoured to look more gun-ish. Most everybody everywhere lets you mount up lights and lasers on your favorite tactical pistols nowadays, and Hi-Point is no exception. In this case I wanted to do this up right, so I picked the finest accessories I could find. The stubby bit of rail on the dust cover is Picatinny standard. I mounted this gun with a nice Streamlight TLR-8AG combination white light and green laser (StreamLight.com). This rig costs substantially more than the gun itself, but it is wicked effective and still cheaper than its competition. Be forewarned that there isn’t a whole lot of real estate there given the compact dimensions of the weapon.

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The YC9 slide is cut to accept a detachable rear sight. You can swap that out for a ghost ring should the spirit lead. However, Hi-Point also offers two different optics mounts. Both are sold separately, replace the rear sight, and are user-exchangeable. The conventional sort accepts any standard Deltapoint Pro (DPP) footprint red dot optic. The other, curiously enough, sports a short length of Pic rail. As a result, you could theoretically mount most anything up there. It’s tough to imagine the Hi-Point YC9 as a sniper platform, but if your proclivities wander in that direction, the YC9 will accommodate that weird fetish. I outfitted this YC9 with the extraordinary SIG ROMEO2 convertible red dot. The ROMEO2 fits any DPP or SIG mount without an adaptor and can be configured three different ways by mixing and matching hoods and polycarbonate lenses. Whether the host is a handgun, rifle, or SMG, the ROMEO2 can be set up to thrive there.

The YC9 is a blowback-operated firearm, and the fixed barrel comes threaded standard 1⁄2x28. In addition to being theoretically more accurate than the tilting sort, this also means hanging extra mass on the snout does not adversely affect function. A Browning-inspired tilting-lock action demands a LID or Nielson Device for reliable operation. By contrast, the YC9 really doesn’t care. Just secure your can in place via a direct thread mount and go to town. I mounted up this YC9 with a SilencerCo Osprey 9 can. The Osprey’s offset rectangular geometry offers maximum volume while staying clear of the gun’s sights. A handy clutch button makes indexing the can upon mounting a breeze without tools. As with everything SilencerCo makes, the Osprey is an inspired design perfectly executed (SilencerCo.com).

Trigger Time

The textured grips of the YC9 feel better in the hand than do the old slick sort, but this is still a pretty fat gun. The thumb safety is a pivoting left-sided lever. The grip safety comes off without conscious thought when you grab the weapon. The magazine release is on the left side where John Browning would have placed it. There is no manual external slide stop, though the slide does lock to the rear on the last round fired. To put the YC9 back into action just swap magazines, give the slide a quick snatch to the rear, and let it go. Most of us run our combat pistols that way these days anyway. The double-column, single-feed magazine is a curious thing. The box packs ten rounds and is not unduly challenging to load. The natural taper to the top speeds up reloads. The YC9 incorporates a magazine safety that disables the gun when the magazine is removed.

Right out of the box, the striker-fired trigger is as creepy as Joe Biden at a Girl Scout jamboree. However, that smooths out over time. Once broken in, the trigger breaks at around six pounds and enjoys a nicer comportment. I have seen worse triggers on guns costing way more. For practical defensive use, the ignition system is entirely serviceable. The Hi-Point YC9 pistol rattles a bit when you shake it, but it still shoots unnaturally straight. This is likely a function of the fixed barrel and blowback action. I shot this example alongside some seriously high-end iron, and the YC9 easily held its own. The YC9 actually outshot some very nice pistols. At typical 21-foot CQB ranges I could print single jagged holes so long as I did my part.

Recoil is snappier than what you might find in a more complex gun, but complex guns with lots of parts can potentially break. By contrast, the action of the YC9 is pretty stupid-proof. Feed it decent ammo and don’t store it at the bottom of the ocean, and the YC9 should render fine service come what may. I did have some failures to feed during our range time together, but not many. Like the trigger, the action seems to loosen up and become more forgiving over time. As with any defensive handgun you’re really going to use, log enough trigger time to get the gun smoothed out and the shooter dialed in.

Disassembly is not as straightforward as might be the case with some more conventional weapons. Field stripping entails locking the slide to the rear and punching out a roll pin that will allow the gun to come apart. I inadvertently dropped this pin during reassembly and spent ten minutes hunting 
before I found it. However, I’m a pig. My gun space is pretty cluttered. The Hi-Point pistol is incredibly popular. That means there is ample support gear available. The YC9 is certainly bulkier than some others, but it shoots just fine and is indeed just dirt cheap.

Ruminations

I’ll be honest, I’ll not be trading in my favorite tricked-out HK VP9L Long Slide for a Hi-Point YC9 anytime soon. That VP9L has occupied the coveted spot beside my bed for some years now. It and I understand each other well. However, if I can get past my natural bigotry, I’d have to admit 
that both guns really do shoot about the same. It is simply that the HK costs literally four times as much. And that is the niche where the Hi-Point YC9 thrives. My first concealed carry weapon was a .25ACP FIE Titan. My sweet wife gave that pathetic little handgun to me for my birthday soon after we were married. I actually packed that pitiful pistol for years. That was all I could afford. Had I found myself in a legit life-or-death situation, I might have been better off with a decent baseball bat. However, the Hi-Point YC9 isn’t like that. I have actually seen a couple of guys who had been shot with Hi-Point pistols. They didn’t look happy. When stoked with decent expanding hollowpoints, the YC9 is every bit the equal of the most rarefied 9mm combat pistols on the receiving end. They both hit just as hard, and the YC9 is just killer accurate. It is simply that the YC9 leaves plenty of cash left over for rent and diapers. It is, after all, the combat pistol for the Common Man.

Hi-Point YC9 Yeet Cannon Pistol Specs

• Caliber: 9mm
• Barrel Length: 3.93 in. 
• Overall Length: 7.18 in. 
• Weight: 29 oz. 
• Magazine Capacity: 10 rds. 
• Grips: textured, high-impact polymer
• Finish: Back Powder Coat
• Sights: 3-dot, fully adjustable rear
• Warranty: Lifetime, no-questions-asked
• MSRP: $229
• Contact: Hi-Point, MKS Supply

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