Because the barrel is so low in the frame, what recoil there is is directed almost straight back, so it has very low recoil. It's a neat design from several standpoints, including the grip safety/squeeze-cocking mechanism, and the gas-delayed blowback action. When you fire this pistol, a small amount of the propellant gas is tapped off into a tube under the barrel, and that gas resists a piston that's attached to the front of the slide, so the gas from a single shot is simultaneously pushing the bullet out the bore, trying to blow the slide OPEN, and trying to keep the slide CLOSED. The downside to this system is it can get fairly hot just above your trigger finger, and it doesn't allow you to use either lead bullets or bullets with any sort of heavy lube on them, since any residue that ends up getting into the under-barrel piston lessens the "delayed blowback" action, and the pistol will try to slam itself to death.