I do love a nice Sig...seems like an incredibly robust offering. Have fired a few and none were short of impressive

 

Another consideration for a carry gun: it may be desirable to have a picatinny rail to add a compact flashlight + laser.

I have one of this on my p226 Navy:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07PFFVQB7/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

No, I am saying that it is the same amount reliable within the context of concealed carry and reasonable practice.

And it has nothing to do with the 1911 being a 1911! (You know US Marine Special Operations uses a 1911, right? The Colt M45A1?)

The standard NATO pistol round is 9mm. Almost every 1911 in government inventory was made before 1945 and, basically, worn out, save for some few examples that never got into the hands of the troops.

Yet another 9mm using the standard NATO pistol round. Again, has nothing to do with a 1911 being a 1911, and no one who makes a 1911 even submitted a 9mm 1911 because it doesn't meet the requirements.

Bullshit!! I just told you that a (new) military 1911 will shoot inside a 3" circle at 25 yards. I dare you to hold any centerfire pistol significantly inside a circle that size. If you can, I'll buy you whatever gun you want. Don't make things up because it fits your narrative.

Not a mil-spec pistol and what magazine did you use? I bet it had those nonsense "hybrid feed lips" that no one needs in a defensive gun ever. Plus what was your ammunition? Quality commercial, cheap reload, what? That makes a difference too.

Damned right it is. It's a genuine Colt Model of 1911 from October of 1917 with new Colt springs and no extra BS it doesn't need. I use Checkmate magazines with GI feed lips. These are the same magazines the military used. They work.

Skippy for you. I do not care. That doesn't invalidate my position, one of them being that you do not know the 1911 well enough to give any decent advice.

I clean my 1911 at the end of each range session. You should see how dirty they get after 300 to 400 rounds... with zero malfunction.

Look, I get it, you have pistols you are happy with. You want to promote them. Don't put down a platform that works when you don't screw with it, thinking you're smarter than John Browning or the engineers at Colt.

You're making yourself sound like someone who has to validate his choices by pooping on someone else's, and I don't think that's the kind of person you want to be. You had a bad experience, and I can see why. I have had good experiences, unless the gun wasn't to spec or the magazine wasn't. Once you correct someone else's fault, surprise, the darn thing goes bang every time and if your eyes don't suck because you're getting old, you can shoot them quite accurately.

You don't want to carry a 1911 in favor of some other pistol, that's fine. No one is making you. But don't shit on people who do.

 

@SkunkPrince @valkyrie_rider

Didn't mean to open a can here.

Please know that I do appreciate both inputs. I didn't find myself as aggravated by valkyrie's response as the skunk might. Still, I do have the discipline and resources to maintain and effectively deploy the 1911. My other guy choice, as much as I don't really care to shoot it, is the 357 mag revolver. Really, a reasonable person should expect that they can gain full competency and effectiveness with any piece if they commit the time to it.

Thus us the plan.

Also, I have a buddy that will set up a bit of a field lab and load up custom loads for me. Then when we dial in what works best, I can order up a batch from him for a case of beer and help on whatever project he's working on

 

That might cause you issues in the long run. Some people claim that anything other than box stock off the shelf anything, especially ammunition, will be used against you when the family sues.

Assumes a lot, of course.

And someone forgot I just bought a S&W M&P Shield EZ 9.

 

That's a good point and worth investigating.

Really is a shame the litigious world we live in. Frankly, I would tell my defense attorney to just go ahead and tell them that I was trained and qualified to shoot-to-kill and that the ammunition origin was irrelevant to such a purpose.

But scary thing is, all they have to do is pick 12 people that don't know anything about guns to sit in a box for a few days to screw you. Can they really be called your peers? I digress...

Thank you for mentioning this. I hadn't thought of it to be honest. No shame in admitting it.

 

During military trials the 1910 prototype of the 1911 Colt fired 6,000 rounds in two days without a single malfunction. No cleaning was done though at times the pistol was fired so rapidly that it had to be dunked in a pail of water to cool off enough to be handled.
Only reported malfunctions of military issue 1911 pistols I've run across involved some worn out WW1 pistols hurried rebuilt before WW2.

in modern times over loaded .45 ACP ammo has occasionally blown out near the base due to the undercut at the rear of the chamber.

Original .45 ACP mil spec ammunition casings had a rolled in shelf under the bullet base that prevented short stroked bullets from being pushed back into the case, a common cause of extreme high pressures that has caused even Soviet SKS rifles to blow up when non milspec ammunition has been used. The same situation has caused blow ups of 9mm Browning P-35 pistols. The older UMC 9mm Luger cases also had this shelf rolled into the cases, with no such problems with any 9mm handgun. I may have one of those 9mm Luger rounds in my collection.

Other than the occasional stepped on magazine the only cause of malfunction in a 1911 in reasonably good condition would likely be caused by non standard or damaged ammunition .

 

@SkunkPrince you are taking my criticism to the 1911 personally, that is not the intention.

If your centenary 1911 works fine, that is great!


Answering the question: I use either Federal 230gr for target practice or CCI Blazer (brass). Non fancy but supposedly good quality ammo. The same ammo that works fine on my HK USP Expert and my Sig Sauer p220 Equinox, but fails on the Springfield 1911 unless the gun is squeaky clean and freshly lubbed.

I don't think the issue is the ammo here. My bad experience with the Springfield 1911 ruined my view on 1911s in general.

Moving next, I personally don't think any single gunsmith produced more innovations than John Moses Browning, it is my understanding that a huge majority modern guns built upon his original inventions.

And that is the key: we had generations of gunsmiths working on top of Browning's ideas and evolving the designs and improving the basic ideas. Plus, a lot of improvements in manufacturing and metallurgy will naturally produce better guns in general.

Finally, there is no perfect gun in *my view*.

Sigs are too expensive. Glocks have bad triggers and cheap stock sights. HKs are overpriced Glocks over-hyped by Hollywood movies with gritty stock triggers (and hkpro folks will insist that is 'because is a tactical gun'). S&W plastic guns are a copycat of others designs and their *new* revolvers are commonly faulty (and I'm including 'Performance Center' here). Rugers revolvers are ugly but at least overbuilt.

I see guns as tools and I would trade up my guns for anything that comes up that works better for my application (i.e. always go bang! and being low maintenance without costing an arm and leg).

Those are my 2cs and they are worthy exactly that.

 

I suspect incorrect magazines have done more to turn people off of the 1911 than anything. In other pistol designs, all the magazine does is hold ammunition. In the 1911, it is actually part of the feed system. If you use a magazine other than what Browning designed, you have issues.

In addition, people have consistently decided that Browning was wrong about his springs so they use extra power this and that and disturb the timing of the gun.

If you use Browning’s magazines and springs, suddenly all problems go away.

The only true improvement has been in heat treatment of the steel and in steel formulas. If you otherwise stay with the original specifications you get the same pistol the Army adopted, one of the best defensive weapons of all time.

 

Let me get in on this 1911 action, I own four. Up first is a M1911 produced in 1915 and brought back from WWII by my great grandad. The finish was shot (from being stored in its flap holster for twenty-five years) by the time my dad inherited it when he was fourteen or fifteen so he did the logical thing a kid in 1970 would do, he sandblasted it and had it nickel plated. This gun has had thousands of rounds put through it and is incredibly reliable, in fact the only time I can recall it having a failure was once when I forgot to resize the brass when I was reloading back in high school. Next up is my 1968 Gold Cup National Match. Now it hasn't had nearly as many rounds put through it as the old war horse but it runs flawlessly and will produce sub 2" groups at 25 yds. Third up is my winter time EDC a 1989 Delta Elite. This one again runs perfectly and produces good groups, not as good as the GCNM it's more like 3" at 25 yds but still respectable. This one I've only seriously started shooting in the past eighteen months because I didn't have reloading dies for it until then and 10mm can be kinda pricey. Lastly is my little summer time EDC a 2012 New Agent in 9mm. Now this one is again reliable but it is not accurate. With the "trench sights," really just an abysmal trough cut in the top of the slide, you'd be lucky to hit the target at 25 yds. It is a good little gun and gives me good service but is strictly a point shoot kinda pistol. Like I said all of my 1911 give me good service and none of them fail when I shoot. Either I am the luckiest sob on the planet or I am maintaining them correctly. First off I only use Colt or Wilson Combat mags in any of them. Secondly I keep up on my springs, I try to replace all the springs every fifteen hundred to two thousand rounds, I only use Wolff springs and have gotten good use out of them. The only other thing I do is to clean them when I am done shooting them. I have done a little bit of work to all of them, mostly trigger work, but haven't done anything drastic to any of them. I am always confused when people tell me that my 1911s are unreliable and will jam on me. I've been shooting the old one for over thirty years now without any failures coming from the gun, only from my bad reloads. The others I have been shooting for different amounts of time and again they all give me good service and don't jam.

 

If there was a "love" button on here...

Thank you for sharing! The inherited piece at the top hits me in the feels.

 

The current nonsense in fashion is the small radius firing pin stop. Colt and Browning changed this part because the gun was near impossible to pull the slide back. What the dipsticks don’t realize is that they changed other things like springs to compensate.

When the 1911 has its as designed parts and springs you can almost see the slide working, it cycles so slowly. It also cycles flawlessly. When it doesn’t, the dipsticks blame “limp wristing”, ignoring that works just fine no matter how loosely it’s held, when it’s correct.

The “gun community” have only themselves to blame for the nonsense that abounds with this pistol.

 

Hi Power
Since I am using the hi power for carry.
I installed a set of carry G10 grips on the pistol. Grey/black in color gives the pistol another look on the plus side I can preserve the original grips I will not have to be careful with the original wood grips when I carry the hi power. The original red back grips are going up in price more than I am willing to spend on red back grips

 

Here's a Guncrafter Industries Model 4 in .50 GI caliber. Pricing not for the faint of heart. Case is about the same length as a 45acp but is .50 caliber.

 

Those grey G10 stocks look awesome on the hi-power Voere! The checkering almost looks like fish scales as it follows the curve along the front. I always wanted a hi-power and a few years back I picked up a nice little FEG PJK but it never quite made the impression on me I had hoped. My middle son now carries it and he thinks it's great.

 

Holy buckets, we usually just posting pictures of guns and a sentence or two. These long dissertations are great, but a few sentences and pic of gat is the real deal.

gat and pic

Glock 17 Gen2 in a nice leather holster.

 

Regarding capacity, I hold to the view that there are a lot of shooters out there who are greatly afraid of the reload.

I have high-capacity pistols. I still choose the 1911 over other automatics. There's always another seven round magazine available.

 

Personally, I think that if I need more than X number of rounds, I'm screwed, regardless!

Seriously, too many people with a concealed carry license, whatever your state calls it, thinks that gives them license to be aggressive. Quite the opposite. It gives you a plausible ability to defend yourself should you be stuck in a situation you were prevented from getting out of.

And even then, chances are perhaps not high. Would you believe I carry a switchblade (legal in Wisconsin) more often than I do a pistol?

 

I have had a carry permit for almost 20 years, about how long carry has been "must issue" in MN. I very seldom carry as i don't go to bad places, although there are many, as the news shows. Still, it's a right I won't give up and I will always have the ability to defend myself.

 

Always carry the pistola, but my two feet will run my ass away before I get in spot to pull it out.