Your hand closes firmly around the slim grip-frame of the pistol, and as you slide the weapon smoothly from the holster, your thumb closes naturally down until you feel the snick of the safety snapping into the "fire" position. The pistol seems to point itself at the target, and your finger finds the trigger at just the right spot, pressing rearward.

You feel the clean, crisp release through your trigger finger, and the familiar, soft bump of the recoil through the palm of your hand. Downrange, a reaction target is slammed over by the heavy bullet you have launched, and the pistol has already cycled itself, its sights coming almost automatically back on target as you let the trigger come forward a tiny bit until you feel the click of its reset, your cue to begin a second pull.

You're firing a 1911, a Government Model, the classic ".45 automatic." You are also experiencing the quintessence of man meeting machine, the functionality of a tool intended to work as an extension of your hand. And you are steeping yourself in U.S. history, in Americana, in the lore of America's longest serving military-issue pistol.

In continuous production for 96 years, the 1911 is a monument to firearms design, a classic of a magnitude that extends beyond the world of the gun. Show its silhouette to a non-gun person who has only seen pistols on TV and they'll identify it as "a .45 automatic." Within the world of the gun, the 1911 has become iconic.No other handgun has become so ubiquitous, so essential, so de rigueur that gun manufacturers with absolutely no connection or association with the 1911 have begun to produce them as a necessity. Foreign makers are on board: from Canada, Brazil, Germany, Spain, the Philippines, China. Even Colt's historical arch rival, Smith & Wesson, is on the bandwagon with its competitor's eponymous .45 Automatic Colt Pistol (ACP).

For some, this pistol literally takes on religious overtones. John Browning's most popular design remains like a piece of the true cross. Devout followers take note that Browning's middle name was not Moses for nothing; some joke, but perhaps a bit too seriously, that wrist bands should be worn proclaiming: WWJMBD. What Would John Moses Browning Do? There are those who feel that phasing out the 1911 .45 and replacing it with the Beretta 9mm in the American military was a greater act of treason than anything committed by Benedict Arnold.

War Horse Or Old Nag?
Yet, in a time when modern technology has pervaded handgun design more thoroughly than any other type of firearm, there are also those who would cheerfully relegate the 1911 pistol to the museum. They point out Ken Hackathorn's famous remark that the king of combat pistols is also the king of feedway stoppages, and that stock Glocks are routinely claiming competition victories in box-stock classes.

Praised and cursed for the 96 years of its existence, the Model Of 1911 has created twin cottage industries of customizing gunsmiths and of all manner of accessorizing manufacturers. Brownell's famous catalog for gunsmiths has more pages of accessories and tools for 1911s than any other handgun, by a factor of 20 to one.

There are some who prefer the 1911 out of tradition and sentiment, however, there are also those who cleave to it solely because they can find nothing better. For the latter, the proof is in the performance. At Camp Perry, the rifle ranges are now dominated by AR15s, but before that it was the M14 that ruled and before that, the M1 Garand and before that, the military '03-A3 Springfield, all within the past century. Yet at the pistol ranges of Perry, National Championship for National Championship, it is the 1911 .45 ACP that wins the .45 event every year, and usually the centerfire event, and sometimes even the .22 event. It has been more than 50 years since a National Pistol Champion in the bullseye game has won the title without firing at least one 1911 in the course of the 270 precise shots that determine the overall winner.

Look to IPSC. There will be Glocks winning Production class and occasionally, a CZ75 or clone thereof in the open winner's circle, but most years, Limited and Limited Ten and Open will be captured with one or another high-tech 1911 derivative. And, on the harder side, look to those at the razor tip of what British SAS always called "the sharp end of the stick." Close to a quarter century after the Beretta M9 was standardized all-service-wide, the elite Marines of MEU-SOC are issued 1911s.

The 1911, almost always in .45 ACP, is likewise still present in law enforcement circles, and indeed is undergoing a resurgence there. LAPD's role-model SWAT team has carried the 1911 as its standard sidearm for going on 40 years, and today each operator carries a pair of Kimber .45s, one with and one without a dedicated SureFire WeaponLight attached. By the 1990s, FBI's SWAT teams and its elite Hostage Rescue Unit had gone to the Government Model .45 as well, acquiring both Para-Ordnance and Springfield Armory pistols with various purchase orders. A number of police departments in recent years have determined that "what's old is new," and authorized or even bought and issued one or another variation of 1911 service pistol.

It's The Ergonomics
Before ergonomics was a word, John M. Browning understood it. The 11° angle of barrel to grip on his Model Of 1911 design is well nigh perfect for the human wrist and hand. For most people—not all, but most—it is possible to close their eyes, raise the pistol by feel and point it blindly at a predetermined spot, then open their eyes and find the sights dead on. In some hands, a revolver may point better. In some hands, the steeper grip-to-barrel angle of the Glock or the ancient Luger. But, for many, that sweet spot of "natural pointability" comes best from a Government Model .45.

With its original single-stack magazine—still the most popular version, by far—the grip of the 1911 is slim enough to accommodate even very small hands, yet not so big that Brobdingagian paws will dig fingernails into heel of palm when the fingers take their hold. Many doughboys returning from World War I found the trigger reach of the original 1911 to be too long. At that time, demographics indicated that the average American male was distinctly more "vertically challenged" than today, and would have had proportionally shorter fingers. The 1911A1 modifications of the 1920s included a shorter trigger, and niching out the frame on either side of the trigger guard to make it that much easier for the index finger to reach. As time went on, shooters and pistolsmiths and, later, gun manufacturers went back to long triggers. However, the 1911A1 trigger dimensions turn out to be perfect for very short fingers, using the pad or tip of the index finger as contact point, and work very well for average male fingers of today if the trigger is contacted at the palmar surface of the distal joint, the spot that double action revolver shooters wisely call "the power crease."

Triggernometry
Except on an egregiously bad example, the 1911 has a consistent trigger pull shot-to-shot. The faster the shooting gets, the more important this becomes, and in every task the big Colt self-loader has been selected for (and especially, the very serious task it was designed for), there will be times when this is its most critical attribute. The 1911 has a low bore axis, which maximizes the hand's leverage over the gun and therefore minimizes muzzle jump. It has a very fast trigger reset, something serious shooters always appreciate. And, with proper selection, setup, care and feeding, the Government Model lives up to the reputation for reliability that it earned in two world wars.

But what of the dependability of Old Slab Sides? Is the Government Model as reliable as Old Faithful? Or is the military-issue sidearm a tribute to its namesake and "good enough" for Gov'ment work? Vintage Colt advertising refers to, "The legendarily reliable 1911!" while the legendary trainer and gun guru Ken Hackathorn bestows a different crown, "The king of feedway stoppages!" For two such contradictory sentiments to exist, doesn't someone have to be wrong? Well, no. The simple fact is, there are good and bad 1911s among the millions that have been produced to live up to both the blessing and the curse.

John Browning configured his masterpiece with a 17 lb. recoil spring on a short guide, and with a short ejector and generous tolerances between the moving parts to allow for dirty gunfire residue and the muck of the battlefield. He intended it to feed a roundnose, full metal jacket 230 grain bullet in the 850 fps velocity range, with a certain overall cartridge length. That gun, with that ammunition, functioned almost flawlessly when kept even halfway cleaned and lubricated. History confirms it. Browning had to have assumed that a soldier fighting for his life with it would hold it in a death grip, hand and arm locked against the recoil so that the frame would be a firm abutment for the slide to work against.

Then, shooters and gunsmiths decided they knew more about the pistol than its designer. They tightened all the tolerances to produce pinpoint accuracy. They put in much heavier recoil springs, on full-length guide rods, and barrel bushings so tight they had to be removed with special wrenches. They extended the ejector's length. And then they loaded the gun with short cartridges that had button-nosed target semi-wadcutter configurations, or the sharp shoulders of a semi-wadcutter. Some shooters and instructors decided to hold it like a quail, just firmly enough that it doesn't fly away, but not hard enough to hurt it. The byword became, "Don't fight the kick, just let it recoil." Everything had changed. A feedway angle acceptable with ball was too steep for short, wide-nose cartridges. The ration of spring compression to slide mass had changed. Friction had increased. The solid abutment of the frame was no longer there for the slide to move against, instead moving along with the slide because it was held too lightly, and sucking away momentum the slide needed to operate properly. And, in the manner of humans everywhere, shooters blamed the gun. There is no reason with today's superb CAD-operated machinery that pistols cannot be built to more uniform tolerances than ever.

Care And Feeding
The magazine is the heart of the beast in terms of reliability, and once you get past a payload of "seven rounds of hardball," you want to be looking at the very best aftermarket products. The usual rule for handguns is, "Only trust magazines that come from the manufacturer with the gun," but the single exception seems to be the 1911. The reason is that this pistol alone is so popular that high-tech magazines have become part of the cottage industry that grew up around it, and outstripped the gun factories themselves. Colt, McCormick, Metalform, Wilson-Rogers and Wolff are among the companies that have produced 1911 magazines I trust. I prefer Wolff springs in my Para-Ordnance hi-cap magazines. That said, though, the older I get, the more I find myself using Wilson-Rogers magazines exclusively in my 10mm and .45 ACP 1911 pistols. As a firearms instructor, when I see those stopped 1911s in students' hands, I often am able to cure their problem simply by handing them three of my Wilson-Rogers magazines.

Government Models want to be kept lubricated. Only the tightest of target pistols need to be oiled like a salad. Some lube on the rails, on the barrel hood, and in a ring around the barrel where it will contact the bushing should suffice. Oh, and be sure you have stocks like Browning designed that come up and hold the plunger housing in place on the left side of the pistol. On a defensive handgun, keep the trigger weight at a minimum of 4 lbs., and never deactivate a safety device. If you can't compress the grip safety, get a replacement part with raised bottom edge that will activate when the hand makes contact.

Shooting Is Believing
The old canards of "washtub accuracy" and "bone-wrenching recoil" came from decades of ancient, benighted military training. Men were taught to stand upright, their shoulders back, and fire with one arm fully extended. Naturally, the pistols jumped. Even after the reshaped hammers and grip safeties of the 1911A1 modification, the grip tang still bit most hands. A high-hand grasp was not encouraged for this reason, which meant that the hand was often too low, exacerbating recoil and causing the finger to pull the muzzle down as the shot broke. No ear protection worthy of the name was issued on the firing lines in those days, so men were subconsciously conditioned to cringe in the instant before the ear-splitting blast, flinching their shots even harder.

If the Marksmanship Training Units of today's American armed services could go back in time machines to the year 1911, and show their predecessors what they know today, none of that would have happened. By 1912, the 1911 would have had a beavertail grip safety that would prevent hand bite. Combatants would learn to lean into their guns, using firm grip and body mechanics to snap the gun back on target virtually the instant the slide returned to battery. The 1911 pistol wants to be grasped high on its backstrap. By 1990, even Colt had learned that niching out the bottom of the trigger guard where it met the frame would raise the middle finger's position, allowing an even stronger grasp on the gun.

The beavertail grip safety is essential to doing your best shooting, because it prevents flinch- and jerk-producing "hammer bite," and because when it is properly recurved at the rear of the tang, it helps to guide the drawing hand more swiftly and positively into its grasping position on the holstered gun. If you will, a brief digression to serve the explanation. For generations, pistol marksmanship manuals have suggested that the pistol be grasped in the support hand around frame and slide, its muzzle up at about a 45° angle, and then placed carefully in the firing hand. This comes from bullseye shooting, and I am largely convinced, also comes from the 1911 pistol in the days before the beavertail. Anchoring the web of the hand at the inside curve of the grip safety and then pivoting the gun down into firing grasp pulls the web of the hand and the skin behind it down taut against the rear of the grip safety. This pulls the skin down tight and away from the sharp back edge of the grip safety's tang, and minimizes the chance of "bite." It becomes unnecessary when the protective beavertail is in place, which is why all but the cheapest 1911s of today—or those built with nostalgia rather than shooting in mind—come with anything else.

The 1911 also wants to be firmly held. This is important with any gun powerful enough to generate significant recoil, which certainly applies to the .45 ACP. However, it is also important with the lesser calibers. Ray Chapman, the man Jeff Cooper called The Maestro, shot his way to fame with the Colt Government Model .45 auto, and noted that pistols always seem to work best in the caliber for which they were designed. Government Models in calibers less powerful than 10mm and .45 ACP are notoriously finicky about feeding and going into battery. The more firmly the .38 Super or 9mm chambering is held, the less it seems to malfunction. Balancing the recoil and mainsprings also is important with these more diminutive cartridges.

Optimum 1911 Grip
Trigger finger placement in firing will depend on pull weight, trigger face configuration, and perhaps more than anything else, the length and shape and range of movement of your index finger. Tip, pad (generally defined as the whorl of the fingerprint), and distal joint placement all have their advocates. Try before you decide. It's what works for you that is important, not what's recommended by someone who won't be there to press the trigger for you when you need to fire. Thumb placement is a major debate among 1911 aficionados. Tradition has the thumb straight to the target, and it's what you see most often in one-handed bullseye shooting at championship level. This allows the index finger to come back just the least bit straighter, important in a game with 2700 points possible in which no one has ever actually scored a 2700. Some recommend the thumb to ride on the safety, but bear in mind that fleshy thumbs or gloves can cause the slide to bind, a friction-induced stoppage, and the high thumb also pulls the web of the hand away from the grip safety. This is why the leading advocate of the high thumb position always recommended deactivating the grip safety. If you prefer the high thumb, a grip safety with a protruding hump is a must. My old friend Wayne Novak came out not long ago with a replacement backstrap that has the beavertail feature for comfort and fast grasp, but eliminates the grip safety. I think it's great for shooting, but not a cure for the civil liability aspect of having a safety device removed from a lethal weapon.

The curled down thumb position with the firing hand creates the strongest possible one-hand grasp, and virtually guarantees activating even a mil-spec grip safety. However, some shooters find the firing hand thumb in the down position gets in the way of the drumstick of the thumb of their support hand finding its most comfortable position against the grip panel. Each shooter has to find his or her own preferred technique.

One thing on which virtually all experienced 1911 shooters agree is that cocked and locked with a round in the chamber is the fastest, most positive, and safest way to carry such a gun. Jacking the slide is a stunt when done one-handed, and one often has only one hand with which to react, draw, and fire in an emergency. The 1911's hammer is too far back to allow fumble-free cocking with the firing hand's thumb, and is a nightmare to de-cock without a dedicated de-cocking mechanism, which of course does not exist on Mr. Browning's timeless pistol. The self-decocking Para-Ordnance LDA is a sensible option for those uncomfortable with the concept, or the appearance of cocked and locked.

Cocked and locked carry with a torpedo in the launch tube pretty much mandates either an internal, passive firing pin safety or a lightweight titanium firing pin coupled with a heavy duty firing pin spring, to make the pistol "drop-safe." Springfield Armory and Wilson Combat, in their "drop-test compliant" variations, have taken the latter approach. The trigger-activated Series 80 safety is found in all Colt 1911s made today except the "nostalgia" models, all pistols manufactured by Para-Ordnance, and in the SIG 1911. The Swarz concept that works off the grip safety, and is more economically feasible to manufacture with today's computerized manufacturing options, was resurrected by Nehemiah Sirkis for the Kimber II series, and a similar design is found in the SW1911 and the Taurus PT1911.

Future Shock
When I was young, the greatest semi-automatic pistol ever made was not referred to as "the 1911" but was known as "the Colt .45 automatic." Colt was the only game in town. Yeah, another armory or two had been called upon to build them for World War I, and more than that for World War II, but unless you got something that was military surplus, if you wanted to buy a new.45 auto, you bought a Colt. Period.

Things are different now. Long before they made a movie called Sleepless in Seattle, Colt was Clueless in Connecticut. It was expedience that drove the government to pressure Colt to license the design to other makers in time of national emergency. However, we cannot overlook the fact that in World War II, Remington-Rand produced more than 1 million 1911A1s while Colt itself manufactured fewer than half a million, and Ithaca produced only about 110,000 fewer guns than Colt.

History has repeated itself. A host of manufacturers—primarily Springfield Armory and Kimber—have been selling far more 1911s than Colt. Kimber has for some years led the 1911 sales parade, as documented by annual production numbers submitted to ATF, although Springfield Armory has closed the gap with their more affordable mil-spec models, and newcomer Taurus is coming up fast from the back of the pack with a high-featured, low-priced contestant. ATF figures tell the tale, though foggily, since their production numbers are not broken down by model or even particular caliber within caliber categories. In the last year for which the Bureau has records, 2005, Kimber produced 47,820 pistols, almost all of them 1911s. Springfield produced 126,188. Springfield Armory believes it has surpassed Kimber as the leading vendor of 1911s today. Colt, by contrast, produced only a little over 14,000, virtually all in 1911 format, and a little less than 2,000 of their little .380s, which are 1911-ish if not true 1911s.

The future tells us that the 1911 will continue to be popular. Gun dealers have different best-sellers in different parts of the country and even in different neighborhoods, but most I talk to put "the 1911" in their top five list of best-sellers. Taken in sum, the spectrum of handguns we generically call the 1911 has become more popular, and perhaps more appreciated, than ever. It will be with us well past its centennial year. There is no firearm in our military—indeed, in any army in the world—that has stayed in service longer. It is entirely possible that a modernized variation of this .45 caliber pistol may return as general issue to our military by the year 2011. The 1911 pistol still wins matches and wins fights and provokes controversy. It is, deservedly, the greatest.

History of the 1911

The history of the 1911 pistol goes back to well before that eponymous year, as surely as it continues today.

Let's look at some landmarks in its development:

1896: Seeing the future, Colt's Patent Firearms signs John Browning to a contract to do developmental work on automatic pistols for them. "Semi-automatic" will not become the common parlance for such automatically-loading designs until later.

1899: The first Browning-designed autoloaders take form in steel, chambered for a proprietary .38 caliber round.

1902: Colt .38 automatics, in both sporting and military trim, appear on the market. Despite smooth actions and excellent workmanship, they are rickety things that resemble T-squares with triggers.

1903: Initial concept work begins on the cartridge that will be known as the .45 Automatic Colt Pistol. This same year, Colt introduces their famous Pocket Model .32 auto.

1904: The .45 Automatic Colt Pistol cartridge is born.

1905: The U.S. Army has become insistent on a .45 caliber handgun in the wake of the Philippine Insurrection, and is somewhat open to the newfangled autoloading pistol concept, that despite the annoying fact that all the pistols they had tested in the previous five years (including early Colt .38s) have failed to prove totally adequate. Colt quietly begins production of their first .45 automatic, though the Model Of 1905 will not hit the market until early 1906. Like all its predecessors but the Pocket Model, it retains a nearly 90° grip to barrel angle. It will not please the Army for a number of reasons.

1907: An Ordnance test determines that no currently produced automatic pistol is satisfactory for U.S. military needs, but that Colt comes closest.

1908: A grip safety is developed for Colt's .45 pistol, still a work in progress.

1909: Colt's classic is now beginning to take shape. It is the first Colt to get the push button magazine release, located behind the trigger guard on the left. Its slide lock lever is a rather crude picture of what the 1911's will be. The ugly square front of the earlier guns has given way to a shorter dust cover portion of the frame, and the gracefully narrowed lower front of the slide, seen in the 1903 Pocket .32 (and the identical-in-appearance 1908 Pocket .380), as adopted on this iteration of Colt's .45 auto.

1910: The shape of John Browning's masterpiece is almost complete, but the 1910 variation lacks a thumb safety. This will be added at the insistence of the Army, which has determined it unsafe to attempt to manually decock a chamber-loaded auto pistol in the heat of battle, one-handed.

1911: The vision is complete. With long trigger and short grip tang, by today's standards, the 1911 has a safety readily accessible to a right thumb, and a flat-back mainspring housing. In the climax of a long series of military handgun tests, the Colt trounces the only other remaining finalist, the Savage. In March of 1911, the United States government officially adopts Colt's Government Model pistol, Model Of 1911, as the standard sidearm of the Army, Marine Corps, and Navy. It will remain so until the mid-1980s.

1912: For the first of many, many times in its long history, production of the 1911 pistol is outsourced from Colt. In addition to Colt's own production, the pistol is now being manufactured at the Springfield Armory in Springfield, Mass. This same year, the National Rifle Association offers its members NRA-marked 1911s acquired from the Ordnance Department.

1914: Norway adopts the 1911 Colt .45 ACP as its standard military sidearm. It is granted the right to produce the guns there, the following year.

1916: Argentina adopts the 1911 as its standard service pistol, and will soon be licensed to produce them there. Mexico will adopt the 1911 shortly after World War I.

1917: With America's entry into The European War, demand so far outstrips production that Remington becomes another licensed 1911 manufacturer, and both Colt (on their separate revolver line) and Smith & Wesson mass produce revolvers that will fire the .45 ACP cartridge with half-moon clips.

1923: A post-war study of small arms effectiveness determines that the 1911 needs a longer, more protective grip tang to prevent hammer bite; an arched magazine housing to cure a tendency to shoot low; more visible sights; and a shorter, more easily reached trigger. These modifications combine to form the Model 1911A1, a designation that does not become official until three years later.

1929: The Colt .38 Super makes its official debut, in a Government Model format identical to the .45. It fires a 130 grain bullet at 1,300 feet per second. Ostensibly, the reason for the new cartridge was to penetrate the body armor worn by gangsters of the era.

1931: Colt attempts to market a blowback 1911 in .22 Long Rifle. Called the Ace model, it will prove unreliable.

1932: The National Match version is introduced. Produced in .45 ACP and .38 Super, this handcrafted beauty will be declared by many purists to be the finest Colt automatic ever manufactured.

1935: Marsh "Carbine" Williams invents a floating chamber device that allows the 1911 to function more reliably with a .22 Long Rifle cartridge. The Colt Service Model Ace .22 pistol and the Colt .22/45 conversion unit are born.

1937: William Swartz's firing pin safety is patented. Colt buys the rights and assembles a quantity of .45s and Supers with it, eventually abandoning the concept as too difficult to machine.

1941: The outbreak of World War II creates a vast demand for 1911A1 pistols. In addition to Colt, they will be manufactured in greater or lesser quantities by such firms as Remington-Rand, Ithaca, and the Singer Sewing Machine Company.

1950: The first shortened (and the first lightened) Colt 1911, the Commander, is introduced. With aluminum alloy frame instead of steel, shortened dust cover, and barrel stubbed from the conventional 5" to 4.25" with a proportionally shorter slide, it is offered in calibers .45 ACP, .38 Super, and 9mm Luger.

1957: The National Match concept is resurrected. The new pistol will be offered primarily in .45 ACP but later, briefly, in .38 Special wadcutter, and will be better known as the Colt Gold Cup.

1970: Colt introduces their Series 70 with collet-type barrel bushing intended to improve accuracy. The collets will prove to be fragile, and this design will soon be abandoned.

1972: The United States Army officially adopts the General Officers' Pistol, a Colt Commander .45 shortened at muzzle and butt for issue to those with stars on their shoulders. A concept created earlier by military armorers, it has already been offered to the public as a custom "Bobcat" .45 by custom gunsmiths.

1973: Louis Seecamp offers a double-action conversion to the Government Model pistol. It will later be incorporated into a short-lived, double-action 1911 pistol, the ODI Viking.

1974: Bob Reese founds a new gun manufacturing firm that after buying the commercial rights to the old government arsenal of Springfield Armory. This firm will be the first to compete seriously with Colt in production of commercial (as opposed to military contract) 1911s, beginning in 1985.

1983: Colt introduces the Series 80 with the first passive, internal firing pin safety since the short-lived Swartz design. It is activated via trigger pull.

1985: The first commercially successful stainless 1911 is introduced by Colt in the '80 series. In the same year, Colt introduces the subcompact Officers ACP, effectively wiping out the mini-1911 market among custom gunsmiths.

1988: ParaOrdnance introduces a wide-body 1911 frame that accepts a double stack magazine, originally designed to hold 13 rounds of .45 ACP. The wide-body, hi-cap platform will soon be copied by several other makers, and Para will begin producing complete 1911 pistols two years later.

1990: Colt introduces its first double-action 1911, the Double Eagle, a design somewhat derivative of the Seecamp concept. It is not greeted with enthusiasm, and will be discontinued in 1997.

1991: Colt introduces its first flat-finish "economy" 1911 for the commercial market, the 1991A1.

1996: Kimber introduces their aptly named Classic, a moderately priced Government Model size pistol with all the usual custom bells and whistles. It will soon become the nation's best selling 1911.

2000: ParaOrdnance introduces the LDA, the first double-action only 1911.

2003: Smith & Wesson introduces their long-awaited version, the SW1911. The SW1911 earns an excellent reputation.

2006: An amazing value at $600 retail, a 1911 from Taurus hits the market.

2007: Springfield Armory announces the first scaled down version of the 1911.

Shooter's Eye View: One Man's Story
By Massad Ayoob

The THE 1911 is a controversial pistol, a "cult gun" if you will. There are other cult guns, and their true believers like to bash competing "ballistic belief systems." When such a topic is under discussion, the reader has a right to know where the speaker is coming from. As a little boy, I was already fascinated with guns in general and handguns in particular. Many if not most of the adults in my life were World War II vets, many survivors of the previous Great War were still alive, and many of the young men were freshly back from Korea. I grew up on stories of the 1911's recoil practically wrenching the shooter's arm off, and its bullet ripping the arm completely off the enemy soldier, not to mention accuracy that might not suffice to hit a washtub at 25 paces. (Yes, we still had washtubs then.)

In the late 1950s, Jeff Cooper began his famous series on the 1911 in Guns & Ammo magazine, and I pored over each segment with far more attention than I paid to my elementary school textbooks. Cooper put forth a promise of 19 one-shot stops out of 20 shots with 230 grain .45 ACP hardball. He explained the controllability of the single-action trigger, the ease of flipping off the safety between holster and target, and the speed of reloading. I already knew that accurized .45s ruled the pistol matches of the time, and Cooper explained how the same platform had come to dominate the simulated gunfighting competitions he had organized in California. The lucid logic of his argument was compelling. It was as if a messiah had risen in the West.

I begged my dad for a Colt .45 automatic. My twelfth Christmas loomed, and that November, my father took me to his favorite firearms emporium, Sprague's Gun Shop. Dad was uncertain that a boy my age could handle the mighty .45. Stan, with a knowing smile, liberated a surplus World War I vintage 1911 from the used pistol shelf, stuffed a few lead bullet round-nose handloads into its magazine, and took us out behind the shop. (You could do that then, too.) Bracing myself for the sprained arm I was sure would follow, I held the heavy Colt at the end of my right arm, and squeezed the trigger carefully, determined not to flinch in front of my father or Mr. Sprague.

I felt a gentle bump, and watched the muzzle come up a little and to the left. I settled the 1911 back on target and kept it downrange as I turned my head and said, "I like it, Dad..."

That Christmas it was under the tree, an early production (1918) surplus Colt Government Model with flat housing, long trigger, short tang, and very worn double diamond grips. It was an ensemble present. My mother had bought me a tanker's chest holster to go with it from the local Army/Navy store, and my Uncle Whitney had purchased a yellow box of Winchester 230 grain hardball (easy to wrap, too).

That afternoon, my dad drove us out in the country to a snowy field where I put 50 rounds of beige-box GI surplus hardball (five bucks a box back then; pricier Winchester would be saved for special occasions) without a hitch. That evening I set about learning to field strip it, and was soon doing so blindfolded.

In my teen years, I experimented with various accessories. New hammer and grip safety to prevent a bitten web of hand. Bigger sights. A re-blue for its tired finish. A trigger job. A new barrel, since corrosive ammo had apparently gotten to this specimen before I did. It never occurred to me that I was ruining the collector value of a war-era Colt. They were dirt-cheap then. My father had bought this one for $37.50.

Life went on. I was a senior in college when I bought my second Colt .45 auto, a pristine 1957 C-series National Match that had been accurized and fitted with BoMar "hardball" sights by the USAF Marksmanship Training Unit for the ex-airman I bought it from for $100 when he got sick of bullseye shooting. For many years, it would be my all-purpose 1911: it went with me in concealed carry and in police uniform, and to bullseye and PPC matches, Second Chance, and Bianchi Cup. In 1979 or so, I used it to tie the national record on bowling pins, 3.9 seconds for five pins, established by young Johnny Robbins and soon tied by Bill Wilson. That record quickly fell to Jerry Miculek and others.

Over the years, I accumulated a lot of 1911s. Some, like the Vega and the Crown City, were unmitigated junk and didn't stay with me long. There were comp guns and wide-bodies, .45 ACP and .45 Super. There were .38 Super, 9mm, .40 S&W, .41 Avenger, .41 Action Express, 10mm Auto, 9x23, .357 SIG, and more. The years gave me the opportunity to own and shoot other fine 1911s besides the defining Colt: Arminex, Les Baer, Ed Brown, Jim Clark, Ithaca, Kimber, Dave Lauck, Remington-Rand, Rock River, Smith & Wesson, Springfield Armory (both Massachusetts and Illinois pedigrees), and Wilson Combat, among others. And the custom guns of the finest master pistolsmiths: Baer, Austin Behlert, Jim Boland, Brown, Bob Chow, Ned Christensen, Jim Clark, Dick Crawford, Al Dinan, Jim Garthwaite, Al Greco, Dick Heinie, Jim Hoag, Lauck, Bill Laughridge, John Lawson, Paul Liebenberg, Ed Masaki, D.R. Middlebrooks, Mark Morris, Wayne Novak, John Nowlin, Frank Pachmayr, Mike Plaxco, Nolan Santy, Armand Swenson, Wilson, and more.

The 1911 remains one of my favorite pistols. I shoot it better than anything else.

I do not have a WWJMBD? tattoo, and I do not consider the 1911 the be-all and end-all of handgun designs. I do recognize it as a mature design that has been intelligently optimized for a number of specific purposes, which performs a remarkably wide range of purposes well. If and when I ever retire and settle on just one personal handgun to carry, I suspect it will be a minimally customized lightweight Commander .45, cocked and locked and ready to do what it has spent a century, from drawing board to battlefield to tournament range, doing amazingly well.