The 1911 Doesn't Suck.

But neither is it the uniquely inspired gift of God.

In this morning's blog-crawling, I was directed by Robb to this anti-1911 screed titled, appropriately, "The 1911 Sucks." The writer says, in part,

It’s a 100-year old design. It needs tools to disassemble. It has unreliable magazines. It is finicky about ammo. And, as a single-action pistol, it is unsafe for 95% of its users to carry.
...
Why does a reliable 1911 cost so much, and need so much gunsmithing?

Since this is my blog, here I go with my retort. It's an excellent 100-year-old design. The tool thing is true, but so what? If your magazines are unreliable, you should get better ones because mine work fine. I don't get the unsafe-to-carry thing at all.

But the last question is absolutely spot on. Why, indeed?

When I was young, there were 1911 detractors. We chipped them out of stone back then, but they did exist. Their two main complaints were thus: The 1911 is laughably inaccurate, and its recoil is unmanageable. Seriously. Stop laughing. The first statement may have had some basis in truth, since there were a great many surplus pistols out there and some of them had been shot to death, but I think any claims about inherent inaccuracy have pretty much been put to bed. As to the recoil thing - get serious. People must have been wimpier back then, because these days recoil from a full-size 1911 is considered quite moderate. These days before you're even allowed to complain about recoil, you pretty much have to rechamber an NAA mini-revolver for .44 mag.

But along about the time I started shooting centerfire pistols, conventional wisdom held that an unaltered 1911 was, in fact, inherently inaccurate. The path to accuracy, it was preached, was to tighten up the whole action. Some others argued that this was a terrible mistake - the pistol isn't made for bullseye shooting, it's made for blasting large, bloody holes in people at dangerously close range. They argued that tightening the action might improve accuracy, but it was bound to do horrible things to the one essential thing a defensive pistol must do, which is reliably go bang.

The first group got its way. History has vindicated the warnings of the second group.

My first 1911 was an appalling frankenpistol build on an ancient Remington frame. God, I wish I still had it. Accurate? Not in the least. That pistol never jammed, never failed to fire for any reason but an empty magazine. Picky about ammo? It would feed empty cases as reliably as hardball. I know this because I did a lot of holster drills with primer-only loads and wax bullets. I did a lot of handloading back then, because I did a lot of shooting. Hollow points? Pick a style - no problem.

When I got into IPSC shooting, I threw the FrankenRemmy in on a complex trade to acquire my first Gold Cup. In a lifetime of idiotic gun trades, that's the one I regret most bitterly. Oh, the GC was more accurate - very much so. I once won a bet at a Hunter Pistol Silhouette match with a guy who was bad-mouthing the 1911. I bet him I could beat his score at our next match, me with a 1911 and him with his target-grade single-shot .44. (granted that I was a much better shot at the time, routinely trouncing him with my TC Contender, and that I expected to get skunked on the Rams.) Reliable, it was not. It would not feed any form of hollowpoint ever, was very sensitive to lubrication, picky about magazines, and just generally not a good carry piece.

I gather they've gone downhill since then. When I got back into shooting after a lengthy and disastrous marriage ("Oh, no, I don't mind guns!") I bought my current 4-inch SA and had nothing but trouble with it at first. After my third or fourth trip to a gunsmith I bewailed my fate aloud, and the smith rather dismissively told me I could never expect a 1911 to work reliably out of the box - they all, every one of them, needed to be ported and polished, hung with gingerbread and gimcrackery, and perhaps - perhaps! - then with the proper sacrifices to the proper gods you could get reliability out of one, for that was the way decreed by the Great Prophet Browning. Which is ... such ... BULLSHIT! ... that I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

So like I said, the writer's last question is perfectly valid. And I know the answer. A reliable 1911 costs a lot of money and needs a lot of gunsmithing because they typically come from the factory unreliable. And they're unreliable because the current fashion in 1911s misses the whole point of the pistol's original design. Which is NOT bullseye accuracy.

Still, like the man said, it's a 100-year-old design and time has not stood still. Are there better pistols out there? Yes, there are - and I say that as a guy who carries a 1911. I use a 1911 because I always have, and that is really the only reason. If I were starting out now I'd probably have a Glock. Frankly, most new 1911s really do suck. But the original 1911 did NOT suck. It needed better sights, but all pistols did back then. That business with the hammer biting chunks out of the web of your hand - okay, that wasn't great design but a minor modification of the grip safety fixed that a long time ago. It was a good pistol and it would still be a good pistol if later, lesser designers hadn't screwed it up to the point where now you have to spend hundreds on gunsmiths to unscrew it. There is absolutely no excuse for that, and anybody who shrugs and tells you to suck it up because that's just the way 1911s are, is selling something you shouldn't buy.

But even if it hadn't been screwed up, it still would have been superseded by later, better designs. JMB was good, but he wasn't a god.