Pistolas

I started this last summer (!), experimenting with Google Docs to write the posts, intending to then cut and paste it into Blogger. And promptly forgot about it. There are a few other relics languishing in my My Google Docs, I'll work on finishing and posting them over the next few weeks, as if anyone cares...

Few weeks ago at the local gun show I learned that "The Marines want the new pistol to be a .45, the Army wants a .45, but the military wants a .40." I guess there's nothing saying a gun store owner (or gun show table holder, in this case) can't be a Gun Store Commando.

Been several posts on the subject of the 1911 lately--Tam, Breda, and Frank James. My own first experience with a 1911 was with a friend's "parts gun", which, as I remember it, had a gap between the slide and frame you could read the newspaper through. Now, that's not possible, and I know it, but that's the way I remember it. Maybe it's the way he was sniveling about how inaccurate it was, until he handed it to me and I proceeded to use the 230grain hardball rounds to scoot that coffee can down the range. At the time I regarded myself as a rifleman--I don't think Clint Smith had yet said "A pistol is what you use to fight your way back to your rifle", but I was familiar with the concept--but shooting Old Slabsides was fun. I had heard all sorts of stories about how punishing the recoil was, but it is simply not true.

Later--years later--I used some TDY money to buy myself a Colt Combat Commander, and discovered the hard way what my friend had--a semi-automatic pistol needs (or did, at the time) to be "broken in." That, and cheap ammo... Well, let's just say you get what you pay for, usually. As Frank James relates in his post linked to above, at the time if you wanted a full-sized semi-auto your choices were pretty much a Colt 1911 and a S&W 9mm, unless you wanted to spend more than a junior SGT E5 had to spend on an import. (I was also calling Uncle Sam's bluff on replacing the 1911; lost that one.)

Oddly--or not, considering my experience--when the M9/Beretta 92 was adopted and fielded while I was at Ft. Ord, the first qualifications were disastrous. The pistols evidently needed breaking in. Too, the Beretta is a big pistol. It may fire a smaller round, but the double stack magazine requires a wider grip. It is also "blockier"--from an ergonomic viewpoint, it is less friendly to the majority of hands. Especially in an MI Battalion, full of officers who, if they had qualified on a pistol at all, it was the 1911, or even one of the myriad .38 Specials the Army was issuing at the time to females and to Counter-Intelligence personnel.

A few years later, I was in Korea deactivating a unit, which turned out to be one of the last to turn in it's 1911s. They had quite a bit of .45 ammo in the bunker, and it's easier to expend it than to turn it in, so... All the SSGs and SFCs got a trip to the range. Qualified "Expert" two or three times over, since we had all that Class V (military designation for ammunition, explosives, and pyrotechnics) to burn. Tried not to laugh at the MPs who were breaking in their new M9s, and bolo-ing miserably... And several years after that, on my last trip to the range before retiring from the Army, I went to that very same range with an M9 that was only a few years old--and just barely qualified. I am usually leery of blaming the gun, or the ammo, but in this case I think I can make my case.

Later, Mrs. Drang picked herself up a Star Firestar in 40S&W. Nice pistol, not quite a 1911... And this one kicks. Not as bad, say, as my 5 3/8" Super Blackhawk, or our his-'n'-her Charter Bulldog .44 Specials, but it's recoil is definitely sharper than the .45. Others have agreed with me about the perceived recoil of the .40 S&W versus the .45 ACP.

Which brings me back to the subject of sidearms. I'm not talking so much about a self-defense pistol for civilian carry, as for military use. You may be aware that the Army was running a competition to find a replacement for the M9/Beretta Model 92. And that the competition was canceled. I'm not going to speculate about the whys of the competition's cancellation, but offer up my thoughts about what would be desirable in a duty sidearm; just my humble opinion. (Stop smirking, you!)

The first thing that needs to be understood is that the vast majority of military personnel who carry a sidearm do so for two primary purposes: Self-defense and as a Symbol of Authority. (A pistol is only rarely used as an offensive weapon; Special Operations personnel have special needs, and a budget that will allow them to purchase a different pistol.) Of the two purposes, self-defense obviously is more dependent on proper design.

Factors to consider in design:

• Ergonomics. Several noteworthy handgun designs today incorporate interchangeable grip backstraps; I would say that, in addition, changeable grip panels, of varying thickness, would also be useful. If your military has a wide variety of sizes of people, and of people's hands, the ability to adjust the standard sidearm to fit the shooter would be golden.
• More Ergonomics: Whether it would be so easy to adjust grip angle, I don't know. As I mentioned, in my opinion (and I am not alone) the Beretta 92/M9 does not have a grip that is ergonomically friendly to most people. Most people seem to believe that the 1911 is about as close to perfection as can be attained for the general populace.
• Even More Ergonomics: Magazine Capacity: This impacts grip size, specifically, thickness. Does a defensive sidearm really need to hold a zillion rounds? A double-stack mag is, perforce, wider, which leads to wider everything. (Tamara has some more on magazine width here.)
• Controls. I am not going to address the whole Single/Double/Striker Action thing here. But proper placement of safetys and of magazine releases is critical. They should probably be ambidextrous. And a mechanical safety should be a requirement--Gaston Glock may feel that his "Safe Action" needs no additional safety controls, but the record indicates otherwise: There are too many incidents involving Glocks going off when something besides a finger gets into the trigger guard.
• Caliber. Okay, I confess that I have said, with a straight face, that any serious defensive pistol should be in "any caliber that starts in '4', and ends in '5'." Ha, ha. Seriously, though, the 9mm is adequate with the right ammunition, as is the .40 S&W, except for that perceived recoil thing... (That and the whole "ka-boom" thing, which seems to primarily be an issue for Glock .40s, especially with reloads. See, inter alia, Frank James, here and here.)

The thing to do would be to hold a "shoot off" to determine which guns should serve as the basis of your service pistol: Acquire several dozen of the dozen or so top contenders, and get as wide a group of test shooters as possibe, from as many demographics as possible: male and female, experianced shooters and rank beginners, from the ends of the spectrum of height, arm length, eyesight, strength and agility, and so forth. You want hundreds, if not thousands, of people to be shooting these things.

I will say that from what I can glean from reading and from anecdotal personal reports, the Springfield XD series seems to be the prime candidate for a service sidearm: Good ergonomics, nearly indestructible, compact concealable versions, for undercover/plainclothes duty, comes in 9mm, .40, and .45 ACP, and it has a mechanical grip safety (although not an elegantly blended one like the 1911.) Designed in Croatia, believe it or not, it is built in the USA by an American firm.

Too bad they're in the state with the most restrictive gun laws there are--which disqualifies them for any contract I'd be letting.

Edited at 11:20 AM to fix some typos. Maybe I should skip the posting at 2AM after getting home from work...