Handguns

How much should you spend on a "perfect" handgun? How much should you spend for anything that is generally considered to be at the very top of its field? A Ferrari F60 will set you back half a million bucks, give or take a few hundred thousand, and a new Purdey shotgun today lists at around $85,000. But how much ought you to spend for a really good 1911 .45 auto, when your lifes on the line and money is no object? Were leaving engraving out of the picture entirely in this discussion, though many will want it on their ultimate handguns. Its possible to acquire a thoroughly reliable 1911 for well under a grand, but it may not satisfy you completely over time, for one reason or another, especially if you have lots of experience with the type. It might not be completely dehorned, or its finish may not be all that durable, or itll need a trigger job or better accuracy, or whatever. All these things can be fixed, but all cost time and money. How about if you spend around two grand?For that kind of money, it seems to us, you ought to get a gun that needs exactly nothing. It ought to work every time for many thousands of rounds, with zero failures of any sort. It ought to outlive you, all your grandchildren, and then some. It should have a decent trigger pull. The finish, whatever it is, ought to be durable. There are plenty of excellent finishes available today that are in fact really durable, and you should not have to pay extra for that. Nor do we believe such a handgun should show any appreciable wear from several years spent in a holster. The gun should be fully dehorned so you can practice clearance drills, or go through any training center in the country - or the world - without the gun ripping up your hands. The sights may or may not be adjustable, but these top-notch guns probably ought to have tritium sights, unless you specifically dont want them. If the sights are adjustable they must never break, and thats a tall order. If the sights are not adjustable, they should be capable of being regulated to your favorite load. The gun should at least hit mighty close to center when you get it. The grips and the front and rear straps should have decent traction, but not too much of it until you grab it hard.The gun ought to be able to feed, fire, and eject any reasonable self-defense loads (we assume these are self-defense guns). It is unrealistic to expect the gun to print to the same impact point with light 185-grain target loads or with 165-grain JHPs as it does with 230-grain ball, so that means either the gun should have adjustable sights or, more important, the shooter needs to know what load he or she will use in it. If you get our drift, were assuming such a handgun will probably not be the best choice for the inexperienced shooter. To justify such a costly handgun, the shooter, we think, should have put in his time with a 1911 and ought to know what features he wants on his gun, and should have a good idea of the type of ammunition to be used.The individual may want some special features, such as a lanyard ring or maybe a special grip material, checkering pattern, etc. Also, were talking a full-size 1911 in this evaluation. Lighter or smaller 1911 types are generally preferable for long-term concealed carry, but many shooters are mighty happy with the full-size gun and dont want - or are not allowed - anything smaller.What we like may not be what you like, but remember the test crew for these 1911s has many years and hundreds of thousands of rounds experience with the type. The three we looked at were the Rock River Pro Carry ($1795), Wilson Combat CQB ($2150), and Nighthawk GRP ($2695 as tested). We tested them with five types of ammo. Black Hills remanufactured hardball, Federals Hi-Shok JHP in both 185 and 230 weights, with Winchester 185-grain BEB truncated cone, and with sizzling Cor-Bon 185 JHP. Well jump ahead here and let you know there were zero failures of any kind with the three guns.All three were very tightly fitted, yet none needed a "break-in" period before we could operate them in all their functions by hand. All had beavertails with bumps, skeleton hammers, lightened aluminum triggers of the Videki type, and grip safeties that worked without needing recontouring, as we found with the S&W. All had straight mainspring housings of steel, and checkering on front and rear grip surfaces. Two guns had forward slide serrations for the new-type press checking, but all three could be press checked the old way, with a careful pinch. All had tritium sight inserts, but one of the setups was superior. All three had decent triggers, but only two were perfect. They all had relieved mag-well openings to aid fast reloads, and all had pads on the magazines. They all had dovetailed front sights with the protrusions rounded to blend with the slide. One final observation that applied to all three is that they were very well fitted between slide and frame, with no observable movement. Lets see what else we found out.

A member of our staff recently returned from an intensive training session at Bill Davison's 550-acre TacPro Shooting Center located about 65 miles west of Dallas. Davison is a former Royal Marine and British Special Forces instructor widely respected as a spec-ops consultant and provider of VIP protection. Coming as a surprise to students was Davison's preference for high-capacity 9mm pistols over larger-caliber handguns, even the 1911 45. "It should be noted," Davison said, "that the whole gun is in the fight, not just one round, so when we are looking at energy levels, we should look at how much energy is in each pistol.

"For example, if the pistol has eight rounds, then it has eight times the amount of energy of a single round. The same applies to a 17-round pistol having 17 times the amount of energy of a single round. How many rounds you have in your pistol is relevant to how long you can stay in the fight.

"Based on this point of view, we decided to put together a roster of high-capacity 9mm pistols and evaluate their potential for self-defense shooting. They were the Sigarms P226R DAK, the Para Ordnance Tac Five LDA, and the CZ75B SA. The Sigarms P226R DAK offered double-action operation only. The Para Ordnance Tac Five LDA operated with a "light double action" trigger, and the CZ 75B SA was a single-action gun. Each model, however, utilized a hinged trigger.

We shot for accuracy from the 25-yard bench. We chose three test rounds. They were Speer's 124-grain Gold Dot hollowpoints, the Black Hills 115-grain JHP rounds, and 147-grain JHP subsonic ammunition from Atlanta Arms and Ammo. We evaluated the guns' rapid-fire capabilities by engaging an IPSC metric target standing offhand from 7 yards. Our drill consisted of ten separate strings of fire wherein the first two shots were aimed at the 15-cm by 28-cm center-mass A zone. The third shot of each string was aimed at the 15-cm by 15-cm "head" of the target. Naturally, we expected all shots to be on target, but we wanted to know more about shooting each gun at speed. Our goal was to maintain a rate of fire producing an elapsed time between the first and second shot of approximately 0.15 seconds. In each segment of our test, the greatest challenge we encountered was mastering three very different trigger actions. Let's see what each gun had to offer.

Despite many competing autoloading pistols, the five-shot snubnose revolver still has lots of fans. In fact, some of those fans are among our test crew. Once limited to .38 Special, the snubby may now be found chambered in .357 Magnum. A small 2-inch revolver has a lot going for it in self-defense situations. Its irregular shape is often easier to conceal than the relentless slab of an autoloader. There are no magazines to fall out. As Elmer Keith put it, if you have any part of a revolver, you have it all. They are generally reliable for five shots, and can be recharged quickly with a speed loader. Despite what you see in the movies, most gunfights are over with the firing of only a shot or two. Though snubbies had pretty bad sights in the past, recent ones have excellent sights. The guns can be extremely accurate, though you may have to work to prove it. Of course a revolver will handle any level of ammunition, from primer-propelled wax bullets to the hottest loads. And there are no failures to feed. Not ever.

Many snubbies are made with hidden hammers, and we've looked at some of those over the past months, but it's been awhile since we looked at the old standby with its protruding, easily cocked hammer. These may not work all that well out of the pocket, but work fine from a holster. With fixed sights and a short sight radius, these are not among the best plinkers, but well suited for self defense. The three test guns we acquired were the Ruger SP101 ($530), the Charter Arms Undercover ($325), and the S&W Model 60 ($623). All three are stainless-steel five-shooters with fixed sights.

The Smith and the Ruger handle .357 Magnum ammo. For this test we chose the Charter Undercover, which is .38 Special only. Charter makes a .357 version called the Mag Pug, which is similar to the Smith and Ruger, but is much heavier than the Undercover and has a ported barrel which we didn't care for. So we gave the lighter Undercover a chance, with an eye toward easier carry. Because of the limitation of the Charter to .38 Special, we did most of our testing with .38 Special ammo, but did try some .357 loads in the other two. That doesn't mean we stuck with light loads. Far from it. Our most interesting test ammo was the heavy-bullet Buffalo Bore load designed to be similar to the old FBI round with lead bullet, but this time featuring a soft, Elmer-Keith-type, 158-grain cast hollowpoint lead SWC with a gas check to prevent leading. (See sidebar.) These loads are put together with flash-free powder, and gave little visible blast at night from these snubby revolvers. We also tested with Black Hills cowboy-level cast-bullet loads, with Winchester's Super-X 130-grain JHP, and — in the two .357s — Federal's Hi-Shok 130-grain JHP. Here's what we found.

Recently we received a letter from a subscriber who asked us to compare a small .45 ACP 1911 pistol to some of today's more popular options in the category of subcompact pistols. Keynotes of comparison were action design, similar size, and similar stopping power. Also, our reader wanted us to compare the speed and integrity of fundamental controls other than the trigger. A concealed-carry gun may never be reloaded during a confrontation, but you wouldn't want to drop the magazine by accident or fumble releasing the slide.

Your competition or hunting gun may be the love of your life but a powerful subcompact pistol is the one you are likely to spend the most time with. In this test we'll get up close and personal with three pistols small enough to blend in with your lifestyle and powerful enough to preserve it. The Springfield Armory Ultra Compact 1911A1 PX9161L, $952, represents the traditional .45 ACP single-action single-stack pistol. The Glock polymer pistol is another very popular option. The Glock 33 No. PI3350201, $599, is chambered for .357 SIG, which offers .357 Magnum power in a controllable high-capacity platform. Smith & Wesson's SW990L in .40 S&W is also a polymer pistol with a double-column magazine, but distinguishes itself from the Glock pistol by utilizing a Walther design. Our SW990L No. 120233, $729, like the others, employed approximately a 3.5-inch barrel, and all three were specifically designed for concealed carry.

There are a few clever innovations in handguns that have specific usefulness to certain groups of individuals. One of these is the pop-up barrel that permits loading one round into the chamber of semiautomatic pistols without the need for weak or possibly arthritic hands to work a slide. This feature has been mighty handy over the years for a few folks, to our certain knowledge. We found two modern .22 LR pistols with this feature and decided to see just how well they worked in the field, and against each other on the target.

They were Beretta's Model 21A Bobcat, $250; and Taurus' PT-22, Model 22B, $227, both chambered for .22 LR. The mechanisms were a bit different, the Beretta being DA for the first shot and SA thereafter for all 7+1 shots, and the Taurus being DAO for all its 8+1 shots. But we thought they were within a nickel of each other for overall size and usefulness. Each gun came with just one magazine. Neither gun had an extractor, nor did they need one. With the open-top design, spent cases had lots of room to get out, and all fired rounds from both pistols ejected perfectly, as it turned out.

Either pistol could be carried in the pocket, and it seems to us that's the service for which they're designed. Our general feelings are that a .22 LR would not be our first choice for serious back-up work, but hey, any gun sometimes is much better than nothing at all.

We won't recommend any specific usage for these tiny pistols. We'll leave that up the individual; but if you own one of these you should expect to be able to shoot it inexpensively, hit your target, and have some fun with it. In that vein, we thought either gun could be used easily and well as a single-loader for training purposes. Let's see what else we found out about them:

We recently attended a major sporting event where security was provided by uniformed police. We couldn't help but notice how many officers, male and female were carrying revolvers instead of semi-automatic pistols. Never shy to interview, we took turns asking various officers why they had chosen a revolver. Here are some of the reasons they gave. "It can't be knocked out of battery." "The trigger doesn't change after the first shot." "I can get a really good action without worrying about reliability." "It was easy to find a replacement grip that fit me." "No mags to buy and this gun will last." "It didn't need any work to make it more accurate." Most of the guns we saw were .38 Special/.357 Magnums, which offer a wide range of power without affecting reliability.

Those practical answers to self-defense problems moved us to evaluate currently available service revolvers from Taurus, Smith & Wesson, and Sturm, Ruger. The most popular barrel length in a service or duty revolver is 4 inches, and such guns are now widely available with seven-shot cylinders. Our Taurus Model 66SS4, $469, was a seven-shooter, and so was our Smith & Wesson Model 619 No. 164301, $646. Only our $615 Ruger KGP-141, a member of the GP100 family, was limited to six rounds.

Two recent pistol introductions have been much-ballyhooed in the gun press and firearms industry: Springfield's XD 45 and the Smith & Wesson M&P 40. At the NRA annual meetings in Milwaukee May 19-21, the new XD pistol in .45 ACP won Handgun of the Year notice from NRA's American Rifleman magazine, and it won Handgun of the Year at the Shooting Industry Academy of Excellence awards. The S&W M&P .40 was likewise nominated for the Shooting Industry award, and another NRA publication, Shooting Illustrated, named the M&P as its 2006 Handgun of the Year.

Because interest seems high, we wanted to weigh in on which pistol we thought was the best, so we acquired a $559 Springfield Armory XD (Extreme Duty), and a $624 Smith & Wesson M&P (Military and Police) pistol. Of course, both were designed to provide an effective weapon for law enforcement and military use, but they certainly will serve as personal defense guns for civilians that are durable, easy to maintain and within most budgets.

The XD is based on the Croatian police sidearm that Springfield Armory has adapted to the American market. Chambering the XD for .45 ACP is the latest volley aimed at landing the XD in the holster of every policeman. The XD is a proven design, but we wondered how the power and size of .45 ACP ammunition would affect the integrity of the machine as well as the friendly ergonomics that have attracted so many buyers in other chamberings. The Smith & Wesson M&P 40 S&W is the result of research and development that included consultation with the law enforcement and military training community. Starting with a clean slate, Smith & Wesson has risked much more than Springfield Armory by having to spend money on tooling up. Was it worth the investment?

What good is a defensive weapon without stopping power? "Not much," most self-defense handgunners would say in response. Thus, we all agree that an effective defensive handgun requires power, but the more nuanced question is, "How much?"

We recently treated ourselves to a head-to-head test of defensive handguns in an increasingly popular chambering, the .357 SIG. The round was designed to deliver the same amount of power as .357 Magnum ammunition fired from a 4-inch-barrel service revolver, which almost all shooters will agree is enough stopping power for a handgun. Moreover, the .357 SIG round provides more total firepower, because staggered-column "double-stack" pistol magazines hold much more ammunition than a revolver loaded with .357 Magnum rounds. Some agencies now recognize the round's effectiveness; notably the Texas Department of Public Safety has adopted the .357 SIG round in Sigarms P226 pistols for its troopers.

In this test we will look at two .357 SIG pistols that are small, light, and easy to conceal. The Glock 32 was one of the first polymer compact pistols chambered for .357 SIG. Our version of the model 32 was stock number KADO71, $599. Shooting against that was a Heckler & Koch P2000 Variant 3 No. 735203, $883. We picked this particular gun for our test because we were intrigued with the unique placement of the decocker.

The Second Dragoon was the middle of three post-Walker revolvers developed by Colt beginning in 1848. All were designed for horseback use, and as such, weight was not much of a consideration, though at 4 pounds, the Dragoons weighed half a pound less than the Walker. There also was, most likely, ignorance about how heavy a revolver had to be in order to handle a given power level. For example, the 1860 Army Colt was not a lot less powerful than the Dragoon but weighed far less, yet was totally controllable, the result of ten years of refinement.

The Dragoon name comes from the use, or designated use, of this heavy pistol by the U.S. Mounted Rifles, some of which were called the Dragoons. Most originals, and all of our test trio, had the initials U.S.M.R. engraved on the cylinders. The Second Dragoon was in production from 1850-51, with a total of about 2,700 made. The First Dragoon was made from 1848 to 1850 in the quantity of about 7,000, and the Third Dragoon was made for about ten years, in the quantity of about 10,500. This makes the Second Dragoon the rarest of the original 4-pound Colts. In a similar manner, when Colt organized the production of the 2nd-Generation Dragoons in the early 1980s (built by Iver Johnson from I-J and Uberti parts), they made nearly 4,000 of the First, close to 7,000 of the Third, but only 2676 of the Second Dragoon, again rendering them the rarest of the lot. Easily distinguished by the square-back trigger guard and the rectangular bolt-stop notches, the Second Model Dragoon was originally presented with blued barrel, cylinder and trigger, and case-colored loading lever, hammer, and frame. The grip straps were brass, and grips were one-piece walnut. Some martial-use pistols had grips marked with an inspector's escutcheon. Our test EMF has such a mark.

Those who are most serious about Cowboy Action shooting tend to favor lighter-recoiling firearms so they can cut their times down, never mind that bigger guns like .45s tend to be more authentic, especially when stoked with black powder. Not that it takes any less skill to do well with lighter recoiling equipment, but it can give an edge, or so we've been told. This means .38 Special loads in handguns and rifles, and probably 20-gauge shotguns. How much benefit does a .38 Special offer over, say, a .45 Colt? There's a huge difference in recoil, even if the .45 shoots only light cowboy loads.

To find out more, we gathered a trio of .38 Special single-action six-shooters to see how well they'd do for us, and to find out how much we liked ‘em. All were .357 Mag-capable, and all had 4.75-inch barrels. The guns were a Ruger New Model 50th Anniversary Flat Top Blackhawk ($583), a Taurus Gaucho M38SA ($499), and from EMF Co., a resurrection of the old Great Western revolvers, the Great Western II "Californian" model ($450). We tested with three main types of ammo, Black Hills Cowboy loads, Federal 110-grain JHP .357 Mag, and with a modest handload in .38 Special cases that approximated Cowboy loads. Here's what we found.

Most shooters don't get too worked up about new polymer-framed auto pistols; they don't have the charm of a well-built 1911 .45 ACP or the character of an old Chiefs Special .38. Instead, what plastic guns do well is protect their owners, and in this defensive role, they excel. If you doubt this statement, simply check out what gun is riding on the hip of today's law-enforcement personnel. More often than not, it will be a polymer-framed high-cap 9mm or .40 S&W, and quite often, it will be a Glock.

Glock introduced the first successful plastic-framed pistol more than twenty years ago, and it is still the most popular polymer by a large margin. But several other manufacturers make comparable polymer pistols, and we recently tested two of such guns against the mainstay .40 S&W Glock Model 23.

Our first test product was the Heckler & Koch USP 40 Variant 9 .40 S&W USPLEM, $769. This design adds a manual thumb safety to the hinged-trigger USP pistol. Sigarms's latest polymer pistol, the SP2022 .40 S&W (No. E2022-40-BSS, $715), offers a decocker. Our Glock 23 .40 S&W No. HXL616 cost $670. All three guns came with night sights, and barrel length was approximately 4 inches.

In these guns we shot Winchester's 155-grain JHP Ranger loads, 180-grain hollowpoints from Black Hills Ammunition, and 165-grain FMJ rounds loaded to USPSA major caliber specifications by Georgia Arms (770-459-5117). This meant these rounds were expected to travel at an average velocity of at least 1000 fps from a 5-inch barrel.

For the testing, our shooters visited the comfortable confines of Top Gun of Texas (www.topgunrange.com), where we took advantage of the opportunity to adjust lighting conditions to test the effectiveness of each gun's night sights. Using the Black Hills rounds exclusively in this portion of our tests, we fired standing unsupported from a distance of 7 yards. We adjusted backlighting to provide just enough illumination to allow us to see a 3-inch circle on a Hoffners ABC16 target (www.hoffners.com). We recorded the first 10-round group we shot. Accuracy data from the bench was recorded at 15 yards, and we fired single action only from the Sigarms and HK pistols.

Our first question was whether or not the Glock SafeAction trigger, a full-time double-action system, would put the Model 23 gun at a disadvantage. Second, we asked if the addition of an active safety on the Heckler & Koch pistol or, the decocker on the Sigarms SP2022, added safety, or did these mechanisms hinder operation. Though we formed definite likes and dislikes about each gun, we found that they all ran trouble free with a variety of ammunition. Otherwise, let's get a detailed look at how well they shot in the text below:

Need a full-size .22 pistol? We've looked at smaller pistols and revolvers recently, but some want or need a larger .22 pistol, for whatever reasons. Happy to oblige, we grabbed two pistols that we thought would fill the hands better than anything smaller, and put them against each other in the hands of our test team. The pistols were the Whitney Wolverine ($280), Olympic Arms' remake of the Space-Age-looking older design which used to have an aluminum frame; and SIG's Mosquito ($390), a close copy of that company's larger pistols, with similar shape and finish but made somewhat smaller overall. The Wolverine was much lighter than the Mosquito, and it had a grip shape that not everyone will like. The Mosquito, which felt great in most hands, cost a bunch more. Was it worth it? Let's see what we found.