Originally Posted by
Aisin Gioro
This, so much this. The DAO has a terrible image problem with the general shooting population, but in reality, I think it offers an awful lot of advantages with few disadvantages. I suspect part of the problem is that most of those disadvantages show up more apparently in competition/gaming than they do in real-life duty and defense use and, like it or not, games are driving the market more and more these days. Hence we get people running Skimmers, etc. even in their carry guns, because, hey, it worked so well in the IDPA club matches they shot last year and "OMG, my splits!".
Compared to the shorter learning curve of striker guns, the DAO just seems too arcane for many people. At the institutional level, getting good quals means a bit more time, money, and effort teaching people (often people with limited enthusiasm for shooting) how to gain the advantages of the DAO. Those are three things that most organizations are already short of, and since you don't really appreciate the advantages of the DAO until you either examine the issue from all angles or actually experience them, there isn't much impetus to spend precious resources overcoming the more elongated learning curve. To slightly paraphrase Charles MacKay from Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, "The crowd does not form a new average, it finds the lowest common denominator." Striker fired actions fit the most apparent needs of the lowest common denominator, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but does eclipse some really strong benefits that the extra investment in DAO can bring. Ironically, the DAO also meets the needs of the lowest common denominator in some other important ways, but those seem to get lost in the shuffle more now than they did in, say, the early 1990s.
Not saying it's the only good option, or even that it's always the best option, but DAO is almost always something to take a long look at for people interested in pistols for serious purposes.