the 90s market

[Baldanders]

I figured the 80s thread is so popular it could use a companion.

Of course, Glock moved into the civvie market really hard in tbe 90s. I saw Glocks or 3rd gen Smiths in LE holsters. Glocks dominated the gun rags and shop shelves more and more.as the decade wore on.

But there were still other semis.....

Tanfoglios used to be much more common. Only .38 Super game in town, usually. FIrst 10mm I saw besides the Delta Elite was a Witness. I don't think I saw a CZ75 in the flesh until the lare 90s-early 2000s.

I think of the 90s as when all the other SIG guns besides the 220/226 got big. The 230 was sort of a thing.

.40 everything. The awesome sauce.

Many, many more Taurus alloy guns based on the pt92 in 9mm, .40, .45 (not sure if this was actually based on the 92) and even .357 sig for a bit. All sorts of options. Their line tried to fill all niches much like the Smith 3rd gen and Glock lines.

I put the Star Firestar in the 80s thread, but it was a very early 90s gun. I saw one in a store once. Civvie CCW wasn't big early 90s, but that shifted with the shift in laws. Firestar was probably a bit heavy to benefit from that, even later. Also, not a 1911.

1911 Custom awesomeness everywhere. Raceguns! How can we make major, let me count the ways.

Ruger P-series really was the civvie mainstay much of the 90s, IMO. They were in the magazines and the shops, that's for sure.

Glockified TDA guns.

3rd gen Smith kept rockin', but I don't think civilian interest was anything like the passion for Glock. Maybe the paucity of movie appearances hurt?

Odd attempts at boosting performance in new chamberings, with the .357 Sig as the only survivor (unless you are a hipster).

.40 Super/.400 CorBon --- I never understood how these made sense when 10mm exists.

The .440 CorBon---born from the most Walter Mitty caliber of all time, .50 AE!

Still crappy "Ring-of-fire" guns in the bottom of the market.

[Jared]

My firearms interest really took off around 1992. I was in grade school at the time. Oh the hours I spent reading American Handgunner, G&A, Shooting Times. I definitely learned a lot of myths and BS that I had to let go of later.

IIRC: Loads of articles about the 1911 in the 90’s. The 1994 AWB gave that gun a second life. Everything was all about the 40 or the 45 because “if you can only have 10 they might as well be 10 big ones!”

The way I remember it, SIG was seen/marketed as the premium service pistol. Everything else was what you bought if you just couldn’t afford the SIG. The Beretta 92 seemed particularly derided by this time, although I think a lot of that was 1911 hard heads that couldn’t believe big Army hadn’t gone back to God’s gun yet.

I remember when I was in 6th grade a deputy came to my school for the DARE program. He actually got his pistol out of the holster and held it up so we could see it. It was a 4006. The local municipal PD carried Colt Commanders and did so until the late aughties. I remember the local gun shop selling tons of Ruger P-Series autos. I also remember that they kept Colt revolvers in stock back then. I walked past scads of Python and King Cobras. Plus the D frames of the time. Anacondas too.

I also remember the Kimber 1911s coming out and taking the civvy market by storm.

[Gater]

Product placement, circa 1998:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlsCObKlVcY

[Navin Johnson]

I switched to 40 in the 90s because bigger is better right?

Also IPSC started a production division and the 40 made major. For five or 600 bucks you could have a glock and a holster and go play.

I believe this is when the goat test paper came about and this drove people to specific calibers and bullet styles as the magazine writers gleefully masturbated that information to the public. I believe this drove a lot of firearms decisions then.

The slightly above average sig pistols were also like little blue pills to the all "knowledgeable" gun riders. For way more money you could have a gun that was less durable than the glock 9mm.

Other gun companies were s******* themselves trying to keep up with Glock as they couldn't hand out free plastic guns to the popo. Which translated into retail sales.

Glock would come in and replace used Glock guns and magazines for a couple hundred bucks in the 40 caliber before they started breaking from round counts.

The biggest money maker for Glock was to trade all the 9mm guns out and give the popo the 40s which would fit in the same holsters. Then reselling all of the high-cap nine mags at more profit than selling a new gun.

1911s became huge again because bigger is better right? Then everybody remembered why they weren't carrying 1911s to begin with. At least production ones anyways.

It was probably the early 2000s when I switched back to 9. Made me realize how nice a service pistol was to shoot again.

[JJN]

A lot of the drive for .40 was the mag ban. You didn't want to "lose" capacity in 9mm, so you went with .40 S&W so you could fill up more of the magazine. It was also the dawn of the slimline autos like the Kahr.

[Duelist]

I bought my first guns in the 90s. First was a Ruger MKII .22. - still have it. Then a Star Firestar .40, which I later traded for a S&W Model 10 (which I really should have kept but eventually traded off and have replaced several times over just to make sure I’m never without a Kframe .38 again). At some point I traded into my first hunting rifle, a T/C Hawken in .50 caliber because of that Robert Redford movie. Killed a few deer with it.

But those three pistols were the only ones I had in the 90s. I was in college, a young father, and then joined the Army and was an E4 with 2 kids. Buying lots of guns wasn’t a thing. I just shot the guns I had whenever and as much as I could.

But I really, really wanted a couple of things: a S&W 3913 cause they are cool, a 4506 or one of those other big .45s like Sonny Crockett carried on Miami Vice, a Glock, an AR of my own, and a Beretta. Finally grew up and got a real job and bought them.

[Sal Picante]

.41 AE

[SecondsCount]

Handguns that I bought and sold in the 90s

Ruger Blackhawk in 45 Colt

Norinco 1911

Taurus 915. It was an okay pistol from what I remember but I sold it and bought a Kahr E9.

Taurus 94 22LR Revolver

Colt Frontier 22LR

Traded a Taurus PT99AF for a 70 series Colt Gold Cup because the guy wanted the high cap mags.

S&W 645, 745, 4506, 5906, 910, 39, 422

Sig P226, one in 9mm and later one in 40- purely because of the hotness. Almost had a 220 as well but the guy bailed on the deal.

Kimber Gold Match Stainless. Kimbers got really hot in the late 90s.

Never owned a Glock until around 2008, a G19.3. Nobody I knew ever owned one until 1999, I think. My friend bought one and became a huge fanboy, even had the Glock Perfection sticker in the back window of his truck. I could still outshoot him with my 1911 and teased him about drinking the Koolaid.