What "Elite" Units/Organizations Currently Use a Single Stack 1911 .45

[ToddG]

SFOD-D, no
FBI HRT, varies (increasingly "no")
FBI SWAT, varies

Changes in red.

[David Armstrong]

Carrying any sort of handgun doesn't matter "except in vary [sic] narrow and uncommon circumstances." The the need for a handgun is a statistical anomaly. Why try to predict what an "average" anomaly might be, rather than carry enough gun to fight effectively?

I'm sure that each agency, unit, and individual who picks a gun will tell you their gun is enough to fight effectively, even though each will pick a different gun and will argue their pick is better than the next guy's pick. If there was a consensus we'd all be carrying the same thing for the most part.

[JHC]

IMO the Pat McNamara quote is quite profound: "The pistol is your secondary, until it's your primary." And when the secondary, has become you're primary your probably pretty particular about it. Hence the energy that is poured into them.

[ToddG]

And when the secondary, has become you're primary your probably pretty particular about it. Hence the energy that is poured into them.

That would make sense if those units/agencies/teams put as much time and energy into training with the secondary as they do selecting it. But almost universally they do not.

[JHC]

That would make sense if those units/agencies/teams put as much time and energy into training with the secondary as they do selecting it. But almost universally they do not.

SFOD-D was famous for shooting a million rounds of .45 ACP a year. And they were not that large of an org. Are they the outlier or maybe that has all changed.

[Le Français]

IMO the Pat McNamara quote is quite profound: "The pistol is your secondary, until it's your primary."

Apparently, though, he likes the 1911 for serious social work (with a FLGR, no less).

[ToddG]

SFOD-D was famous for shooting a million rounds of .45 ACP a year. And they were not that large of an org.

Even if it was only 200 guys (it's bigger than that), 1M per year works out to just 5,000 rounds per shooter. While that's certainly a lot more than most teams, it's far less than the average serious shooters will go through. That's not a slam on the unit, just another example of how low pistol training is, by necessity, on their list of priorities.

[TCinVA]

I promise, I'm not trying to open up this can of worms, and I truly don't know the answer. As someone who doesn't run a 1911, I have to ask. Is a 1911 significantly more accurate than other modern polymer guns?

If built properly, they certainly can be. A properly built 1911 can be a superbly accurate handgun...but as Caleb pointed out, a properly built Plastic Pistol Appliance can also be a superbly accurate handgun.

In real life (I.e. a human holding the gun), do they group that much better?

There you hit on a valuable bit of information about the 1911: A 2.5 pound handgun with a 4 pound short-travel trigger can cover for a world of sins in the trigger manipulation department. They were used in a certain elite Army unit for a long time primarily because, and this is a direct quote from an individual who was in charge of small arms training for that unit, "they're easy to shoot." I carried a 1911 for a very long time because I found it was stupid easy to make shots with. I took my Les Baer through a course at Blackwater USA (back when they were Blackwater for the first time and didn't have a contracting business) where I was the lone little civilian in a class full of SWAT guys and the dudes who will show up to kill you if you try to steal a nuclear weapon. All had more training and experience than me. All were in better shape than me. All had double stack pistols and didn't have to reload even half as often as I did. I beat the pants off of all of them on stress course after stress course because even with my deplorable level of skill, every time I put the yellow front sight on a target and pulled the trigger, I made a hit. I merely had to think that I wanted the gun to go off and it did, and the steel gave audible affirmation that the job had been done.

I wasn't a good shooter...the gun just made it look like I was.

The price for that was when everyone else was out at dinner, I was in my room with my pistol detail stripped carefully cleaning and lubricating it. I lubed it three times a day every day of the five day course. I changed recoil springs and mag springs during the course because it was over 3,000 rounds for the course. I re-tensioned the extractor. My gun ran extremely well, but I took great pains to keep it happy...and that was just five days of shooting.

When I started looking to buy a second handgun to back up my expensive 1911 (because I tried the less expensive 1911 route and found nothing but heartache and woe) I began to realize that having to spend a minimum of 2 grand on a pistol just so I could have a hope of hitting something with it was a pretty bad way to do business...so I started buying appliance pistols and started to actually work on my shooting skill. I liked the 1911 better than anything else because I could put bullets where I wanted them better with that pistol than with anything else. So for me at that skill level, there was a significant accuracy advantage to the gun. It was the pistol I sucked the least with. If I had to, say, go on an airliner and shoot terrorists 8 inches above the head of innocent passengers and didn't have the time to go much beyond that skill level, I'd have taken the 1911 in a heartbeat.

For me at a higher skill level, there's no accuracy advantage whatsoever in terms of results on the target. Now I use a pistol that holds more bullets, that I clean maybe a couple of times in a year and just happily keeps firing rounds if give it even minimal lubrication and attention.

[TGS]

Even if it was only 200 guys (it's bigger than that), 1M per year works out to just 5,000 rounds per shooter. While that's certainly a lot more than most teams, it's far less than the average serious shooters will go through. That's not a slam on the unit, just another example of how low pistol training is, by necessity, on their list of priorities.

I'd be extremely surprised......as in utterly flabbergasted....if SFOD-D was only shooting 5000 rounds or so per shooter, per year. Especially when you have guys like retired SgtMaj Eric L Haney talking about specifics of their pistol training, and the amounts they shot.

Every single dude I know from the USMC special operations community ranging from 20 years ago to today, has easily done more than that in a couple days. Talk to anyone who's been through a Stone Bay shoot package. I know people in that community who've shot more than that in their MEUSOC 1911's as part of skills maintenance while in country over a period of 4 months. A fiscal quarter could see 30,000+ rounds through a single MEUSOC 1911.

[ford.304]

If built properly, they certainly can be. A properly built 1911 can be a superbly accurate handgun...but as Caleb pointed out, a properly built Plastic Pistol Appliance can also be a superbly accurate handgun.



There you hit on a valuable bit of information about the 1911: A 2.5 pound handgun with a 4 pound short-travel trigger can cover for a world of sins in the trigger manipulation department. They were used in a certain elite Army unit for a long time primarily because, and this is a direct quote from an individual who was in charge of small arms training for that unit, "they're easy to shoot." I carried a 1911 for a very long time because I found it was stupid easy to make shots with. I took my Les Baer through a course at Blackwater USA (back when they were Blackwater for the first time and didn't have a contracting business) where I was the lone little civilian in a class full of SWAT guys and the dudes who will show up to kill you if you try to steal a nuclear weapon. All had more training and experience than me. All were in better shape than me. All had double stack pistols and didn't have to reload even half as often as I did. I beat the pants off of all of them on stress course after stress course because even with my deplorable level of skill, every time I put the yellow front sight on a target and pulled the trigger, I made a hit. I merely had to think that I wanted the gun to go off and it did, and the steel gave audible affirmation that the job had been done.

I wasn't a good shooter...the gun just made it look like I was.

The price for that was when everyone else was out at dinner, I was in my room with my pistol detail stripped carefully cleaning and lubricating it. I lubed it three times a day every day of the five day course. I changed recoil springs and mag springs during the course because it was over 3,000 rounds for the course. I re-tensioned the extractor. My gun ran extremely well, but I took great pains to keep it happy...and that was just five days of shooting.

When I started looking to buy a second handgun to back up my expensive 1911 (because I tried the less expensive 1911 route and found nothing but heartache and woe) I began to realize that having to spend a minimum of 2 grand on a pistol just so I could have a hope of hitting something with it was a pretty bad way to do business...so I started buying appliance pistols and started to actually work on my shooting skill. I liked the 1911 better than anything else because I could put bullets where I wanted them better with that pistol than with anything else. So for me at that skill level, there was a significant accuracy advantage to the gun. It was the pistol I sucked the least with. If I had to, say, go on an airliner and shoot terrorists 8 inches above the head of innocent passengers and didn't have the time to go much beyond that skill level, I'd have taken the 1911 in a heartbeat.

For me at a higher skill level, there's no accuracy advantage whatsoever in terms of results on the target. Now I use a pistol that holds more bullets, that I clean maybe a couple of times in a year and just happily keeps firing rounds if give it even minimal lubrication and attention.

This stuff needs to be stickied. One of the best explanations I have ever read for both why someone might still reasonably choose to shoot 1911's, and why they really probably shouldn't.

Question for you, TCinVA - roughly how much practice did it take with the new gun before you caught up to your performance with the Les Baer?