Archive for December 3rd, 2010

Reliability of the 1911 GI or MilSpec guns

My first 1911 was a Colt 1991A1 that I picked up for $375 for a gun shop.   The gun was hardly used and I don’t believe it was ever shot.  Every 1911 that I own has been had for under $400.   I have had maintenance issues with my Colt 1991A1, but I believe the gun has well over 10,000 rounds through it and I’ve made a few customizations to improve it.   I miss my gunsmith, but he did mess up something on the gun when I took it to him to have the feed ramp polished.  When he was polishing the feed ramp he hit the slide stop and put a niche in it that I noticed immediately after test firing that the gun would not lock back.   He found the mistake was his and fixed it, but I thought that it was a good time to replace the slide stop with an extended one.   When I put Hogue gun grips on Colt, it made the grips a little fatter and it was a little difficult to hit the slide release with my thumb.

I messed around with polishing the feed ramp and using Wilson Combat magazines and noticed a good improvement in feeding SWC and HP ammo, but I was still not happy with it not running flawlessly.   At this point, I don’t care, I’ve seen enough junks of wood fly out of the back of backstops to notice the difference between a 45acp and 9mm ball ammo to know that one type of ball ammo is better than the other.   I would never use 9mm ball in a defensive situation, but a 45acp is fine by my book.   I have also noticed absolutely no difference between Wilson Combat magazines that are 7rd vs 8rd.   I have done the 8 +1 in the chamber on several occasions and never noticed any reliability issues as long as the gun wasn’t stored like this for very long.   Even though I believe manual safeties aren’t the best type of device to have on a CCW gun, I think 8rds of 45acp ball ammo in a GI 1911 is not a negative.

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Avoiding unnecessary searches during police stops

There has been a recent issue with a man who moved from Colorado back to New Jersey and has been arrested and thrown in jail for transporting firearms that he legally owned.   I won’t go into the whole story, but it’s available with just a google search.  From what I am reading about it now, there was something that occurred and the police made a stop and searched this individuals car, they found two unloaded handguns in the car and he was arrested.   Transporting firearms in non-gun friendly States has been a real problem for those traveling across State lines for hunting trips.   I had the opportunity to take a trip to Maine and I had to plot driving routes to avoid as many blue States as possible although  avoiding all of them was impossible.

So many of my friends own SUV type vehicles and I have urged many of them to think about tinting the windows, not too dark, but darker than what they had, just because they can dramatically reduce their chances of having a theft by making it harder for the less  honest in society,  from seeing any firearms even in gun cases or valuables they are transporting.  Most of the smash and grabs that I have heard of were for laptops and the CCW stuff was under or near it.   Of all of the times I have ever been in a vehicle stop, being polite to a Police officer avoided any friction and I have never had issues with searches.

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