Is the Colt 1911 as good as people say? I’ve always heard jokes about how amazing it is and people genuinely saying it is the best American Handgun ever made I am not big on guns so I am a bit ignorant of this stuff. But I am wondering if it is true.
That’s both a yes and no, and a lot of it is subjective observation.
Yes. It’s a good pistol that has been in active service since 1911. It isn’t laser-accurate, but few pistols are. The design is so good that it is the most copied and modified pistol action in the world. The 9mm version, the Browning HiPower, is essentially the same pistol but is even more highly regarded.
But one thing that gets a lot of criticism is the ammunition capacity. It only has space for a maximum of seven cartridges. 9mm pistols can carry up to 14 rounds depending on the design.
That’s because 9mm rounds are smaller. They’re roughly the size of a .38 caliber bullet, while .45 is almost twice as wide. .45 bullets do most of their damage because of mass. 9mm bullets do most of their damage because they are fired at a much higher speed. The two bullets are roughly equal in their effect when they impact a target.
However, I’ve never considered the low ammunition capacity to be a drawback. The M1911 was designed to replace .38 caliber six-round revolvers that were in service around 1900, and did that job very well indeed.
As for 9mm pistols? The people who carry them are taught to double-tap (fire twice rapidly) when shooting at a target, so their ammunition only lasts about the same amount of firings at individual targets. If you are a decent shot and can actually hit your target, one .45 caliber round is as effective as the two 9mm rounds.
That was why the US Army adopted them.
Around the turn of the century, they were fighting the Moro people in the Philippine Islands. The Moros were tough and when shot at with the .38 caliber service revolvers being carried at the time, they’d just shrug off the hit and carve up the pistol carrier with a machete. So the Army wanted a pistol that would knock down a Moro or at least make him know he’d been hit.
9mm Parabellum (a Latin word meaning “for war”) was a new cartridge around that time. .45 caliber bullets had been used for a very long time and their effectiveness was well known. Browning designed a .45 cartridge for his pistol. Since the pistol was to be manufactured by Colt Arms, the cartridge was designated the ACP (Automatic Colt Pistol). Later, when the 9mm was more of a known quantity, he redesigned the pistol for it and that got the name Browning HiPower.
To this day, the Moro people still claim bragging rights that they were the ones who were so tough that the M1911 had to be designed and built specifically to stop them. To be fair, that’s one heck of a justified boast.
Edit: For the first time, I’ve had to disable comments. I posted an answer to a question. Then it turned into a “mine is better than yours” fest in the replies. I do not want to have that garbage popping up in my email every few hours so I’m cutting it off. If you want to state your opinion, reply to the OP.