Month: November 2025
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TTi Benelli M2 | Shooting USA
When I was 10 years old, I read Jeff Cooper’s articles in Guns & Ammo magazine in which he extolled the 1911 “.45 automatic” as the ultimate gunfighting/self-defense handgun. What he wrote made a great deal of sense to me.
All these years later, it still does.
Slim and flat, among the easiest of full-size “fighting handguns” to discreetly, accessibly carry concealed.
Unarguably adequate in power for its task, all the more so today with improved ammunition. It’s been long-since proven reliable. It has a low bore axis to minimize muzzle rise and contribute to accurate rapid fire, and a straight-back, short, easy-to-control trigger pull enhances rapid-fire hit potential under the highest stress imaginable. And, thanks to the genius of John Moses Browning, it has redundant safety features.
Since 1911 — and really, mostly, since 1960 or so — gunsmiths and master pistoleros found ways to enhance the original pistol. Today we have a broad assortment of calibers to choose from, and higher cartridge capacity versions.
We have target sights, we have optical sights, we have laser sights. Clever gunsmiths came up with accessories which reduced both muzzle rise and rearward recoil impulse, colloquially known as “kick.”
But, you know what? While today’s 1911s may have more flavors than Howard Johnson’s famous ice cream, plain vanilla still works pretty darn well.
The Choice of (1911) Flavors
When I was a kid, it was a big deal that Howard Johnson’s had 28 flavors of ice cream. Heck, there are way more than 28 flavors of 1911 when you factor in calibers, sizes, and manufacturers.
Let’s look at just one manufacturer, Springfield Armory. You can get your 1911 in a double-stack 9mm like the Prodigy holding all the rounds you want. You can get several models already cut for optic sights if you shoot better with those. Want something small and light? Turn the catalog page to the EMP (Enhanced Micro Pistol) series. Fancy? They have those too.
Still and all, for many shooters’ needs a “plain Jane” version will suffice. Your basic 5” barrel all-steel 1911 .45 auto is the gun that earned its rep from the trenches of World War I to the proverbial sands of Iwo Jima to the tunnels of Vietnam, and even found its way into the 21st century’s war on terror.
In its standard configuration it was carried in the holsters of many Texas Rangers and other lawmen, and protected the homes of countless Americans. Pistol-packers discovered early on that its slim profile made it easy, comfortable, and surprisingly concealable in everyday carry.
Features You Need
One thing that drives the purchase of a basic 1911 is economy, simply because additional bells and whistles are expensive for the manufacturer to produce. The exemplar of a plain 1911 that I’ll use here is the Springfield Armory Mil-Spec, which carries a manufacturer’s suggested retail price starting at just $725. Many makers’ top-of-the-line 1911’s will run $3,000 or more. For three grand you can buy three Mil-Specs and have money left over for holsters and ammo.
Reliability of function is a non-negotiable baseline for any firearm, particularly so with one intended for self-defense purposes. A lot of the old military surplus 1911 .45 pistols were designed only for round-nose, full metal jacket ball ammunition and might malfunction if fed modern hollow points.
The Springfield Mil-Spec is factory “throated” to feed the desirable-for-defense jacketed hollow point. My sample has been satisfyingly reliable in that respect. [Read Ayoob’s review of the Springfield Armory 1911 Mil-Spec for more information.]
Adequate power is another definite need in a defensive handgun. Certainly, the general consensus of both military and law enforcement today is that with modern ammunition the 9mm is not inadequate. However, in its original chambering of .45 ACP, no one questions that as handguns go — it has a more than adequate power level.
As For Wants…
I for one like adjustable sights. That said, I don’t consider them essential. Our military has never issued adjustable sight service pistols except to pistol teams and, when they had revolvers, USAF police.
Modern police service autos didn’t generally have adjustable sighting until the recent trend to carry optics, and I’ve won IDPA and police PPC Service Pistol matches with fixed sight guns as have a great many others.
The rear fixed sight on a Mil-Spec 1911 sits in a dovetail and can be drifted laterally to adjust for windage. If a fixed-sight 1911 “shoots low,” a little judicious filing of the top of the fixed front sight can bring point of impact up to point of aim.
Weapon-mounted lights? You can pay a little more and have a 1911 with extended dust cover cut for mounting of an “on-board flashlight.”
However, its holster will be necessarily bulkier and harder to conceal. Before WMLs became popular, we all got by learning to mate a pistol in the dominant hand with a flashlight held in the support hand, and those techniques still work. Moreover, us old gun guys who’ve been doing this for a while have accumulated lots of 1911 holsters which fit standard configuration pistols but not those shaped to mount light attachments.
Conclusion
Yes, you can spend a ton of money on a 1911 with all the bells and whistles. You can take a basic gun to a custom shop and have them completely trick it out with every option imaginable. Is that fun? Sure. Is it necessary? That’s a whole separate question.
If you ask me, the plain vanilla 1911 .45 has served to protect very well for well over a century. It can obviously continue to do so. With a pistol like the Springfield Armory Mil-Spec, you have a great gun for a great price that is proven and reliable. Sounds like a winner to me.
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I have always wanted to go here!?
Nicholas II among military representatives of the Allied Powers; from left to right: Baron Rickel (Belgium), General Williams (Great Britain), Colonel Marcingault (Italy), Marquis de Laguiche (France) and Colonel Londkievich (Serbia). Mogilev, Belarus, 8 Sept 1916.
They are all gone now but their actions still effect our world. So I still say that WWI was a disaster of the first magnitude to the ENTIRE Western World. Grumpy
Soon after leaving public office, the 26th President of the United States Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909) delivered a world-famous speech in France, a part of which later became one of his most often quoted. Referred to as “The Man in the Arena,” it provided insight into the perspective of combatants who perform well under pressure.
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
What Roosevelt so eloquently shed light upon was the depth of human will, self-determination, and mental fortitude it takes to perform under extreme duress. What was true at the turn of the 20th century and later proven by the belligerents of both world wars, is true to this very day, that only the strong survive.
When Wyatt Earp was asked about winning gunfights, he attributed his success to, “Going into action with the greatest speed which a man’s muscles are capable, but mentally unflustered.” Given the critical importance of staying cool under pressure, it is no secret that the likes of war fighters and law enforcement professionals think clearer and perform better in violent physical altercations.
Back in the day, the term “steely-eyed gunfighter” was attributed to those gunslingers who possessed both the physical skills and mental strength needed to ply their trade. Physical prowess, although certainly a contributing factor, must be preceded by an unyielding and pervasive mental fortitude afforded only to those possessing coolness of mind referred to by legendary gunfighter Wyatt Earp as “mentally unflustered.”
Fast forward to today, what three things can you do to be mentally unflustered should you find yourself needing to win a fight? Let’s begin with competency, consistency, and inoculation.
Competency
Think about going in for critical heart or eye surgery. Odds are that you would want a seasoned doctor that has about a thousand or so of these operations under his belt — preferably performing 20 of these a week for the past 20 years. When it comes to something that serious, you would place your trust in the most experienced physically and mentally competent practitioner. When it comes to surviving extreme physical violence, why wouldn’t you want that same competency to ensure your safety and that of those you care most about?
“Repetition is the mother of all skill” is a quote attributed to the hard skills masters of antiquity, dating back to ancient Rome. In meaningful training, the key to competency is nothing more than a countless number of precisely executed repetitions.
Practice makes permanent. As poor, or shoddy practice can create training scars, so does perfect practice (technique executed correctly) make permanent. The greater your competency the greater your confidence. The greater your confidence the lower your stress.
Consistency
The learning process is nothing more than differentiating “right” from “wrong.” The only way to truly learn is by making mistakes. Only by doing something wrong can you know its opposite — doing something right. For example, there are a hundred things you can do wrong when shooting that cause you to miss a target.
However, there’s only one way not to miss a target and that is to align the muzzle with the target and break the shot without disturbing that alignment. Sounds simple until you try to do it. Apply even the slightest layer of complexity such as speed, distance, movement, cost for failure et al and you introduce factors that directly impact your consistency.
If you’re not making mistakes, then you’re not training for consistency.
Dirty Harry once said, “A man’s got to know his own limitations”. Do you know where is the very edge of your skills envelope? Do you work a specific technique repeatedly pushing the process until your wheels fall off?
How far can you go physically and mentally before you step outside that skills envelope or involuntarily let up on that mental gas pedal? It takes the combination of both physical and mental consistency to perform well under duress. One will not work without the other.
The expert can get it right, but the professional cannot do it wrong.
Building consistency on a solid foundation of competence exponentially increases your confidence, which in turn further attenuates stress.
Inoculation
Place yourself in as close a situation as possible to real world physical violence by avoiding injury in balancing safety and reality of training. Such training methods as “force on force” employed by the military and law enforcement using dye marker cartridges like Simunitions (that can also introduce a pain element feedback to your training), Airsoft or digital electronic/video simulators (like fighter pilots use) that allow you to safely experience conditions similar to what you may experience in reality.
Being mentally inoculated is like hearing the same joke over and over again. The first time you hear a joke it may seem humorous but by the seventh time around it becomes an annoyance. The same applies to your exposure to physical violence via repeatedly placing yourself in similar conditions.
Along with any active threat come three conditions which cause the human mind to become flustered. These are a scenario that is new, unfamiliar and threatening. By the sheer number of repetitions in training and having made more mistakes than not, there’s nothing new. Any such newness is displaced by hard-earned competency. Pushing the edge of your skills envelope creates a new and expanded comfort zone of familiar ground where there is no longer anything unfamiliar. Inoculating your mind against threatening situations attenuates the tendency to become flustered.
Conclusion
Replacing new, unfamiliar, and threatening with competency, consistency, and inoculation are what allow you to go into action with the greatest speed which a man’s muscles are capable, but mentally unflustered.