Photos by Jim Supica
This feature article, “I Have This Old Gun: Colt National Match,” appeared originally in the September 2005 issue of American Rifleman. To subscribe to the magazine, visit the NRA membership page and select American Rifleman as your member magazine.
I recently received an inquiry regarding an interesting variant of the ever-popular Government Model pistol. This particular one is a pre-World War II Colt M1911 pattern semi-automatic .45 ACP pistol with adjustable target sights marked “National Match.” The pistol is in very good condition and appears to have never been refinished. The serial number has a C prefix, and is in the 183,000 range.
These Pre-War National Match pistols were similar to the early Civilian Models and share the C serial number prefix. It was a special-production item from 1933 to 1941 and features a honed action and match-grade barrel. It was offered with either fixed sights or adjustable sights, and the latter sells for 150 to 200 percent more than what the fixed-sight variant will bring. These early examples made before World War II bring several times the price of post-war National Match models.
GUN: Pre-War National Match Colt Government Model
CONDITION: 98-percent original finish
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Some Old School Advertising!
By the way, in todays money that gun would run you about $1100! Grumpy
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HOW TO BUY YOUR FIRST HANDGUN
In these troubled times, a man should be armed. The best solution for achieving peaceful living is avoiding trouble, having good locks on your doors, and owning firearms. The specific needs (and wants) a person has for a firearm will vary from person to person, and, while no single gun will be the magic bullet to take care of them all, a good handgun will address most of them. If you’re in the market for a handgun, especially for your first one, there are a few things you should remember.
No gun will do it all
You need to decide what you want from the gun. Do you want to carry it for mobile self-defense? Do you want to leave it at home (or in your vehicle) for defense of home invasion or carjacking? Do you want to hunt, or do competition shooting? Will it be a backup gun for something else or the primary weapon? What are the laws in your state or province?
All of these questions should dictate towards what you choose. Larger handguns tend to hold more rounds, recoil less, have more neat features to aid in shooting, have better sights with a longer sight radius (distance between the front and back sights; longer is better) and tend to be easier to hold on to and shoot more accurately and faster.
Smaller handguns hold fewer rounds, recoil more than their larger brothers chambered for the same cartridge, are typically a little more Spartan in their features, and have more rudimentary sights that are closer together. Shooting a smaller handgun results in more recoil, longer times to get back on target, and a less forgiving weapon that makes you work more for accuracy.
A bunch of Glocks. Carry pistols have shorter barrels, shorter grips (and magazines), and recoil more, but they’re easier to hump around all day.
Home defense, car guns, and competition handguns are usually a semi-automatic, large pistol of a decently powered cartridge. Carry weapons are usually small semi-automatic pistols, or small revolvers, both shooting cartridges on the smaller end of the power range, while hunting handguns are usually large revolvers or semi-auto pistols shooting magnum cartridges.
What is good for you may not be good for others
Even if you’re a one-man army and don’t have to worry about getting a handgun your girl can use, any time anyone recommends any firearm to you, they are speaking from their own experience and not yours. What suits my hands and my eyes might not suit yours, and what feels good to me may not match you. The absolute best thing you can do is shoot a bunch of handguns before you buy one, and the best way to do that is have a friend with guns that will take you to the range for an afternoon. And, dudes, if you are that friend with the guns, it’s practically your duty to help your brother out so that he may learn and teach those who need his help in his turn.
Can you rack the slide on a given semi-auto pistol? Can you break it down for cleaning? Will you have the discipline to get multiple magazines and swap them occasionally so they are not left loaded forever? Would you rather have a gun that you can lightly oil, load, and put in a drawer and not touch for a year? How do you take recoil? How good is your vision and do you want night sights, a light, or a laser sight? Do you want a safety? What kind of trigger pull? All of these are good questions to ask yourself, and anyone else that will be routinely using the handgun, before you buy.
Revolvers And Semi-Automatic Pistols
A handgun is a firearm held in the hand. A revolver is a manual action handgun with a revolving cylinder of multiple firing chambers, and a semi-automatic (or autoloading) pistol is a firearm that holds multiple rounds in a magazine in the grip and uses the recoil or some of the propellant gas to operate the action. Some people use the term “pistol” to mean any handgun and others use it to mean semi-automatic handgun only.
Pick your poison; both will do the job.
Revolvers come in varying sizes and can have a barrel of moderate length all the way down to a 2-inch “snub nose.” The length of the barrel and the sight radius help in accurate shooting (longer is better), but the revolver is lighter and easier to conceal with a short barrel set-up. Smaller framed revolvers have 5 shots, larger frames have 6, and some magnum frames have 8.
The most commonly used revolver ammunition out there today is the 38 special and the 357 magnum. Despite the number difference (both are actually .357 inch diameter (or caliber) bullets), the two cartridges shoot the same bullets, and a revolver chambered in 357 magnum can shoot the less powerful (and less expensive) 38 special round. The magnum round is longer than the other, and prevents it from being chambered in a pistol not set up for it. Never attempt to shoot any magnum ammo from a handgun not rated for it; it can and will blow up in your hand.
Revolvers come in three action types: single action only, double action only, and single/double action. Single action only requires you to cock the hammer each time, and has a nice, short, crisp trigger pull. Double action has a long trigger pull, but cocks the hammer for you. Single/double allows you to choose either and is the most solid choice.
Semi-automatic pistols come in large and small sizes as well. Smaller sized semi’s come in variants of 5 to 8 shots, and the larger frame semi’s of up to 18 or so. Longer barrels and better sights with longer sight radii again translate to better shooting. Semi-autos typically come in single/double action variants like above, and striker fired, which is an internal action cocked by the slide movement.
There is an absolute plethora of semi-automatic pistol ammo out there. The four most common are the .380, the 9mm Luger, the 40S&W, and the 45 ACP. The .380 (also called 9mm short) became popular in the US relatively recently with the advent of pocket sized semi-automatics like the Ruger LCP. The 9mm Luger, also called 9mm Parabellum, has decent power in standard form, can be loaded hotter, is relatively cheap, doesn’t recoil much, and you can pack a lot in a magazine due to its narrow caliber.
45 ACP or 45 AUTO is a bigger bullet than the 9mm and is a solid, good shooting choice which only limits itself by taking up more room in the magazine and reducing the round count. 40 S&W (Smith and Wesson) is a bridge between the power of the 45 and the ammo capacity of the 9mm.
Get the biggest caliber that you can shoot comfortably and well from the size and type of handgun you want. If you do not like shooting your handgun, you will not practice, and you will not take it with you when you could need it. A .380 that is there beats a .44 magnum that you left home.
Brands
Firearm brands vary in quality and price range. I typically view brands in four categories, and I’ll briefly describe them below and list the common brands I see as fitting in them.
JUNK
Saturday night special old brands like Lorcin and Jennings fit in here, along with the modern brand of Hi-Point. These things have a high chance of malfunction. I would not buy these, not accept them as gifts, and not go near them.
A blown up Hi-Point. You don’t have to buy the most expensive gun out there; so don’t feel like you have to buy the cheapest.
BUDGET
These are pistols on the low end of the price spectrum which, while they compromise on fit and finish, will go bang and can be relied upon. They make good training guns, truck guns, and other uses that you wouldn’t want a high priced investment doing. I put Taurus, Rossi, Bersa, Kel-Tec, Chiappa, Rock Island Armory and similarly priced brands here. If you’re tight on money, buy something in this range.
MID-RANGE
These guns have good quality, solid mechanics, and shoot well. They’re a good measure of what a handgun should be, always work, and are fun to shoot. If you’re going to get one handgun, and call it good, get something from this price bracket. I consider modern Colt, modern Smith and Wesson, Ruger, Glock, Walther, Kahr, Springfield Armory, Steyr, Para Ordinance, and CZ here.
PREMIUM
These are the best, and are only beaten by custom guns. I put H&K, Sig Sauer, Browning/FNH, Kimber, old Colt and S&W revolvers, and Beretta here.
Closing
Hopefully, by now you’ve got a good idea of what you need a handgun to do, the features you need, an idea of a caliber choice or two, and some brands to keep an eye out for. Remember to always try before you buy, read the damn instruction manual, use good ammo, and, if you can’t make up your mind between two of them, buy both.
Never underestimate the capacity of the typical Amy Private to think literally.
(Source: Department of Defense)
My buddy was a medevac helicopter pilot flying UH-1H Hueys in the days prior to night vision goggles. Ours was a large training base with a veritable ocean of basic trainees. The training area upon which these young studs learned their trade was both desolate and dark. In the depth of night, it was a massive black hole devoid of artificial light of any sort.
It had been a more torrid summer than most, and a trainee had died of heat stroke a couple weeks before. Basic military training is arduous by design and this young man had succumbed to the toxic combination of dry arid heat and profligate exercise. The military system rightfully does not tolerate such stuff well, so there was a lot of command pressure to treat heat casualties aggressively. In this case, another basic trainee had fallen out during a night tactical movement. The drill instructors determined that he needed medical evacuation by air.
My buddy called through range control and got the range shut down. He chugged into the darkness trying to navigate by the dim light of a weak moon. The terrain was relatively flat and featureless even in daylight. Finding this field site in the dark in the era before GPS was going to take some serious pilotage.
My friend had radio contact with the unit in question via the range control net. This frequency was monitored by all the myriad training units in the field at the time. He called up the unit in question and asked them to point their flashlights skyward. In such a desolate space he figured this would be an easily identifiable way to locate the landing zone.
Alas, Army basic trainees are a terribly literal mob. The entire training area lit up with hundreds of tiny spots of light. My buddy sighed and then got back on the radio. He asked everybody not in the unit with the heat casualty to extinguish their flashlights. The training area went black again save a single glowing spot in the distance.
Time can be of the essence under circumstances such as these, so my friend called the unit again and asked that they get the casualty stripped down to his underwear and prepped for pickup. He also requested they have their trainees stand in a giant circle with their flashlights pointed upward to designate the landing zone. A few moments passed and a glowing circle appeared in the distance as if by magic. My medevac buddy set up an approach to land in the center of the circle and activated his landing light.
An approach into an unimproved landing zone unaided in the dark is indeed a squirrely thing, but it was something we trained to do regularly. You shoot a vector from where you sit to where you want to be and fly the aircraft along that line until touchdown, keeping your head on a swivel throughout for unexpected obstacles or unplanned eventualities. My friend landed the aircraft without incident.
Once the Huey was safely down my buddy glanced between his feet through the chin bubble and his heart stopped. There, stretched out atop an Army-issue litter underneath his roaring helicopter, was one severely dehydrated Army private. The several million-candlepower landing light burned some six-inches from his face. The long sharp WSPS (Wire Strike Protection System) blade had come to rest within a foot of his chest. The young man just lay there still, blinking in bewilderment. I can only imagine the poor kid’s thoughts as this massive flying machine landed directly on top of him.
In the confusion leading up to the landing the unit on the ground had prepared the young man and inexplicably oriented him in the center of the landing area. As luck would have it, they had landed with the skids parallel to the litter. Had the kid been crosswise the 10,500-pound helicopter would have crushed him to death.
Just about the time my buddy started breathing again his crew chief came over the intercom and said flatly, “Sir, take a look outside.”
Arrayed around the idling aircraft in a gigantic circle was an entire company of confused Army basic trainees dressed solely in their t-shirts and boxer shorts. They each obediently held their GI-issue angle head flashlights pointed at the helicopter. Never let it be said that Army privates have any hesitation doing what they’re told, even when it’s a little bit crazy.
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Guns: Gods of War | Full Movie
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