TGO David

I NEVER said that I'm the change anyone needs. I like things the way they are.

Of course, your comment was kind of negative too. Just saying. Become the change you wish to see.

It's both!

What I've been saying since my first comment in this thread, but people get so god damned vitriolic about it when you bring up their favorite sidearm. It's almost worse than talking politics or religion. Probably because the 1911 is a religion. Agreed. Man... you could have just stopped there. Back when I was looking to become a Marine, poolees weren't allowed to think they knew anything about anything. If you made the mistake of thinking you knew something, there was usually a mountain of an SSGT ready to help you see the error of your ways, usually via pushing them out until your lunch was on the grass in front of you. Back to your regularly scheduled religious debate. I'm pretty much done with any sort of useful contributions to the thread. I've said what I had to say.

Remember, some people are alive simply because it's illegal to kill them.

I agree with this statement.

You know, I stopped reading your post after I made it one sentence into it and saw that you were being a whiney-ass about my position as owner of this forum. I refuse to discuss anything with anyone who can't handle the fact that I have an opinion and that it has nothing to do with my position on staff.

Respectfully, personal experience shouldn't be the metric by which a service pistol is chosen for an entire branch of the armed forces. I'd rather they use unbiased data resulting from brutal testing. If the M&P fails that, so be it. I've personally witnessed all sorts of fluke **** in my life, but that doesn't mean that those instances were typical.

Broke, how? I've seen some high end 1911's choke and die on the range too. Does that mean they are crap?

That's idiotic. You really need to try floating that on M4C and see what sort of responses you get. Because it supports your opinion? C'mon... do you really think that the model 1911 is really state of the art for a fighting pistol? Look, I'm a 1911 fanboy but I also don't think they are the best gear that we can be supplying our troops. And our troops deserve the best gear they can get! But honestly, sometimes I think if I posted that the sky was blue outside, some folks on this forum would argue with me just because it was me who said it.

The good thing about lights is they come down a lot easier than they go up.

I've been waiting for "good weather" to take down the last of the Christmas lights and finally decided to just man the f-up and go take them down this morning in the snow. My HOA was starting to get on to me on Facebook anyway. (inside joke)

How has it evolved and been improved upon?

It's pretty clear that the person who wrote the article was not very well versed in the weapons platform about which they were writing.

Do you think John Moses Browning wouldn't have been a little proud of his creation back in 1915 as well? I don't think there is any room to question LAV's integrity on this matter regardless of the role he played in the creation of the HK45. Clearly you can see from that article that he still feels that HK dropped the ball on several aspects of the HK45 and was not shy on pointing it out. As for competition... unless you're shooting at targets that return fire, I'm not sure I can see that much of a correlation to how a 1911 runs in a game versus how it runs in the hostile environments of modern battlefields where there is no such thing as a time-out because your gun stopped running.

Here's some good reading on the HK45 and how Larry Vickers and Ken Hackathorn evolved it from the [at the time] ongoing effort to field a new 1911 for various .mil bodies. pistol-training.com » HK45 Interview with Ken Hackathorn and Larry Vickers It's kind of insightful.

I'm actually enjoying the snow. What I'm not enjoying is the amount of brine that TDOT and the various local governments feel they need to spray all over the damn place every time it might snow an inch or two, or the people who can't drive on it because they don't understand the concept of reduced traction due to adverse weather conditions. If you fix those two problems, it can snow all it wants and I'll be as happy as a clam.

Honestly I guess where I'm coming from here is that the USMC seems to be stuck in some sort of institutional timewarp where they can't divorce themselves from emotional attachment to an inanimate object. I have read first-hand reports from Marines who have personally seen piles of inoperable MEUSOC 1911's stacked in the Force Recon armory, keeping full-time Marine armorers busy and backlogged. Why not just use this as the impetus to switch to a modern platform with improved reliability, higher magazine capacity, better ergonomics, lighter construction, improved resistance to corrosion, identical accuracy between handguns (recognizing that almost no two 1911's with the slop required to be reliable are going to be similarly accurate) and the benefit of drop-in parts that modern handguns enjoy. 1911's require a lot of hand-fitting, after all. As 323ssplt pointed out, troops are hard on their weapons. As Larry Vickers has pointed out, running a combat 1911 means you either need to be a ruthless bastard about maintenance to keep it reliable, or have someone on staff who is. This seems to make choosing a 1911 counter-intuitive to the end-goal. There are clearly better platforms to be had. They may even be "plastic" guns.

I never said I felt that the Glock was the way to go. HK45, perhaps. M&P 45 perhaps. There are others that I'm too tired to think about but still, the 1911 platform -- as nice and nostalgic as it is -- is not exactly state of the fighting art anymore. And I'm a big 1911 fan.

Other than backward compatibility with their existing inventory of 1911 magazines, I find it hard to believe that they are looking at the 1911 platform still. There are others out there that would make better replacements for it, IMO.

Good thread.

This coming from someone who for about 12 years was a die-hard Mustang guy... anything but a Mustang. They have become like a--holes and elbows... everyone has them. I've been digging the SRT8 Challenger since they came out and think that would rock. I had an SRT8 300C a few years ago and the 6.1L Hemi is a beast. You'd love it.

I liked that brand in particular, but you have my attention...

As you probably are aware, I just ran through this myself. My budget was $40K and I needed four full doors, full-size truck, 4WD and torque. No one... and I mean no one... could touch the deals that I was seeing at the Nissan dealerships. To say that my wife and I are elated with our 2011 Titan Pro-4X would be an understatement. We've only put 200 miles on it so far but it absolutely puts a smile on our face every time we get into it. It may not be the truck for you after you've done your due diligence and the Pros / Cons don't stack up right, but you really should put it on your short list of vehicles to look at.