semi-automatics jam.
My Ruger Mark IV .22 stove pipes. It’s very, very, very, very frustrating. $600 gun. Takes a lot of the fun out of going to the range.
I’ve tried different brands of ammo. I’m looking for a gunsmith that I know won’t make the problem worse.
I keep a .38 S&W revolver for protection at home. I’ve fired it at the range. Never jams. Works everytime
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Revolvers were more dependable than auto-loader pistols. Easier to clean, easier to maintain, and could fire a wide range of bullet weights in various configurations. If a round didn’t fire, the shooter only had to pull the trigger again (double-action) or cock the hammer and pull the trigger (single-action).
Semi-autos were picky about which loads and bullets they would reliably fire. Dirt, mud, pocket lint, and mishandling could cause a semi-auto to misfire.
The .45 ACP M1911 semi-auto was popular because it worked. It also fired a heavy, large calibre bullet. Sometimes difficult to master, it had a repulation of stopping the bad guys. .45 Long Colt revolvers were dependable, and also had a reputation for stopping the bad guys. When your life is on the line, which do you chose? The very reliable six-shot revolver or the almost as reliable seven-shot pistol?
Beretta created a reliable semi-auto 9mm to replace the M1911. Glock was nowhere to be seen. When Glock entered the market they did so with a very reliable design and a great publicity campaign.
Plus, there was the infamous 1986 FBI Miami shootout after which large capacity handguns became much more popular.
The US Army went from, I believe, a .38 revolver to a .45 revolver when fighting in the Philippines because the .45 had better stopping power. Why did they go to the 1911A?
You have the option of sending the Mark IV back to Ruger for repair. just sayin’
Most soldiers most assuredly did no such thing. The pistol has always been a secondary weapon, of limited use and issue.
Another major reason that semis took so long to get accepted was that they were seen as “weapons of war” rather than “self defense.” Cops weren’t out-gunned yet, so the Official ine was that they carried a revolver in .38 Special because it wasn’t threatening and didn’t scare the populace like a .45 would.
The Army went partly back to using M1873 single action (and originally black powder) .45 cal revolvers over complaints about lethality of M1892 (and subsequent) model .38 cal revolvers in the Philippines. After that conflict it bought a small number of Colt commercial .45 revolvers M1909. So the ‘stopping power’ issue was why it chose .45 for the next general issue handgun. But the reason it was an automatic was general judgement of the advantages of (semi) automatic pistols even before they featured much larger magazines than revolvers, a judgement shared by almost all other armies in the early-mid 20th century.
The Army bought a lot more .45 cal revolvers from S&W and Colt during WWI, M1917’s, but that was simply because not enough M1911’s could be made.
Some US police agencies long used the M1911 or contemporaries, just not that many and not big city police forces generally.
I didn’t know Ruger does repairs. I’m sure mine is out of warranty. But I rather them fix it then have someone make it worse trying to fix it.
I’ll give them a call.
Ruger does do repairs, but their policy is to return guns to factory standards. For you, this isn’t a problem, but I personally know several people who returned guns to Ruger for repair or refinishing and had aftermarket/custom parts removed by the Ruger gunsmiths and replaced with plain vanilla factory parts. Ruger did not in all cases return the custom parts when they returned the gun. One gentleman was completely furious over the undoing of an expensive trigger job on his Redhawk. OTOH, if you are sending a plain vanilla gun back for work, it sometimes works the other way. I have returned guns to them that I had for years and they did the work for free a few times. Other times, like when the rear sight on a Ruger Ranch Rifle self-destructed under the mighty .223’s recoil, they billed me rather stiffly for replacement parts.
Not most but how secondary depends a lot on which Old Days. A late WWI US infantry division had a table of organization and equipment including 17,666 rifles and 11,913 handguns. An early WWII US infantry division had 6,761 rifles and only 1,157 handguns. The WWII division had 5,204 M1 carbines replacing a lot of the handguns* (only 90 sub machine guns and that didn’t increase a lot in official TO&E’s of infantry divisions later in WWII, but more SMG’s than that seem to have been around, and other types of units than infantry had more in their official TO&E’s).
In WWI most men of a US division besides ordinary riflemen had hand guns. In the WWII US set up men with a primary job other than rifleman usually had M1 carbines (in theory**), though there were some rifles throughout the official table. Generally officers would have pistols and perhaps also carbines, as would men with primary jobs which would prevent them easily carrying even a carbine (like the primary gunner in a machine gun team).
Back in WWI when pistols were issued on a much greater relative scale the type used in infantry units seemed to depend more on what was available when a particular division was outfitted than automatics for one purpose and revolvers another. As mentioned above the US bought a large number of commercial .45 revolvers in WWI to supplement M1911 production. It’s true though that some second line units would get revolvers. Like aviators, small arms on navy ships, non-combat units back in the states, etc. The old military .38 revolvers M1892-1905 were also still found in those uses in WWI and even II.
*besides the WWII division being smaller in manpower overall.
**in practice before enough M1 carbines were produced they’d usually also have rifles, often WWI produced ones.
Thank you for the repair information.
Really glad that I signed in here today.
And a result of that was the .40 cal S&W round.
In a roundabout way, it was. The FBI’s sub-optimal choices of cartridge and platform led to the development of the .40 S&W. Briefly, the mid-velocity loadings they desired could be achieved in a shorter case than the standard 10mm. A shorter round permitted a platform that was better suited to small statured and female agents than the rather large 1076 that they initially issued.
FYI, the .40 S&W is similar to the earlier .41 Action Express in many loadings. It was, possibly, the Fibbies’ involvement, even if only as tramping on their peckers, that made the .40 a success and the .41 AE a footnote.
The 1911 has the problem* of only giving 2-3 additional rounds over a revolver (i.e. 5-6 rounds to 8 total). It wasn’t until the 70s that the BHP’s influence in double stack capacity was seen in things like CZ 75.
As far as police caliber, it seems to have gone from .32 S&W to .38 Spl. to 9mm to .40 or .45, and more recently more are going back to 9mm. Does that sound correct? Was there ever widespread adoption of .357?
Another factor is the “tacticool” one - the civilian market follows the police and the military, and the police were rather conservative about adopting “new” technologies.
*Sorry internet god of the .45, please forgive me, the M1911 is unassailable and the greatest thing ever made, everything else just bounces off. I will make an offering to Saint Browning in repentance.
Your answer lies here.
Define “widespread.” The S&W Model 27/28 were standard issue to the California Highway Patrol for decades.
The PA State Police, as well as many local forces, issued them for decades as well.
NB:
.38 Long Colt, a black powder cartridge, was being replaced, not the common-today .38 Special which is a bit more powerful.
And the .45 Colt mentioned in the report is different than the 1911’s .45 ACP. The (much criticized) report decided that a.45 caliber was needed, and they opted to make a new one rather than adopt the ones tested. .45 Colt is a revolver round, which don’t tend to work well in semis due to the rim (exceptions of course exist, as well as the opposite though a moon clip is needed in that case).
Thanks. Widespread enough, I guess. I was mainly wondering whether they went past .38, which most were still using instead.
The question was how the US arrived at the 1911. They had already decided as early as 1900 that they wanted one of the newfangled autoloading pistols. The Thompson-Lagarde tests indicated it should be a .45 caliber.
I can only answer for New Jersey. We have semi-annual weapons qualifications. The course is from 1 yard hip shooting out to 25 yards. There is a day and a night phase. I can’t remember exactly how many rounds but a decent percentage of the shots are off hand unsupported.
What kind of accuracy is required to pass the various tests?