1911: A Century Of Service!

The United States Military embraced John M. Browning's pistol 100 years ago today.    There are darn few inventions from a century ago that are still being used, in basically the same form as they were introduced.  I grew up watching westerns, and I pretty well got stuck on single action revolvers, lever actions, and single shot rifles.  Engineering Johnson was raised shooting what I had, so he went out in the world without ever having shot a semi-auto of any kind.  He started reading gun blogs while he was away at school, and broadened his firearm horizons a bit.  His first firearm purchase was one of these:

He soon had me educated in the operation of his new beauty, and now when I visit gun stores I spend a good bit of the time checking out the various 1911's behind the glass.  The last time I was at Cabela's in St. Louis, they had a Cimaron 1911 in a polished blue finish, and with a holster correct for WWI; and one of the new Remington 1911's, plus a Taurus, and a host of Kimbers.  While I was visiting Bea last week, we stopped at Fin and Feather in Iowa City, and they had a good variety of 1911's, too.  They had one of the Remingtons priced at $650, and that made me wish that I had been carrying some mad money. 

If you want to learn about Browning's .45 before you go shopping, there is plenty of information (and opinions) on the blogs, and one of the best places to start is Xavier Thoughts.  He has a post up on his front page right now about evaluating used .45's.  At the end of that post you will see a label for '1911 Basics.'
Click on that label to read more of Xavier's thoughts. 

Now let's visit Jeff Quinn from GunBlast.com, and watch him check out one of the newest 1911's to come on the market. 



Click over to The Anarchangel for an educational post about the Colt 1911,  and over to Backwoods Home Magazine for Massad Ayoob's 1911 reminiscing.