TargetTalk

Can anyone help me understand the reasons behind the choices of weapon here. The 1911 is popular. Pardini makes a .45 look alike. Sig has the P210 in 9mm and 7.65 with the new GSR in .45. Revolvers have come and gone in popularity with S&W, Korth and Manurhin. I may have missed a few. With triggers being so important, why does'nt one gun come to the top?

the 1911 is the greatest handgun ever designed.

For US NRA shooting, which mandates a .45 for one stage, the 1911 has 93 years of history and gunsmithing skill behind it and NRA shooters are mildly more "buy american" than others, so its hard for any other gun to break into that niche. And american gunsmiths know how to make a 1911 trigger very good for the NRA rules, 4lbs I think.

for IPSC, and defense, see my first statement above.

For ISSF centerfire (and sport/standard too).... looks like Pardini/Walther/Hammerli are about equal

but that is just one guy's biased opinion

good shooting,

Poole
http://arizona.rifleshooting.com/

The 1911 is definately the dominant .45. There are also a lot of others used in IPSC. It's sort of a chicken and the egg type senario, are there there more 1911's around because they are good or are there just more around because there are more available. As for the ISSF center fire pistols i agree that those 3 makes are the most dominant but I think the Walther is far mor reliable and less finicky about ammo.

G'day,

Because we do not field shoot pistols in Australia and because ISSF has been the main centrefire firearm and given that we now have problems registering anything above .38 calibre (due to the piss poor polititians we have on the whole in Australia) we see a fair range of ISSF centrefire firearms. We see a lot of S&W (mainly model 14) Colts (not a lot now) Manurhin (but virtually none of the new ones since the change of manufacturing) and a few Toz revolvers. By far the more popular is the .32 semi automatic with Walther, Benneli, Pardini, Morini and the like being seen regularly. The Hammerli has very little following with most of the Hammerli 280 handed in at the buyback due to the price the government was paying for these plastic guns.

If I had to pick the most commonly seen firearm across the range of shooters from new to world class I would say it would be the S&W Model 14.

Cheers from down under
Aussie Bob

I think one gun has in fact percolated to the top of the heap in those competitions requiring the girth of the .45 caliber. I don’t think any of us will live long enough to see another weapon as successful both as a fighting gun and target gun as the 1911. However, I don’t believe it is
necessarily the best choice for bullseye or other precision shooting applications. There are other alternatives.

As we all know, the 1911 was originally designed as a fighting gun and a great deal of skilled smithing is initially required to accurize it and keep it in a condition demanded by precision shooters.

As Bill Poole pointed out, the “buy American” philosophy is one to which many US shooters subscribe. Those of us that bring a foreign made .45 to the line are not only rare but also met with indifferent shrugs from fellow competitors. It’s funny how bringing a Swiss or Russian .22 to that same firing line draws no attention whatsoever. I believe this is because the 1911 has become an indelible part of Americana. The knowledge base possessed by US gunsmiths, the cheap and easily available parts and the endless variety of grips, barrels, triggers and other accessories makes the 1911 platform very attractive.

I own a 1911 built from scratch by one of the most highly respected gunsmiths in the game. I also own a Pardini GT45 which has had no work performed on it whatsoever. Both guns perform flawlessly and I don’t believe there is any significant difference in accuracy of either
gun.

BUT - I like experimenting with triggers and this leads me to the major drawback of the 1911. While a good 1911 gunsmith may design a trigger that you THINK you might be satisfied with for now, once the trigger job is done - your stuck. That is unless you have the gunsmithing skills to
tear it down, replace and stone and polish this and that and then put it all back together. Or, you could just send the 1911 back to the gunsmith (at great expense if he’s not local) and hope he takes the time to listen to your suggestions or he was able to understand precisely what it is you want from a trigger. Then you can sit back and wait for your 1911 to be returned with a hopelessly unpredictable trigger job.

With all due respect to the 1911, it sucks if you want to do things like change the weight of the trigger, add more or less roll or crispness or take out the creep and clicks that even a professionally smithed 1911 gun is afflicted with.

With the Pardini, some very simple, user friendly adjustments will take care of all these adjustments and you don’t even have to field strip it to do it. The trigger in this gun can be made to feel as soft as butter or as crisp as glass - your choice - not the gunsmiths. This is a gun built with a competitor in mind, not a GI in a foxhole.

I am not un-American or anti 1911 - but I’m also not a sheep. I’m always looking for new and more interesting approaches to challenges. I paid $2000 for my 1911 and am very happy with this classic gun.

The Pardini GT45 is not only a joy to shoot, I can adjust it to my preferences on a whim without having to send it some snotty, defensive, condescending gunsmith who finds it necessary to
pontificate endlessly that his trigger job is the best in the industry.


The Pardini comes ready to shoot X’s right out of the box - no gun smith needed thank you very much.

The issue of triggers was the motivation for my question. Standard pistols typically have smooth, crisp triggers with a host of adjustments. The centerfire arena is dominated by the 1911 for all the reasons mentioned but the trigger does take some getting used to or I need a better gunsmith.

The Pardini 45 looks very nice as does the new Sig GSR. Revolvers are absolutely reliable but, again, the triggers, SA or DA are a different breed when compared to a Standard pistol.

Thor, I think you may have NRA centerfire and ISSF centerfire jumbled together. They're two very different events.

With NRA centerfire, the common attitude is that since you have to buy a .45 anyway for the .45 caliber portion of the match, you may as well use it for the centerfire match. This is particularly true since the slow-fire portion of the match is at 50 yards, and the .32 caliber guns rarely do well at that distance. Which means either a .38 or a .45 - and since you can get pretty much the same recoil with softball .45 loads as with .38 wadcutters, most shooters go to the .45. And since the 1911 is a cult in the United States - and since Pardini GT45s are very hard-to-get - it's become the standard.

ISSF centerfire is a very different game. The distance is 25 meters, and the MAXIMUM caliber is .38. On top of that, there is no timed or rapid-fire stage - there is a dueling fire stage, which requires that you raise the gun from the ready position and fire. So a revolver is no problem, and an inexpensive option. No one gun is truly dominant, due to the fact that there are so many good guns - Walther, Pardini, Hammerli, and Unique all make first-rate autoloaders, and I've heard that S&W M52s are popular as well. And S&W always knew how to make a good target revolver, not to mention Korth, Manuhrin, and the Russians.

Mike,


What makes you say the Pardini GT45 is very hard to get?? I made one call to Don Nygord and had one in 48 hours.

By the way, you did an excellent job of explaining the various discliplines along with their courses of fire and requirements.

Thank you, that does clear up some other questions I had.

Paul:
Thanks.

What I meant was that you can run down to almost any gun store and buy a 1911. Pick your maker. Get yourself a C&R license, and you can go for prewar Colts - or get a Sistema Colt and have a bullseye gunsmith rework it.

If you want a Pardini, you have to special-order it, provided you don't live in a hysterical state that won't let you buy one because it doesn't have this widget or gadget.

Gotcha Mike - good point

Hi

Just ordered a Les Baer .45 ACP Hardball gun. Should be here this week. I plan to shoot it in EVERYTHING I can. Don't have another centerfire pistol.

I think that the reason(s) that the 1911 model is so popular in the U.S. is that the other more popular guns are harder to accurize, and to shoot. My experiences are with the 1911, Ruger Mark II, and the Glock. Both the 1911 and Ruger have single action trigger (more like a rifle) while the Glock is more like a double action, a long, long, ............long, trigger pull. Makes Target shooting more difficult. Revolvers aren't as popular for the same reason. Shooting a revolver 5 times in 10 seconds is tough to do accurately. Yes, Mr. McGivern could teach you to fan it like in the movies, but you won't hit the bull.

By the way, I KNOW that S&W must make a single action .38 super that would be GREAT for bullseye, they have enough different models. I just don't like trying to figure out which is which.

Mike
Wichita KS