Category: Pistol

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A New Era: My Sig Sauer P320 X5 Legion

S&W M&P9 Full Size

After almost 9 years with the M&P9 platform it was finally time to move on. I own three M&P9 Full Size guns, one Compact, and a Shield. All have Apex Action Enhancement Kits. All have either Trijicon HD night sights or red dots. All served me very well for a very long time.

Then I failed equipment check at a major match this year when my striker block safety failed due to excessive wear. I quickly spent a fair amount of time and money making all these guns of various ages and round counts work flawlessly. New striker assemblies, new spring kits, new barrels, etc. Everything was back to normal. I could breathe again.

Sig Sauer P320 X Five Legion

Then one day on my way to a match, MikeM says “You know, there’s an ‘event’ at the Sig Pro Shop today”. Oh brother! I had long appreciated the Sig P320 X5 that PaulS has been shooting for a couple of seasons. I even declared “If I was starting out today, that’s the gun I would shoot”. Then this summer Sig released the X5 Legion: a heavy-weight version of the X5 with an already excellent trigger. With that in mind It was all I could do to wait through the match!

We arrived at the Pro Shop to find that all the X5 Legions they had in stock were gone except the one I had reserved. I convinced the sales guy to swap out the 17-round mag tubes for 10-round versions (for matches in Massachusetts) then bought another four 21-round mags for USPSA use. My buddy Paul agreed to loan me a Leupold Deltapoint Pro until the Romeo1 Pro was released and away we went.

My first impressions shooting this gun were very favorable. The ergonomics are magnificent. It actually feels very similar to an STI Edge. The weight and balance are wonderful. The very heavy barrel, tungsten-infused grip module, and massively lightened slide make for a very stable pistol while firing. The trigger is very good but I still got a Gray Guns competition kit for it which I installed immediately.

Even though the trigger weight was unchanged at 3.5 lbs. I liked the curved trigger and the reduced over-travel/reset of the GG system. The curved trigger shortens the length of pull slightly and I just prefer the feel. I also polished the FCU and trigger bar such that the pull weight is now down to 3 lbs. It’s not as light as the Apex CompAEK systems I put in all my M&P9s, not to mention the absolutely minimal over-travel and reset, but it’s still an excellent trigger. Perhaps someone will develop a similarly short and light system for this gun (are you listening Scott Folk???) but given all the other benefits I can live with it as-is.

A few days before the 2019 Life Free or Die New Hampshire IDPA championship I got my hands on a Romeo1 Pro sight and installed it on the gun. Going from a 2.5moa dot on the Deltapoint Pro to the 6moa of the R1Pro made an already easy-to-shoot platform even better. Gone are the days of my YouTube videos where I say “Where’s the <bleeping> dot???”

After learning the ins and outs of the P320 I must say I am thoroughly impressed. I wasn’t at all sure I would like the modular system but I really think it makes a lot of sense. My next purchase will be a P320 X-Compact to replace my M&P9c carry gun!

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M&P Extended Basepads for 2017

Carry Optics table start

With several sports allowing 140mm magazines in their 9mm-friendly divisions, and USPSA’s recent rule change removing round limits for Carry Optics, many competitors are in search of a magazine extension to convert factory magazines to the largest size allowable. Several manufacturers have products available ranging from $24.00 to over $40.00 but not all are created equal.  Continue reading “M&P Extended Basepads for 2017”

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Trijicon HD Night Sights: get some!

TrijiHD_M&P
Trijicon HD – M&P Model

I shot my first IDPA BUG Nationals in November of 2014 and it was a great experience. The only problems were with low-light stages. I’ve shot a fair amount of these at local IDPA matches and using a flashlight has always worked fine but in this case the light levels were such that I could see the targets OK but the gun was essentially invisible in my hands. I resolved to find a better solution. Continue reading “Trijicon HD Night Sights: get some!”

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Mec-Gar 1911 8-Round Magazines: my favorite.

Mec-Gar 1911 8 RD shiny
Mec-Gar 17-7 Stainless 8rd. Magazine MGCG4508SPF

In the spring of 2013 I decided to shoot USPSA Single Stack division for a change. I had two factory Springfield Armory magazines for my TRP but those only held 7 rounds. I also had a bunch of Chip McCormack 10-round magazines that I had used for Limited/10 a few years ago but for Single Stack I needed some 8-round magazines. I looked around at Wilson Combat and CMC, both of which have very good reputations, but I noticed quite a few people were mentioning Mec-Gar as a good alternative to the big-name mags.  Continue reading “Mec-Gar 1911 8-Round Magazines: my favorite.”

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Pistol Review: S&W 22A

S&W 22A 5.5″ barrel model

Some years ago I found myself in the local gun shop looking at the various pistols when I found myself staring at a pistol I’d never seen before. It was a blocky looking thing with a Weaver rail covering the entire top of the gun. This was my first encounter with the Smith & Wesson 22A, a semi-auto .22lr pistol. Having shot the Rugers and Buckmarks forever I was intrigued by this pistol. It had a more classic semi-auto look and the price was right so I bought it. Continue reading “Pistol Review: S&W 22A”

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Review: Berretta 92FS

In the 1970’s and ’80’s the US military held a competition to select the replacement for the 1911. The new pistol would be required to fire the 9mm NATO cartridge and would be have to meet rigorous reliability and durability standards. After most of two decades and several restarts, the Beretta 92F was selected, narrowly beating the Sig P226 mostly due to cost. Designated the M9, this pistol’s story bears some similarity to the M16 rifle. Both were to use a NATO-standard round and both Continue reading “Review: Berretta 92FS”

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Pistol Review: Ruger LC9

Ruger LC9

When I first heard about Ruger’s follow-up to the LCP, the LC9, I was immediately interested. On a personal level I find the idea of using 9mm for a deep-concealment pistol very attractive. I like keeping my calibers to a minimum and since I reload 9mm it makes practicing a lot simpler and cheaper. In the case of .380 ammo, much cheaper. So it was very exciting when I finally got the chance to shoot one yesterday. Continue reading “Pistol Review: Ruger LC9”

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USPSA Pistol Shooting: Managing the Mag Release

The modern semi-automatic pistol uses a single or double-stack magazine held in place by a catch. To remove the magazine requires pressing a magazine release button which disengages the catch and allows the magazine to fall free. Pistols normally have this button located on the left side of the grip frame, just aft of the bottom of the trigger guard. For many right-handed shooters this is perfectly functional, allowing the right thumb to shift slightly to press the mag release but not so easy that the mag is dropped inadvertently.

Unfortunately there are quite a few people that can’t easily reach the mag release so they have to pivot the pistol counter-clockwise about 45 degrees to allow the thumb to reach. For those of us in USPSA, this can be a real problem, especially when moving or turning to the left. The trouble relates to that all-important safety rule: the 180. At no time is the muzzle of a shooter’s pistol allowed to break the 180-degree plane that separates up-range from down-range. When shooting my SR9, the sticky mag release (even after it was massaged it was still really stiff) would often require that I pivot the gun even further t0 get a good, solid punch with my thumb. I had a few very close calls at matches that made me change how I held the pistol during mag changes: I had to hold the pistol to my right, well offline so that even with the pivot it was well short of breaking the 180.

I’ve heard arguments from 1911 shooters that this is just a part of life and that everyone should be able to flip the gun to reach the mag release then flip it back to shoot. They claim that this is actually a safety feature to avoid accidentally dropping the mag. Well, I rather doubt that John Moses Browning intended for his large-handed brethren to be able to operate the pistol easily while the rest of us were kept safe from ourselves by not being able to reach the release. No, in fact I think that he simply designed the gun as best he could to work well for most of his intended customers.

When I recently switched from the SR9 to the M&P9 I found that while the mag release was vastly superior to that of the SR9, it was still really tough to insure that I could reach it every single time, even with the smallest “palm swell” insert on the backstrap. There were some memorable miscues where I just couldn’t make it happen. This got me thinking…

This past summer (2010) I had a chance to shoot Bill’s Sig 226 for a week. He had the mag release switched to the right side since he is a lefty. After some fiddling around, I determined that using the middle finger of my right hand to punch the mag release worked really well. It allowed my trigger finger to index high along the slide, where it naturally tends to go, and required no pivoting of the pistol at all. Maybe this would work for the M&P.

I looked over the manual and switching the mag release from left to right (and vice-versa) was incredibly easy, requiring only a small punch, screwdriver, or even a knife blade. I made the change and haven’t looked back. I can’t believe how easy it is to drop the mags this way! The M&P has a raised, stippled button, which really helps but having it on the right side is clearly better for me and I have never accidentally dropped a mag after about 5k rounds. Not only that but my mag changes are noticeably quicker.

So, if you have small hands this might be a good solution. And if you have an M&P, you can try it both ways during your next visit to the range and see for yourself.

Now, where’s that Brownells catalog? I need to order a Lefty mag release for my 1911!

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Ruger Super Blackhawk: singularly unsubtle .44 Magnum

I’ve long been a fan of .44 Magnum revolvers. Like many of us, I first saw one of these in the Dirty Harry movies. The venerable Model 29 carried by Inspector Callahan had been around almost two decades before the first film but what most people don’t know is that it was not in fact the first .44 Magnum on the market. It was beaten to market by several months in 1956 by Bill Ruger’s Blackhawk. The story of how this happened remains shrouded in mystery but the commonly-held assumption is that a Ruger employee found some brass on the range where the round was being tested and brought it back to the armory. Regardless of its genesis, the Blackhawk has secured a place in American firearms history that is still being written.

When Kevin told me he was going to sell his New Model Super Blackhawk, I knew I had to have it. I had already shot it many times and given its history I could not resist. From what I can tell the pistol was manufactured in 1987. The gun is very rugged. The frame is extremely solid and is built to shoot full-power .44 Magnum loads all day long. This was in fact Kevin’s “Bush Gun” when he lived in Alaska. There are not many pistols in the world that can be depended on to stop a Brown Bear but with 300gr FMJ bullets traveling at 1,200 fps, the only real question is “can I make the shot?”

The pistol has a really beefy cylinder too, which it needs of course to handle the high pressures of the round. It also has an adjustable rear sight and a scope rail on top. For safety there is a trigger bar separating the hammer and firing pin, protecting against impact-related accidental discharge. Being a single-action-only pistol and with a one-round-at-a-time loading and unloading scheme, it is not a gun for rapid firing and reloading, although I’ve seen Cowboy shooters do an impressive job while “fanning” the hammer.

I have to say that this is in fact one of my favorite guns. There’s just something about shooting it that is very gratifying. The trigger is light and crisp. The recoil of full-power loads is considerable but the results are equally impressive. From a home defense perspective this pistol is outstanding, provided you can become comfortable handling it. It is small enough to wield in close quarters but powerful enough to stop any threat. In fact, the sight of the weapon alone would give most intruders pause. The fireball from the muzzle blast is also spectacular, especially in low/no light.

Arguably the best feature of this revolver is that it is inexpensive. It is also very accurate, reliable and durable. And you never know when you might run into a Cape Buffalo in your yard 😉