OK, Elusive Wapiti started it with his recent post about acquiring a Taurus .45 1911-style firearm. It kick-started some of my thinking processes and I thought it would be a good opportunity to take a break from what is becoming a pattern here at the-spearhead of bemoaning how bad men have it and how awful women are these days and talk a little bit about the role of firearms and taking responsibility for one’s own protection and one’s own life and their significance for men.
A quote you will see a lot on 2nd Amendment oriented boards is -
“When seconds count, the police are just minutes away.”
In fact, this is not quite accurate – “minutes” can actually be “hours”, and the US courts have ruled that LEOs (Law Enforcement Officers) actually have no hard responsibility to protect individual citizens. (Police Have No Duty To Protect Individuals, Text of H.R. 17: Citizens’ Self-Defense Act of 2009) Their responsibility is to maintain “public order” – full stop.
What this means is that it remains our individual responsibility to protect ourselves and those we love. In the cultural climate of Marriage 2.0 the courts have focused exclusively on holding men to the “provider” portion of the old “protect and provide” role, and have conveniently ignored the “protect” part of it.
EW also wrote a recent post on needing male “leaders.” Typically, a lot of people interpreted this as meaning being a Spartacus who shows up to lead a slave revolt. However, I think the very use of the word “leader” introduces a lot of confusing baggage to cloud the issue of what traits have traditionally been considered “masculine” and which of those traits men today need to hold on to and aspire to. There are lots of ways to describe them, but in order to simplify the discussion I suggest we boil them down to 3 things – self reliance, initiative, and responsibility.
Or – a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.
It is a very feminine strategy to caterwaul as loudly as possible about what victims they are and how they will surely perish if men do not find a way to “empower” (meaning “rescue”) them. It is a very masculine strategy to be self-reliant and take the initiative and be responsible for the quality of one’s own life.
If a psychotic criminal like Steven Hayes invades your home and threatens you and your family, the buck stops with you to tell him that you won’t allow it. By the time the LEOs show up, if they bother to show up at all, it will be too late for someone you care about. I don’t know about you, but when I am engaged in an argument with a psychotic criminal in the form -
Psychotic-Criminal – “I’m going to hurt you and your family”
Me – “No, you are not.”
P-C – “Yes, I am.”
I want the argument to be over ASAP.
And, when it comes to ending arguments with PCs, when you really need to “Git ‘R Done”, there is the .45 acp… and then there is everything else. The classic design for the .45 is called the M1911 and was designed by John Browning in 1904. The 1911 designation comes from that being the year when it was adopted by the US military as a standard issue weapon. The US military had gradually moved away from the old single-action .45 revolver (the famous, or infamous, Colt “Peacemaker”) to double-action revolvers using the .38 Long Colt cartridge. While the double-actions allowed more rapid firing than the single-actions, the .38 caliber (technically a .36 cal, same diameter as the 9mm) cartridge proved to be under powered for what it needed to do.
During the Moro Rebellion in the Phillipines the Moro warriors used leather armor and drugs to reduce or endure the wounds that the lighter cartridge was capable of inflicting, and were over-running the US positions. A call went out to the military to drag as many old .45 Colt “Peacemakers” out of mothballs as they could find, and to come up with a cartridge with more stopping power than the .38 LC. The result was a new firearm design – the autoloader – which combined the relatively rapid fire capability of the double action revolvers with a larger, more powerful, cartridge. The result was the .45 cal acp (Automatic Colt Pistol) design.
Both the 1911 pistol and the .45 acp cartridge have proven to be among the most successful firearm designs ever created. Next year will be the 100th anniversary of the adoption of the M1911, and it has never gone out of style. There was a period in the late part of the 20th century when there was a trend toward adopting a more international standard of the 9mm (Luger), but a drawn out battle between FBI agents and two bank robbers in Miami in 1986 had similar results to the Moro Rebellion and proved that the lighter .36 cal cartridges just did not get the job done. The FBI, like the Army had done 80 years earlier, sought a more powerful cartridge – which led to the development of the 10mm. However, the 10mm was such a hand cannon that most agents found it too much to handle, so they cut it down and it became the .40 cal Smith & Wesson. Rather than wait around for the new cartridge to get perfected and become accepted, a lot of LEOs simply dusted off their old M1911s and went back to carrying them.
The M1911 is not the only design which uses the .45 acp, but it remains THE classic. Virtually every major firearm manufacturer makes at least one variation on the 1911 design, and some – like Springfield and Kimber – make several.
Now, I have no intention of igniting the tired old revolver vs autoloader debate, nor inciting another round of the caliber wars. But, I would like to talk about some of the options that a man who takes the intiative and responsibility to protect himself and his family has in choosing a .45 acp. There are custom built and tuned match-grade .45s, but like Rolex watches they tend to be more about status than pure utility. A man who cares more about accurate time than impressing someone can do fine with a watch that costs far less than $10,000. And a man who wants a reliable piece of “emergency equipment” for protection of self and family has a variety of very good choices which are very affordable.
My personal favorite in a 1911 design is the Dan Wesson Commander Bobtail. I think it is the tightest made mass production 1911 out there. Besides that, it is just absolutely beautiful to look at. They ain’t cheap, around $1200, but neither is my life – which I think is worth a whole lot more than $1200, regardless of what Psychotic-Criminals think.
At the other end of the mass market 1911 price point is the Firestorm American Classic. It is not quite the quality, particularly the fit and finish, of the Dan Wesson CBOB, but it can be had for about 1/3rd the price and still has features of much higher-end pieces. Personally, I think it is the best value on the market today. It has a lifetime warranty, and the company provides excellent customer service. They are about as hard to find as the DW-CBOB because they get snapped up almost instantly, but if you find one it can generally be had for $400-$450.
Among the non-1911 designs is the Bersa Thunder .45 Ultra Compact. Bersa is one of the best kept secrets of the firearms world. They are a major supplier to police departments around the world, and their emphasis is about 99% quality and utility and about 1% looks. They are not the prettiest guns in the world to look at, but if someone is buying them only to look at they probably have a lot more money to spend than most of us do.
Finally, Kahr Arms includes several .45 acp models in its line of polymer based pistols. While there is a certain paradox in putting a cartridge as large and heavy as the .45 acp in a gun designed specifically to be light in weight, Kahr manages to make the compromise work. I would add the caveat that this is probably a “when you really need it” piece and would not make it a range gun to put lots of rounds through. To me, the 9mm+polymer design is the sweet spot and I would be concerned about rapid wear with heavier loads. In this line I would definitely go with the higher end PM series over the budget CW series.
I know that I haven’t even scratched the surface of the available offerings for this fine cartridge. Smith and Wesson also makes it in their M&P series (as well as a 1911), along with Heckler & Koch, Sig Sauer, Ruger, and most of the other big name manufacturers. The cartridge can even be used in revolvers by using a moon clip. My intention was to offer a sampler some of the excellent choices that a man who decides to step up, lead, take responsibility, and exercise the right which those of us in the United States are guaranteed by the 2nd amendment to our constitution to protect ourselves and those we love.
