toughest most rugged pistol ever made

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the Makarov is less powerful than the 38 special and the .38 is well proven to be feeble.
The round isn't in question, the platform that fires it is. While I agree there are better choices, I personally do not feel undergunned with either a CZ82 or a EG Makarov...

Either of which or pretty damn tough. Not my first choice of "the pistol that wouldn't die", but they're high on my list.
 
I believe you are correct. Of course, I didn't say, nor even imply that it could. What I said had nothing to do with how the gun got damaged. I merely pointed out that the gun in the picture could be returned to working condition in a couple of minutes with a pocketknife while a metal gun with similar damage would require tools to fix--assuming it could be fixed.
OK, and I agree, but what kind of apocalyptic event would be required to do that to a metal framed gun? Dragging it behind your bumper for two miles on a gravel road?
 
so somebody without real knowledge about the subject "doesn't feel undergunned", so what? many feel ok with a .25 Raven, too. Many millions of people, in fact.
I fail to see your point. If you're hinting at caliber choice, you've contradicted yourself.

I can purchase 9x18 ammunition that is more than suited to the task of HD/SD, not to mention being fired in only one of three platforms that can handle it. That's damned tough to fire Buffalo Bore +P.

The Mak is plenty tough. As stated, not my choice initially, but high on my list.
 
OK, and I agree, but what kind of apocalyptic event would be required to do that to a metal framed gun? Dragging it behind your bumper for two miles on a gravel road?
Crazy things happen to items that get carried around on a daily basis. For example, nobody in their right mind would let a pet play with a gun, or even leave one lying around where that might be a likely outcome, but I've even heard of a situation where a gun, while unattended, got chewed on by a dog. How crazy is that? ;)

And yes, guns do end up on the road, getting run over and generally banged around violently from time to time. In a situation like that, the grip-frame/mag well is the part of the gun that's the least supported and most likely to be deformed or suffer significant damage. The barrel/slide area are very sturdy compared to the grip frame/mag well area.
 
What do you consider to be the toughest, most rugged pistol ever made? Tough as in beat it with a sledgehammer, run over it with a truck, bury it for 10 years and still count on it to function. The only requirement is that it be semi automatic and chambered in something from .380 to .45acp.

The only realistic aspect of that for me is a 10 year burial, would be done in an air-locked plastic bag, and then put into a tupper-ware like plastic container sealed with duct tape.

Sledgehammers and vehicle run overs? Steel: 1911s or the 3rd gen Smiths.
 
If the thread is about "toughest, most rugged" then a plastic chew toy is right out. Glocks are great guns, but not the toughest, most rugged. Not by a long shot. What if poochy had chewed off the trigger? Your pocket knife isn't gonna fix that.
 
The Ruger P Series is one of the toughest pistols made. When they were doing development on the P85, Ruger had 3 employees doing firing torture tests to see how many rounds could be fired until there was a parts breakage. When those 3 guys eventually died of old age, Ruger put 3 new guys in that job and it took hundreds of thousands of rounds before the $2 extractor broke on one of the pistols. The died of old age comment was a joke, but the hundreds of thousands of rounds comment is true.
 
And yes, guns do end up on the road, getting run over and generally banged around violently from time to time. In a situation like that, the grip-frame/mag well is the part of the gun that's the least supported and most likely to be deformed or suffer significant damage. The barrel/slide area are very sturdy compared to the grip frame/mag well area.

I know you are going to think that I'm lying about this, but I promise that I am not. My house was burglarized in 1991, before I owned a gun safe. The thieving bastards stripped my pillowcases and used them to collect my stuff. My bedside gun at the time was a Springfield Armory 1911 and it got dumped into a pillowcase with a bandolier of shotshells and some other stuff I don't remember. Someone saw them carrying stuff out and so they left in a hurry. The pillowcase with the 1911 fell out of the bed of their truck when they drove off and it landed in the middle of the road. One of the responding police officers spotted in in the middle of the highway and brought it into the house. It had been run over a number of times because the pillowcase was torn and most of the shotgun shells were popped open and oblong.

The 1911 had a new scratch on the slide. It was still cocked and locked. The police took it as evidence and dusted it for prints.

When I got it back some months later it had been unloaded. I filled up the mag, racked the slide and let fly. It functioned perfectly and still does 20+ years later. So I have crossed "run over it repeatedly" as one of the ways to break a 1911.
 
What if poochy had chewed off the trigger?
"What if...?" Is fun because you can make it into anything you want, even if no one has ever heard of it happening and even if it's not really plausible.
Glocks are great guns, but not the toughest, most rugged.
I tend to agree that they're not at the absolute top of the list, however it's not because they have plastic frames that can melt if you put them in a fire or because if you give them to a dog it can break them, it's because the coiled trigger return springs break now and then and because the stock front sights loosen up if you do a lot of holster work with them.
...into a fire for a certain time frame...
By the way, your idea of testing guns by putting them in a fire is problematic--it will ruin any gun.

1. Many metal-framed guns have plastic parts, and if you melt those parts, the guns will become non-functional. Even guns that are all-metal in every other respect often have plastic magazine followers and floorplates.

2. If the gun gets tested in the loaded state, the rounds going off in the magazine are almost certainly going to cause something to break.

3. Even if you can find a gun that is truly all metal--no plastic at all in any part of the gun or magazine--and even if you put it in the fire unloaded, it will still be ruined. At best, the springs will lose their temper and that will cause it to cease to function, at worst, critical parts of the gun can be weakened to the point that a catastrophic failure results if the springs are replaced and the gun is fired.

Besides, you need to look at the big picture. Every gun I'm aware of has at least one weakness that can be used to easily render it non-functional. If your goal is to rule out one particular gun or class of guns, you can focus on that single feature to the exclusion of all others to try to "make your point".

Or, you can look at the big picture and compare the various contenders on a more even playing field if you really want to learn something.

Depends on your goal, I guess.
So I have crossed "run over it repeatedly" as one of the ways to break a 1911.
Well, if you want to be totally accurate, you crossed out "being dropped on the road and possibly run over" as a way to break a 1911. There's no way to tell if, or how many times it was run over even if you can verify some of the other objects got run over more than once.

Besides, I have no problem believing that a 1911 (or virtually any gun for that matter) could survive being run over without functional damage. That's not at all the same thing as saying they CAN'T be damaged by being run over. It all depends on a number of things.

I had my foot run over many years ago and was totally uninjured. The car was small and the tire didn't get far enough up on my instep to smash things flat. But I'm certainly not going to state that my feet are impervious to injury from being run over on the basis of that experience.
 
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Am I the only one that finds it funny that the OP posts a clearly loaded question, and then doesn't even reply to any of the answers in the thread?
 
When Ruger introduced the -Six series centerfire revolvers their sales reps were known to demonstrate the toughness of the design by tossing them around the range, driving over them and then shooting targets with them.

John
 
JohnBT

I remember a similar story years ago concerning the then new Security Six and Bill Ruger. As the story goes Mr. Ruger wanted to show off his latest revolver design to a select group of people before the gun was actually introduced. So they took a Security Six frame, placed it in a remote firing machine rest, screwed in a solid barrel blank, and proceeded to fire six proof loads through it. They then replaced the solid barrel with a regular barrel and fired another six proof loads. The gun functioned perfectly without any damage being done to the frame or the cylinder.

Of course I have no way of knowing if any of this ever occured but I did think at the time, given the overall design and solid construction of the Security Six, that there was a certain amount of plausability to the story.
 
I'd say the 1911 .45 ACP. It's been tested in every climate in the world for over 100 years under tougher conditions than any civilian will likely encounter. If it can survive sevice in Mexico,Hondurus, Saipan,Sicily, North Africa, Tarawa, France. Korea, and Viet Nam just to name a few, then it will probably stand up to anything you or I do to it.
 
Most modern combat handguns are more rugged then their owner. So unless you are a superhero you will die before your handgun does (that includes being chewed on by a dog or tossed into a fire)
 
" So they took a Security Six frame, placed it in a remote firing machine rest, screwed in a solid barrel blank, and proceeded to fire six proof loads through it. They then replaced the solid barrel with a regular barrel and fired another six proof loads. The gun functioned perfectly without any damage being done to the frame or the cylinder."

I've heard that from a couple of different people and read it in one or two articles.
 
if you don't plug the 'backstrap' of your glock

18161-glock-plug-22.jpg

it will perform a lot less magically than you think it will in your torture tests and environmental exposure.

that's the glock kryptonite.
 
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