Here is my take on the whole matter. I will not involve military or caliber size as I have never been in the military and caliber has no bearing on anything whatsoever.
The modern firearm has not changed in over 100 years, really since the Mosin and Mauser came out.
I beg to differ. Whole new classes of firearms have appeared (e.g. the submachine gun, the assault rifle) have appeared since those two rifles you mentioned debuted. The effect of light machine guns and assault rifles has been considerable on infantry tactics as well, and it is the military for whom many if not most new weapons are designed.
The 1911 is an excellent design JMB did what he could with what he had. If he had access to modern tools and training I have a feeling that the pistol known as the 1911 would never have existed. CAD, CNC, computer simulations all would go a long way towards making a different gun. The 1911 was built for military use, and therefor it had to be one thing, reliable. The 1911 changed everything, and every semi auto handgun built since has been directly related to the 1911, as modern bolt rifles are directly related to the Mauser.
Again, I beg to differ. The Beretta 92, for example, does not derive from the Browning tilting barrel. Numerous smaller pistols like the PPK, SIG P232, et al. use operating systems that were not patented by Browning either.
Also, I think you are confusing cause and effect. Browning's design of the original 1911 and its prototypes was dictated far more by the customer requirements than the type of tools he had. He designed the pistol for the army, and it would have had the features the army wanted it to have, regardless of the tools available for its manufacture.
To me the OP's question was more aimed at the technology and not usability.
The 1911 is still a very good design that works well, however, most areas of complaint are personal issues, but I will state some areas I believe to be out of date.
The beaver tail needs to go, as does the hammer. Both are in the way and add weight.
Just what is the beavertail in the way of? The vast majority of users find it improves the ergonomics and pointability of the gun. As for the hammer, it does not need to go. Lots of modern designs retain that feature, rather than using a striker, and it is arguably more desirable on a military pistol, since a hammer gives a harder strike to the primer than a striker does, ensuring more reliable primer ignition.
Many companies are coming out, and many have been out for years, very small hammers. I actually like how Ruger did the rear of the action on the P345. But those are personal issues.
Now on the one issue I just feel needs to be fixed is the single action. A modern firearm should not have to be cocked, or locked and cocked. This is the only area I feel is outdated.
Please do not state your personal preference as though it were a universal truth that should be obvious to everyone else. The single action trigger is probably the single biggest reason for the 1911's continued popularity. It may be the only reason, since there is no other feature of the gun that is not equalled by other designs. Other pistols offer comparable reliability, accuracy, stopping power, and even more magazine capacity, but
not one has a better trigger. The single action trigger, and especially the 1911's particular design of the single action trigger mechanism has a shorter trigger pull, and a shorter trigger reset than
any other design. Only the single action permits this. Only the single action allows this, and allows it for every shot. In the hands of a well trained shooter, there is no other semi auto that is faster to an accurate first shot from the holster than a cocked and locked single action, and no other autoloader can be accurately fired more rapidly, again thanks to that single action trigger. It takes a bit more training to take advantage of this, but for those who do train enough, it is an advantage.
If you don't care for single action or cocked and locked carry, fine. Carry what you like best and what you shoot best. But your choice is not the final word, and there is nothing inherently unsafe or obsolete about a single action trigger. It's not for everyone, but it definitely still has a place.
When it comes to modern firearms there are many advantages, and some disadvantages. The advantages come in forms of technology that was not originally around when the 1911 was designed. One thing I do like on many modern firearms is the internal lock. It does not affect performance in any way.
Again I beg to differ. There are enough reported instances of that thing self engaging on S&W revolvers that I will not under any circumstances carry a gun that has one. It may be a very rare occurrence, but it does happen, and since this is so, and since I can still get guns that don't have one, I regard it as a completely unnecessary risk to have one on any gun of mine.
You want to secure the weapon? Fine, get a cable lock. I know you said those can be cut, but I think you are not perceiving the true purpose of cable locks or internal locks. They are not to prevent theft of the gun -- that's what safes are for. Neither a cable lock nor an internal lock in any way prevents the gun from simply being picked up and carried away by a thief, who can take it someplace else where he has all the time in the world to figure out how to defeat the lock. Cable locks and internal locks are intended to make the gun a bit safer to store, and to reduce the likelihood that someone -- especially a child -- will come along and pick it up and accidentally fire it. And for this purpose, I think cable locks are better, since it is possible to put a lock-equipped gun down, thinking the internal lock has been engaged, and trusting that lock to make the gun secure, only to discover later, after a negligent discharge, that the lock
wasn't properly engaged after all. A cable lock, on the other hand, provides an impossible to miss visual indicator of whether or not the gun is locked or unlocked, and does so without introducing another mechanism that can go wrong into the internals of your gun.
You can keep your internal locks. I won't have them on any gun of mine.
When the gun is in the safe I can lock it and leave it, same as if I am on a trip, I can lock it up, put it away and that way if someone does steel it they will be annoyed enough that the police might have a better chance of catching them and it not being used to hurt anyone. Metals, polymer, tooling have all been advanced significantly since 1911, but those have all been to be used on the 1911.
One area the 1911, I don't know if outdated is the proper wording, is the take down. It is overly complicated when compared to modern firearms, most of them anyway.
So what? So it takes you a full forty seconds to field strip it for cleaning instead of only ten. Is this
really a serious problem?
Magazine capacity has zero bearing on whether the design is outdated, many modern handguns don't have 8 rounds available. And the slimmer design is preferably to many, I prefer a thicker design and my 17 rounds of 40 help that out.
Designs like SAO and mechanical safety, and to a small extent magazine capacity, is why the 1911 is not a great M&P design, it is not plug and play, to many items are in the way of it being a good MODERN day self defense handgun. With the proper, and extensive, training it is not a problem. But if training time to properly use a handgun for SD can be cut by 1/3, and therefor cost is also cut, it is at a disadvantage.
One other item to mention in the Glock/1911 war is parts interchange. Go find any two 1911's of the same model and configuration and totally strip them down, put the parts in a bucket, shake it up and build the two guns back up with the parts interchanged and see what happens. Do the same to a Glock, guess what happens.
If the parts are all mil spec, it's not a problem for the 1911. Most of the ones still in government arsenals have been rebuilt many times over.
I also would like to see a torture test on a factory 1911, any choice, done in the same manner as done in the ptooma productions book, "The Complete Glock Reference Guide". Not the one floating around that was done with a modified Glock
I don't know about that sort of torture test. But as far as reliability goes, a mil-spec 1911 is first rate. Here's something I posted some time ago in another thread about that:
A well made, mil-spec 1911 is still as reliable as anything you can lay your hands on.
Since the 1911 gets an undeservedly bad rap for it, this issue of reliability is worth saying a bit more about. Remember, in its initial trials, the gun fired 5000 rounds nonstop with no malfunctions of any kind. And in the government tests that ended with the selection of the Beretta 92 as the M9, four M1911A1s, selected at random from government arsenals, were tested alongside the competing DA 9mms as control pistols (as were four S&W Model 15s, used by the air force). The M1911s placed ahead of several of the actual contenders, despite the fact that two of the four did not survive the tests; one suffered a cracked frame at 8,000 rounds, and the other a cracked slide at 6,400 rounds -- but remember, all the contenders were brand new guns made of the most modern steel, with the most advanced heat treatment processes available, and the 1911s were made in 1945 or earlier (possibly much earlier), and had already had tens if not hundreds of thousands of rounds through them. And yet still, the 1911s (in spite of the cracked frame and slide problems) managed to fire 34,400 rounds (the two surviving examples, of course, managed the full 10,000 each with no major malfunctions). Malfunctions totalled 46, giving 748 rounds between failure. Compare this to the HK P9S, which fired 18,697 rounds, suffered 357 malfunctions, and had an average of 52 rounds between failure. The DA pistol from FN managed to fire a total of 33,600 rounds and 81 malfunctions, giving an average of 415 rounds between failure. And even the pistol that ultimately prevailed, the Beretta came of worse than the 1911s in some respects. The rate of malfunctions was much lower -- at only 14 -- for an average of 2000 rounds between failure, but... the four Berettas tested only managed to fire a total 28,000 rounds, and none of the four was able to complete the full 10,000.
So there you have it. The 1911 is so unreliable, that ragged out examples which had been been used and abused for decades, and probably rebuilt more than once, more than held their own with the most modern brand new DA guns of the 1980s.
