1911 & Newbie Questions

[Jim Watson]

I do NOT recommend a 1911 as a first pistol. Nor ANY centerfire, unless you are going to get extensive intensive expensive professional training. Dinking around with a bigbore without experience will kick and blast you into bad habits you will never get completely out of. You will whine about ammunition costs, and get too little practice. Ask me how I know.

Get a good .22. A Ruger Mk II before they are replaced by Mk III with key lock and magazine disconnector or a Browning Buckmark will do fine.

The gun costs less, the ammunition costs much less, noise is low with proper hearing protection and recoil is negligible. Jeff Cooper, the Guru of the 1911 and founder of the Modern Technique says "You can learn about 80% of what you need to know with a .22."

Or get a 1911 with .22 conversion and start out with the .22 on it for at least a couple of thousand rounds. But that will cost a good deal more up front and you are already trying to cheap out.

Resist the temptation to treat a gun as fireworks just because they shoot a big bullet, kick you in a manly fashion, and make a lot of noise. That is not the way to learn to shoot well.

 

[mpthole]

First: DelayedReaction - Welcome aboard!!!

Second: I have to take serious issue with Jim Watson's comments above... with a few caveats, so please bear with me.

In my case, a .45 was my first firearm... and my second; then I got into centerfire rifles. First a .308, then a couple .223's, then another .308... then I decided maybe a 9mm pistol might be a good idea, so I bought a couple of those. Then I thought... enough with the small stuff, I want something BIG, so I bought a Barret M99 .50 BMG.

Somewhere in there I'm sure I added my Browning Buckmark in .22LR, but I honestly don't remember when it was because it just didn't have that great of an effect on me. Sure, it was fun to shoot when I got around to digging it out of the safe, but everything else I had was so much more fun to shoot!

Now, here's the caveat. I was in my late 20's and earning a very nice salary at the time (not so anymore), so money was not an object at all. I took the NRA basic pistol class before I made my first purchase. I never gew up around guns, so I thought that maybe taking a safety class was a good thing. About 6 months after that I took my carry permit training. About 6 months after that I took a course at Thunder Ranch... I went through literally thousands of rounds in practice... .45, 9mm, .223, .308, you name it. (remember how I said money was good in those days...?) Maybe I could have progressed faster shooting only .22's - but I wouldn't have had as much fun doing it and probably wouldn't have continued to pursue the hobby as I have.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that if you like the .45 - then go for it! But, always pursue the hobby within your own personal means. No need to "keep up with the Jones'". Take it at your own pace. Learn as you go.. take in everything you can. Jim Watson has some excellent points in the post above mine... but that just wasn't my experience.

Again, welcome aboard!

 

[Majic]

Then you can join up over at www.1911forum.com and ask lots of questions there.

Don't bother looking. The site went down for the count and no one knows if it will be able to get back up.

 

[BluesBear]

The very first Handgun I ever fired was my Fathers 1949 Colt Commander .45. I was nine years old. It was a handful but actually felt easier to shoot than my Mothers .38 and just as easy as her 7.65 Sauer 38H.

The first handgun I ever owned was a GI Colt .45. I was 14 GI Ball ammo was $3 a box and I bought 3 boxes every week with my paper route money. I shot two and saved 1. I still have a box or two of that in the "collection".

Two years later my second handgun was a 6½" Ruger Super Single-Six. Ammo was 40¢ a box for it. I cut back to shooting one box a week in the .45.

A beginner should have no problem with a .45 all they have to do is set their mind to it. Would it be my first recommendation to a beginner? Nope. Nor would it be my second. However if a brand new shooter stated thay they were set on a .45 I'd have to say, "Go for it!"
Besides, I have just seen a lot of new shooters, many of them women, who actually shot better with a .45 their first time at the range than they did with a .22 or a .38.

To each its own. One size rarely fits all.

 

[TheEgg]

Don't bother looking. The site went down for the count and no one knows if it will be able to get back up.

Yeah, I posted the link to it before I knew they were having problems.

 

[mattHP]

buying a .45 as a first gun would be like buying a crotch rocket as a first motorcycle, the few who have done it successfully always try to convince you to do the same for some reason. i don't think the .22 has been stressed enough if what you're looking for is nothing more than a target/fun gun, especially if you're on a budget. for $20 at walmart you can either have 100 rds of 45 or over 1000 rds of .22, so you can either have an hour's worth of entertainment or an extremely long shooting day. if you're as cheap as i was in college, that alone would make the decision for me. if you think you'll want a 1911 someday, the ruger 22/45 is a .22 that has a grip that's supposed to mimic the shape of a 1911, and most people are very happy with them. you can get 22/45's for well under $300, the only 1911 i know of in that price range is a 1927 sistema (one of my future candidates).
i've shot thousands of rounds through a friend's ruger mk2, which is the same action as a 22/45 on a different grip, and that thing is probably the most accurate pistol i've ever shot. don't be fooled into thinking that .22 is too small to be fun, even though my friends and i have bigger pistols, we always end up in ridiculous informal shooting competitions with our .22's. the only reason i don't have my own mk2 is that i hate loading the magazines, so i have a single six instead. once i started shooting that, my shooting ability improved dramatically with all pistols. it's great to walk into the range and shoot up a tiny 50 ft rimfire target at 15 yds while the guy next to me is struggling to hit a man-sized target at 7 yds with the hand cannon that his friends convinced him to get.
and once you're good enough, hand cannons are fun too.

 

[DelayedReaction]

Here are the factors that I'm using to decide what gun I would pick up. All of this is also subject to actually firing the models, which I plan on doing over the next couple of months as I make my final decision...

A) Size. I need a full-size frame for my hands; my finger span is about 9.5" and my palm is about 4" wide.

B) Budget. I'm not incredibly poor, but I need a reasonably priced gun and ammo. I've set the budget at about $500 for the pistol.

C) Fun. The pistol should be something I can come back to often to shoot some more.

As it stands, I'm looking pretty equally at .45, 9mm, and .22. If I went 1911, it would definitely be a SA 1911 Milspec. Assuming I went 9mm I would most likely get a BHP, and with .22 it would either be the Ruger Mark II or the Bushmaster.

We'll see what happens when I go shooting Sunday.

 

[Feanaro]

but you did mention that you might be on a budget...so remember, you can get twice as many 9mms for the same price of 45s....

And you can get many times that in .22lr with a Kimber conversion kit!

It will cost more up-front but you will gain familiarity with the platform you want to use and still get the benefits of a .22, low recoil and low cost.