Reliability vs Accuracy, whats more important to you?

[BLB68]

The early ones were actually pretty tight, and the WW2-era pistols were quite good when they were new.

I was a unit armorer when I was in the Army in Germany in the late 80's/early 90's. We had those SAME WWII-era pistols in our racks. They'd been rode hard and put up wet in the intervening 40-odd years. None of them were accurate any longer.

Our brigade armorer (the guy who was actually an armorer vs advanced maintenance man like me) told me the Army hadn't bought a new 1911 since WWII. We had one or two that shot straight, but only after they'd been determined to be so bad that they needed to go to depot for repairs. Came back much tighter than they left.

A group of us used to shoot our personal weapons at the range on weekends. I fired nearly every privately owned handgun in the company. Every single one of those was far more accurate than the issued 1911s. My personal 1911 was so loose I could barely qualify with it, yet I was a good enough shot then to dump entire magazines from mine or my friends' personal weapons into the head of a military silhouette from the 25 yard line.

So, there's some basis to the complaints on aged and poorly-maintained 1911s. I suspect that the complaints started long before the 1911 inventory aged to the point that they were merited though.

On the main topic: I'll take reliability. At the range most encounters take place, even my poor, abused, issued 1911 would be accurate enough to get the job done.

 

[CVA-66]

real simple;

Accuracy is realative,
Reliability ain't!

 

[mavracer]

I find an accurate gun that's unreliable just as uninteresting as a reliable gun that's inaccurate.

 

[jad0110]

My point is, there is NO gun design or type that is unconditionally 100% reliable - and shouldn't be represented as such. Your emperical experience with your guns cannot be extrapolated to be a "fact" that can be applied to every gun of that design all of the time.

Of course not, and it was not my intent to imply otherwise, though in reading my prior post I see where you could easily interpret it that way. Man is imperfect, therefore anything built by man will be imperfect. As they say, past performance is no predictor of future results. Then again, what else do we have to go on?

Your 2-inch groups are not good for any gun at 25 yards. If that's all you're getting out of revolvers, you need to take the guns to a revolver specialist and have him time the action, shim the cylinder, and work on the trigger.

It isn't the revolvers per se; I think the accuracy problem is occuring about, oh, 2 feet behind the gun . I can bench rest a gun at the privately own land I go to, but only out to about 12 yards. Beyond that (25 yds) I simply stand with a 2 hand hold unsupported. I really don't feel like dragging that heavy bench out to 25, I'm not even sure I could. So it really isn't a true representation of what the gun I'm shooting is capable of (too many variables). Though I can tell most (with the exception of my H&R 622 and probaby my Heritage Rough Rider) are easily capable of better than 2". Probably 1" or less. Again, I am the weak link.

I don't buy into the revolver reliability versus automatic - simply because, either gun can be made to malfunction OR be reliable.

No argument from me there. Though in the end I am personally more confident with my revolvers, as I understand them better. I feel like I can at least anticipate some potential / developing problems through periodic inspections/tests better than I can with an auto.

 

[JohnKSa]

Your 2-inch groups are not good for any gun at 25 yards.

2" groups at 25 yards are plenty good for everything but the most accuracy-intensive handgun applications.