I'll take a S&W 3rd generation DA 45 over a 1911.....or anything else for that matter, every day of the week and twice on Sundays.
Accurate and bet your life reliable. After carrying and shooting various 1911's over forty years time, I cant say the same for the 1911. My experience and my opinion on the topic. TJ
I wouldn't. And I used to carry one (only because I had to). I just said that no individual owner will ever own enough of a sample of a manufacturer's products to make sweeping judgments about the whole line. Fortunately, I don't have to rely on only my own experience in this case.
My department issued Smith & Wesson autos from the time they changed over from revolvers in the mid '80s, up until about five years ago when we switched to Glocks. It was not an especially happy marriage, but we stuck with S&W autos for a long time because the rangemaster we had for years liked them, and because S&Ws were cheaper than anything else. The first gun I had issued to me was a 6906. I never liked it. I didn't have too many problems with it, but it did jam now and again, and eventually the frame cracked. When that happened, I was issued a DAO 5946TSW (we were in the process of switching to DAOs at the time, and some officers got the pre-TSW 5946, without the rail, and some, like me, got the TSW with the rail). I HATED that thing with a passion. It was hands down the worst auto pistol I've ever seen, with the possible exception of the High Point and the Japanese Type 94. It was a piece of crap. Nobody on the department liked those things. They were
way too heavy, for one thing. When S&W added the rail, they added a lot of metal to the dust cover area of the frame, and the result was a much heavier pistol than it should have been. I carry an all steel gun off duty (an SFS Hi Power in .40S&W), and weight doesn't bother me much, but this gun was
way too heavy.
Worse than that though was the unreliability. I had no less than three separate 5946TSWs issued to me. The first two could simply not be made to shoot reliably, even after being sent back to S&W for repair. They were jamomatics. The second one I got was also the only DAO handgun I've ever seen that stayed half-cocked all the time -- a DAO hammer is not supposed to stay back partway, but this one did. And when the hammer did fall, it didn't always ignite the primer. During the few months I had that thing, I planned on drawing my backup and leaving the S&W in the holster if I ever needed to use lethal force. Fortunately, I never did.
This was not merely a case of my misfortune in getting a couple of bad examples of an otherwise sound product either. Complaints about the 5946TSW's lack of reliability were department-wide. Our range staff had to send fully a third of the guns back to S&W because they didn't work reliably (and they didn't always come back fixed either, as in my case), and the problems we had with that gun were the single biggest factor in our department finally dumping S&W autoloaders for Glocks. Needless to say, the Glock has been completely trouble free, the rest of the department has reported no problems, the minor issues which have arisen were easily fixed by the department armorers, and qualification scores went up as well. When we made the switch, we were each given the opportunity to buy our 5946TSWs for $250, and the only reason I did was because I knew I could turn around and sell it for $400 (I didn't buy it initially, but after a long wait, finally broke down and did so, but only in order to make money on the sale).
I have to agree with L. Neil Smith, who said: "There are those who may disagree, but again, in my opinion as a competitor and a gunsmith, S&W never could make decent semiautomatic pistols, although they've wasted several fortunes trying to get it right -- and failing every time. Their incompetence may even account, at least in part, for the remarkable longevity of Colt's 1911A1. Having shot (and repaired) many S&W autos and listened to the lamentations of their owners, I have never been moved to buy one."
