By Jim Dickson | Contributing Writer
What the world needs now is a good $500 dollar M1911A1 pistol.
Well here it is. Armscor’s Rock Island G.I. Standard M1911A1 is a high quality, reliable M1911A1 at an affordable price. Fit and finish is flawless, and accuracy is superb.
The pistol is made in the Philippines with the best combination of Western technology and Asian perfectionism. Production costs tend to be lower in the Philippines and Armscor passes the savings on to the customer. This is a vital concern to many people who want the best combat pistol ever made but do not have deep pockets in these hard times. While it is true that no price is too high when the lives of you and your family are at stake the grim reality is that you can’t spend money that you don’t have.
When I first picked up the Rock Island G.I. Standard M1911A1 at Reeves Ace Hardware in Clayton, Georgia, I could see at a glance that the quality was second to none. Reeves Ace Hardware is also a first class gun and knife store that has handled Armscor guns and both they and their customers are quite happy with them. Some of my friends also have bought multiple guns from them and also are completely satisfied with the guns and their performance. I have never heard anything bad about them.
I consider the Rock Island G.I. Standard M1911A1 to be the equal of any of the current commercial M1911A1 pistols and I have been recommending it to my friends who don’t have a M1911A1.
This gun deviates slightly from the WWII guns. It has a blued finish instead of Parkerizing. The grips are smooth Philippine Katmon hardwood and sometimes Batino hardwood instead of the checkered Tenite grips of WWII. The ejection port is beveled at the back to insure positive ejection, while the arched mainspring housing with lanyard loop of the military M1911A1 is replaced with the flat mainspring housing of the earlier M1911 and it omits the lanyard loop.
Due to the stopping power of its .45 ACP FMJ cartridge and it’s extreme reliability, the M1911A1 has long been regarded as the best pistol ever made. I have seen them throw sand out of every joint and keep on firing. They will keep up a steady cadence of hits as long as you keep loaded magazines coming. Those hits will kill a horse at 100 yards with one shot just like its revolver predecessor, the .45 Colt. Indeed the .45 ACP can be considered the automatic pistol version of the .45 Colt revolver cartridge. Both of these have proved capable of killing anything in North America with one shot, yet they do not have excessive recoil to slow down rapid fire or throw off your aim.
If I could only have one gun it would be a M1911A1 because unlike a long gun the pistol rides on my hip and can always be there to defend me against man or beast and to shoot game for my dinner. When my wife, Betty and I were living in a one room log trapper’s cabin deep in the Alaskan interior we ended up using WWII Army surplus M1911A1 pistols with surplus G.I. ball ammo on everything. It worked fine.
Some folks say that revolvers are more reliable than semi-automatic pistols. I say bull. I love my revolvers, but I have had far more jams and malfunctions with them than any of my automatics. The M1911A1 has long enjoyed a reputation as the world’s most reliable pistol. It has a well-deserved reputation and more recent pistols don’t even come close to its reliability. Why would you trust your life and the lives of your family to anything less?
Like the M1941 Johnson rifle, the M1911A1 is one of the few guns that is really good at throwing sand out of the mechanism as it fires. It also has places for dirt to go without jamming the works up. It’s swinging link works in dirt and grit that will jam a sliding ramp like the later Browning Hi-Power has. After unlocking the M1911A1’s barrel tips down for the best angle for feeding the cartridge to the chamber. It’s simple single column magazine is virtually jam proof, quite unlike the double column single position feed magazines so popular today. These are susceptible to a sudden shock rearranging the cartridges in the magazine column and jamming the magazine. The 1911A1’s recoil spring with guide and plug work without a modern guide rod which can bend and jam the gun if the pistol is dropped.
I had 940 rounds to test fire through this pistol consisting of:
- 100 rounds of Armscor 230 grain FMJ
- 500 rounds of Black Hills 230 grain FMJ
- 100 rounds of Hornady 185 grain FTX Critical Defense
- 200 rounds of Remington 230 grain FMJ
- 40 rounds of Steinel Ammunition Co. 230 grain SCHP (Solid copper hollowpoint) +P
There were no jams or malfunctions of any type. Just what you want from a gun that you may end up staking your life on. Accuracy was fine with the gun easily making 1 ½-inch groups at 25 yards. The trigger pull was 6 ½ pounds as measured by a Lyman trigger pull gage from Brownell’s Gunsmithing Supply. It broke clean and crisp.
A pistol needs a holster and after a lifetime of carrying an M1911A1 I can recommend two.
For open and concealed carry nothing is more comfortable than the pancake holster and you can draw from them exceedingly fast. They will hide a military M1911A1 under just a shirt.
For purely open carry nothing beats the M1916 U.S. Army holster. Issued with tie down thongs, a pistol belt, and a magazine pouch for two extra magazines. This holster was designed with all the lessons learned from gunfighting in the 19th Century. There is a spacer forcing the grip away from the body for quicker grasping and a tie down thong to keep the holster from riding up when you draw.
To do a fast draw from the G.I. Holster with a cocked and locked pistol make sure the tie downs are secured then flip up the cover flap with your thumb and begin wrapping your fingers around the grip as you begin pulling the gun out starting with the little finger and then each finger in turn. When the gun is halfway between you and the target wipe the safety off with your thumb, point and fire. I have never found a faster holster.
As the leather tie down thongs are just leather shoelaces they will rot and break eventually. When that happens I substitute nylon boot laces. They don’t rot and break.
For easy drawing while seated there is the Army Tanker Shoulder Holster which holds the gun very securely yet still allows a fast draw. You can get all of these holsters new from El Paso Saddlery in El Paso Texas.
Unlike most modern designs the M1911A1 holds up well under extensive shooting. In the military with arsenal rebuilds as necessary it commonly lasts 250,000 rounds. A lot of more recent designs struggle to make 5,000 to 10,000 rounds and one famous one is actually unsafe to fire after 1,000 to 2,000 rounds!
So much for those who think newer is automatically better. Once you get to the top of the mountain all roads go down. The M1911A1 is the top of the mountain in pistol design. As America’s greatest expert on the different machinegun mechanisms, Colonel George Chinn, said “As long as nitrocellulose is our propellent all possible mechanisms have been invented and all today’s gun designer can do is reconfigure existing mechanisms in new designs.”
With pistols they got as perfect as they can early.
I have carried a WWII army issue Remington Rand M1911A1 all my adult life and it has never failed me. If it had a plastic frame in the modern fashion instead of a steel frame the plastic would have deteriorated with age by now and I could no longer safely fire it. The polymer used in pistol frames is the same type used in your cracked car dash.
The only complaint that I have is that it has the flat mainspring housing of the original M1911 and I prefer the arched mainspring housing with the lanyard loop of the M1911A1. Still the flat mainspring housing remains popular even today and it is a simple matter to swap out the mainspring housings which I would do if it were mine and not on loan for review.
SPECIFICATIONS
Model: Rock Island G.I. Standard M1911A1
Mfg: Armscor
Capacity: 8 + 1
Action: Recoil
Barrel: 5 inches
Sights: G.I. basic
Finish: Blue
MSRP: $500
