The World's Most Reliable Handgun

TDC said:
Glocks run 35, including the 5 pieces in the magazine. SIG's run about 55 including the magazine, a 1911 is 58
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Yet Sig's tend to be more robust than Glocks. TSE posted years ago about the durability of their range pistols. Surprisingly, high end 1911's broke the least, followed by Sig, then Glock, in that order. I tend to trust this info as range guns are used and abused, they have a hard life.

Don't get me wrong I like the Glock, but fewer parts doesn't necessarily mean fewer breakages, just fewer parts to break.
 
I have a friend who works at a range in the US where they rent pistols and he said the 1911 does last for a while in term of time. But by round count their failure rate is much higher. With the 45 ammo costing more as well as the recoil and lack of capacity in a 1911 they just don't get shot as much. The glock and sig are workhorses at his range and the other employees and himself buy glock, sig or beretta. (HK isn't available at his range)

This is the reality at this range and may certainly not be indicative of the type.
 
Clobbersauras said:
Yet Sig's tend to be more robust than Glocks. TSE posted years ago about the durability of their range pistols. Surprisingly, high end 1911's broke the least, followed by Sig, then Glock, in that order. I tend to trust this info as range guns are used and abused, they have a hard life.

Don't get me wrong I like the Glock, but fewer parts doesn't necessarily mean fewer breakages, just fewer parts to break.
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I'm aware of the prior postings about the reliability. I worked there many moons ago. The Glocks that failed were .40's and the Glocks and SIGs were shot more than the 1911's due to cost and comfort. The Kimbers were great but they needed to be clean to run efficiently. When they were dirty they would fail to feed and fail to eject fairly frequently. By clean I mean cleaned atleast every 600-1000 rounds, which is nothing to snicker at. I personally watched two guys fire 10 boxes each(500 rounds) through two rental Kimbers in about an hour. Very hot, very dirty guns.

I fully agree on the parts comment. However, fewer parts to break does mean less to worry about;) A pistols overall reliability also includes its ability operate under adverse conditions as well as its ability to be operated by adverse users. Single handed, left handed, muddy, bloody, in the dark, and of course under extreme stress. If the controls are not intuitive to these tasks/users, they play against the overall reliability of said pistol.

TDC
 
TDC said:
A pistols overall reliability also includes its ability operate under adverse conditions as well as its ability to be operated by adverse users. Single handed, left handed, muddy, bloody, in the dark, and of course under extreme stress. If the controls are not intuitive to these tasks/users, they play against the overall reliability of said pistol.

TDC
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which is why a revolver is the most reliable.... pull trigger......

If you are including the operators ability and familiarity with the piece as part of the guns reliability criteria then you absolutely cannot rule out a revolver. They are absolutely by far the easiest to operate, and in adverse conditions that has to be taken into account, judging by your criteria.

for the expert they may all be just as reliable as he knows how to maintain his gun, when to clean, what to clean,how to clean, when to replace parts, how to break in, how to treat and not mistreat and on and on.
 
themikea said:
Curious, what issues did the Glock .40's experience? FTF, FTE? Just when dirty? Or actually needed repair?
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be interesting to know. My bet is limp wristing, 40 cal has quite a pop, polymer frame is pretty light even with the low bore axis, many range shooters are beginners and cringers, and just have a tendency to limp wrist causing fte problems which in times put a lot of stress on parts that are designed to work right, not half right.
 
I'm not the most experienced with handguns....but glock has got to be near the top when it comes to reliability. The fact that it eats almost any ammo helps.
 
Things are very different today. In the 1970's and early 80's, Shooting Times used to do the occasional 'endurance test'. It was NORMAL for autopistols to require a new extractor, or new spring that failed...in just 5000-10,000 rounds. These were ones made by big brand names we all know...Colt, Browning, Beretta, and early S+W autos. Revolvers faired better at the time, which is why autopistols were still not that popular back then.

Things changed when the Pentagon chose the Beretta 92F, and the first Glocks started showing up in North America...both were suddenly noticed to be much longer lasting before parts failures, and were dependable. Around that time the Sigs started to get noticed too, with the same impressions. After that, the others seemed to quietly but quickly improve the quality of their parts, and such failures at low round counts disappeared. IMO business competition brought about improvements, forcing manufacturers to pick better steel for critical parts, and maybe do a better job of heat treating those critical parts.
 
survivalofthefittest said:
beretta 92 really? i think alot of fine young men in the military would disagree with you when the slide breaks apart and sends shrapnel flying
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There were instances of Berretta slides breaking up. Thought I remember the US Army forcing the Italian company's hand, to put steel parts on the critical areas of the slides.
At CFB Petawawa before this slide issue was common knowledge, and when these 9mms were brand new to the US military, we had a training team from Fort Drum conducting foreign weapon familiarization for us Canadian soldiers.
There was Uzis on the line as well. But when thier senior weapons tech found out we were loading/firing the M9 Berrettas with NATO full power 9mm he was livid! I guess there was 9mm pistol ammo, just for the USA issue Berretta only.
As unschooled Canucks with our past experience of Browning Hi-Powers and our SMGs sharing the same ammo lots, we were unaware that this was a no-no with thier then brand new, 9mm pistols.

Oops!.................:D

PS: If my unschooled terms and memory serves me right, the Berretta M9 also had a "weak spot" regarding a barrel lock/block (locking lug?) that was prone to failure around about 10,000 rounds. To the Italians company's credit they eventually did redesign this AFAIK some time after they became aware of this flaw, and extended warranty work on older models, to cover this with customers in between.
IIRC, with the Taurus copycat, this company chose not to redesign the failing in the original blueprint design, and is plagued with it as a result.
 
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The Beretta 92F slide failures...were neither common nor due to common conditions: it was due to Navy SEAL's using non-standard high pressure loads. They were trying to improve the 'stopping power' of their sub-sonic 9mm loads through their various combinations of Mp-5's. Some had especially short barrels (the "K"), regular ("A2"), or even ported right by the chamber (the "SD"). They had a specialty ammo maker produce many different loads for their special 170-180 grain 9mm projectile, and pressures were apparently quite high.

So, non-specification extra-high pressure rounds, being fired by special operators with ammo supplies running into 80 thousand per man per year...I'm not surprised there was a few breakages! As they said at the time: "you ain't a SEAL 'till you eat Italian steel!"

This was all an outgrowth of the Vietnam-era SEAL weapon known as the "Hush Puppy", a S&W 9mm single stack purposed-made for silencer use on Viet Cong guard dogs. I believe that this was the first use of stainless steel in an automatic handgun, a requirement for the water-borne SEAL teams. S&W apparently went through hell trying to make the stainless behave itself, there was significant problems where the slide and frame meet. Obviously they eventually worked it out, but back then it was the handgun equivalent to designing the Apollo spaceship! Ok, not at all like that, but it was a significant challenge and it took them a decade and a half to finally figure out how to make it work well. I'm not certain, but I think they found that if they used different stainless compositions for the slide vs frame, it wouldn't gall. Maybe hardening played a factor too?
 
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