I learnt with the years not to trust the 1911. I was a great fan of the design for a long time, until I became well aware of its flaws. No, I would not trust my life to a 1911. Too many problems with feeding ramps, extractor spring tension, bushings, recoil slings, guns that don’t work well straigth from the box, too sensitive to dust, to changes in ammo....I just no longer like that pistol.
About my comments regarding Browning, it is a feeling I had the need to share, and I am not doing it with malice. I suppose that I am a bit tired of so many miths, and we are living in a time when myths are falling.
The thing is that 3 years ago, while visiting the Shot Show, we had a dinner with a Browing arms representative that my bro had some friendship with.
He told us things I can agree with: he was an American heroe, and a genius. That is true. However, he repeated the same myth they told me at the Browing arms museum of Utah when I visited there 15 years ago: that he invented gas operated firearms or was the first one to do it or realize it had potential.
I told that representative that there were a lot of People in Europe, specially in Belgium, and in the nothern provinces of Spain, working on self extracting rifles and pistols as soon as 1875, being the guns from Ibarra and Piñal the very first ones to be patented, a few years before Browing began its experiments.
This same misonception was repeated by the History Channel, by the way.
The Browning arms representative, a very nice and gentle person, by the way, didn’t believe me, of course.
I didn’t show him the guns like I am doing now, as we had more interesting things to talk about at that time. Now I have the chance to do it here.