“Duty” tested guns..

[Jim Watson]

Some of the service handguns that are surplused off are actually unused.

You have a fair chance of getting an unissued spare gun even from recent police trade-ins.

 

[stonebuster]

deleted

 

[FL-NC]

If it is accurate and reliable, and YOU can do good work with it, I say it doesn't matter. The M9 pistol definitely has a global mil/LE pedigree. I used it extensively both in some very advanced training and in combat. I never liked it and never will. Pistols like the Glock that I have also trained hard with and used overseas just work a whole lot better for me and I have much more confidence in them. On the other hand , there are shooters with the Army Marksmanship Unit that can take a standard M9 and outshoot me in any scenario, so I really can't really present a coherant argument with them about my Glock being a superior pistol. For that matter, some of the cowboy shooters that dress like Doc Holiday using single action 6 shooters can make me look like a beginner too- even if they run out of ammo faster than I do, they make their 6 rounds count and they can do it really fast.

 

[tarosean]

I would have no problem with the older guns, as long as they can be vetted, and with that, you need to constantly shoot them to make sure the gun and you are good to go with each other. I just dont see that really happening.
Constant/regular use tends to wear things out, and with a lot of those older guns, there's no idea as to their past history, use, round count, and maintenance, etc.

I have a feeling they will out live us. The defects are known or weeded out by now.

 

[armoredman]

CZ PCR, Czech police and military sidearm for years until finally replaced, and CZ SP-01 Phantom, has been Czech military issue since it replaced the PCR something like 10 years ago. Solid guns, solid pedigree.

 

[21H40]

I think there should be some consideration for how those pistols were supposed to be used while in service. Many of those were adopted with the plan that a pistol is rarely - if ever - used, but some more recent ones were adopted with the idea that they are a secondary weapon, not a last resort. What I observed in the US was that as training for transitioning from rifle to pistol became more common, the SF guys switched to G19's.

 

[The Night Rider]

the P08 luger would be the lowest on my list of carry weapons for reliability reasons (The P08 shoots well if fed the "right" ammo).

Lugers are unreliable or your Luger is unreliable?

I've never heard anybody talk about how Lugers shoot or how well they perform.

Hired as a cop in 1992 the department still issued revolvers but allowed approved personally owned pistols like Glock; I carried my Glock 17 then 21.
Only did that job a couple years but my preference for a semi has not changed; I still carry Glocks and the 19 is a good minimum.

Do you still own the pistols you carried as a cop?

 

[.38 Special]

I'll agree with the OP on general principle, but will point out that both my brand-new Colt 1911 and my late '50s S&W "Military" in .44 Special were spectacularly unreliable when I first got them.

Personally, by the time I've put a thousand rounds through a gun with no bobbles, then I trust the gun with my life.

 

[The Night Rider]

This is a Glock 19 in a Safariland 578 GLS holster.

I carried it at work for the last 2 years I worked. It spent its entire "service" life in my holster. The only time it was ever shot was on the range.

Now it's my hiking gun (unless it's not)

I only ever had one malfunction with it and that was a stovepipe with a Magpul magazine.

I suppose I have some sentimental attachment to it but it's still just another Glock.

 

[MikeInOr]

Lugers are unreliable or your Luger is unreliable?

I only have personal experience with one P08 luger, mine. It does do very well with ball ammo. I.e. they are reliable with the right ammo where most modern 9mm's are reliable with pretty much any off the shelf ammo. I believe that P08 Lugers are know to be more sensitive to dirt than most newer pistols that have a slide instead of the toggle. I keep my P08 quite clean so I haven't really tested this theory myself.

On the other hand my P38 is every bit as reliable as my Berretta 92 INOX. The design similarities between the P39 and 92 are very obvious.

If I were going to rely on any old iron for personal defense I would definitely invest in a new set of springs for the firearm. New springs go a long way in the reliability department.

 

[PistoleroWadcutterGANG]

Smith 58 / Glock 35 ..... for the UGLY business. Be Safe everyone.

 

[JR24]

And service/duty guns are selected on more criteria than simply "does it go bang". There's a budget to hit, ammo capacity for the role, how easily armorers can work on them, if the manufacturer can hit the required order quantities, OEM service agreements and replacment parts, and I'm sure others.

Big one is how good of a deal the manufacturer is giving the department/service.

I do get the mindset that you want to pick a model that has a robust of rough use and reliability in field conditions.

But then again, any gun can fail, so really each carry gun is a sample of 1 to test and verify.

 

[defjon]

I bought a g17 gen 2 from a surplus site.

Looked like the previous owner took to gnawing at the handle on his downtime ...

 

[armoredman]

If I was fortunate enough to own a shootable Luger P-08, I wouldn't care if it WAS duty/war tested - that pistol would be babied out of respect for her age.

 

[JR24]

If I was fortunate enough to own a shootable Luger P-08, I wouldn't care if it WAS duty/war tested - that pistol would be babied out of respect for her age.

Agreed if I found a good old 1911 or M1

 

[Heir Kommt Die Sonne]

TrackSkippy is acting as though surplus pistols are inherently near the end of their mechancial life, and thus a foolish option for self defense. I wasn't alive in the old days of surplus deals, so I wouldnt know about back then but the recent years of surplus deals (most of which is coming from lots made the 1980s and 90s) are pretty much all fine. Alot of them have hoslter wear, some parts have been gnawed it but mechanically are crisp. As if most of them weren't fired more than several hundred times each. A few of them as well, look brand new and must've served as a supply backup.

 

[JR24]

TrackSkippy is acting as though surplus pistols are inherently near the end of their mechancial life, and thus a foolish option for self defense. I wasn't alive in the old days of surplus deals, so I wouldnt know about back then but the recent years of surplus deals (most of which is coming from lots made the 1980s and 90s) are pretty much all fine. Alot of them have hoslter wear, some parts have been gnawed it but mechanically are crisp. As if most of them weren't fired more than several hundred times each. A few of them as well, look brand new and must've served as a supply backup.

I’ve seen similar out of old service guns, holster wear but fairly decent internals.

As an old curmudgeonly LGS dealer once said to me (not intended as any slight to Leo) “yeah the finish is a little rough, and you’re gonna need to blow some doughnut dust out of them, but the inside is good”

Made me chuckle, and stuck with me.

Think that was buying a trade in 220 with holster wear but nearly pristine internals.

 

[trackskippy]

All Im saying is, you have no idea as to what kind of use, misuse, wear, etc on them and now youre choosing it for a weapon that youre going to trust your life with, and if youre serious about it, will be putting a lot more wear and tear on it, unless you buy a couple and work on wearing one of the out in practice.

For all the time and effort you spend making sure its right, you can have a new gun for that purpose. If its of the same model, use the trade in for your practice gun and wear it out there. Unless of course, you overpaid for the "deal" on the trade-in.

If youre going back even further, the old military and/or police guns are just more problematical, and anymore, no deals there either. A $250 or P6 is one thing (and then still likely to need work and money to make it acceptable), but paying $500+ for one now, Im not seeing it. .

Hey, do what you want, but I think you need to put some thought into things here and be somewhat realistic about it. Why pay $1k for an old 1911, or S&W revolver, or something similar, when you can have a couple of new Glocks for the same money and youre already ahead of the curve?

 

[Tallball]

My most recent purchase. $300 OTD, or thereabouts. This is the 5th 65/66/82 series Taurus revolver I've owned. This one is fine. I've inspected it carefully and taken it to the range a couple of times. It goes bang. It's from a PD somewhere. Someone opened it up a time or two: a good sign of routine inspection/maintenance.

I bought it as a range toy. I like shooting 3" K-frames, but didn't have one with full-sized grips and a hammer. Can't afford what a similar S&W would cost, but $300 was NBD.

I didn't purchase it to "trust my life to" (it's a range toy), but it would work for that. A handgun doesn't have to be NiB to be reliable. I can tell by inspecting and shooting them roughly how much they've been shot before. This one hasn't been shot much. My grandkids will probably be the ones shooting it 50 years from now.

Taurus82

• Tallball
• Mar 8, 2023

 

[The Night Rider]

Taurus revolver ....It's from a PD somewhere.

Are you saying that there's a police department out there somewhere that actually issued somebody a Taurus handgun?

 

[sgt127]

Are you saying that there's a police department out there somewhere that actually issued somebody a Taurus handgun?

Brazil. Puerto Rico. I’m sure someone does. But, like you, never heard about an agency in the US.

GT distributors got a boatload of old Revolvers a few years ago from, I think, Puerto Rico.

It was a bizarre mashup. Some, duty guns. Some, property room guns.

A buddy bought me a 2 3/4” stainless Ruger Speed Six out of that bunch. Beat up on the outside. Perfect on the inside. That was probably an actual cop gun.

 

[Ks5shooter]

5906 the"tank" of autos.

 

[PzGren]

While the Manurhin/Walther P1 had been used by the Bundeswehr for over four decades I would not carry it for its bulkiness and weight distribution that doesn't allow for fast follow up shots. I have two cracked P1 slides in my display of failed gun parts and one broken locking lug. The HK P8A1 is also a little too large for me to carry it comfortable. I have shot the different duty guns that my son had used and the SIG Sauer P226 was easy to shoot accurate but I also could not do follow up shots as fast as with a G19. I have a 1942 Mauser P.08 that is reliable, very accurate and built with the improved metallurgy over the DWM versions but carrying the gun with the safety lever would not make me feel very confident in a fast presentation.
All that said, I almost exclusively carry a SIG Sauer P365 since a few years and it has worked flawlessly, good accuracy and surprisingly good for follow up shots.

But if I would need to go "big", then ....

 

[Riomouse911]

I also like many of the martial handguns out there, from the Colt 1873 Peacemaker, 1911 and Hi-Power to the S&W Model 15 and CZ-75. I get the idea that the majority of the military-approved designs have been rigorously tested and have proven their mettle under less than ideal conditions. (Of course lemons like the Chauchat get through, but those are well-documented failures.)

Obviously the improvement in strength and reliability as designs advanced makes many duty-type guns a great choice for a SD/HD firearm.

The only personality owned and carried duty guns I have left from my 31.5 years as a LEO are a trio of Glocks that I carried from 2007-2023; a Gen 3 19 from 2007-2011, Gen 4 34 from 2011-2020 and a 43X I carried from 2020-2023 when I became a neutered administrator:



I still have my West German SIG Sauer P-228 that I carried as an IA and patrol sergeant from 2002-2007:


(Like far too many P-220 series guns, the slide finish is really delicate. This is the one thing I hated about the two SIG’s I used on duty. The other was a P-226 from 1991-1997, that was a mess after about two years in the holster.)

And I carried this S&W 686+ for about five months in 2004 when I was recovering from a thumb ligament injury. (I couldn’t press down hard enough on the mag release, decocker or slide stop on the P-228, but I could push forward on the release and work a speed loader.)



The other true “duty” guns I own are not ones I carried. The first is a Puerto Rico PD trade-in Glock 22 .40:


And the other is my Great Uncles’ M&P .38 with sterling silver-copper grips that he carried as his duty revolver from 1945-1965 at Las Vegas PD. (It has been restoration blued, the finish was pretty frail and scratched up when I was gifted the gun.)



All the other guns I carried over the years were either traded away, or they were issued to me and were returned back to the agency.

Stay safe.

 

[LimaCharlie]

Colt SAA


Colt New Service


Colt Python


Colt 1911


Colt M-16/Colt LE6920


M-14/Springfield Armory M1A