Sweeney - 1911: the First 100 Years

Allow me to introduce myself. For a bunch of you, I am already known. For new readers, I am a name on the shelf. I began shooting back in the 1960s (yes, I'm old) and learned by doing. Alas, the first handgun I shot was not a 1911. It was, of all things, a Dickson Cheyenne, a German-made .22LR revolver. Not the greatest of guns, and one the family shot so much we wore it out but it was a start.

The next (and still going to this day) was a Ruger Blackhawk in .357 Magnum. I learned to shoot that, and reload for it, and from there things just kept going.

By the mid-1970s I was a shooter and reloader, feeding a Colt Diamondback with a single-stage press. I had been reading Guns & Ammo magazine religiously since the very early 1970s and had been keeping abreast of the changes in shooting. I had not heard about the Columbia conference, the formation of IPSC, until after it happened. In September of 1977, I shot in my first IPSC match. I won. I was hooked. I had started working at a gun shop in 1976, the Bicentennial year, and as a result I had access to lots of info and all the firearms my meager income could command. I also managed to read all the back issues of Guns & Ammo, and most of the American Rifleman newer than the Korean War. As a bonus, a collection of guns we bought at the gun shop included a collection of Gun Digests, going back to the mid-1950s, another bonanza of information! A surplus Ithaca 1911A1 pistol came to the shop, and I quickly snapped it up. I already knew that a box-stock 1911A1 wouldn't be competitive in IPSC competition, and even if it was, who wanted to be stock? So I had the local wizard gun-plumber, Frank Paris, work it over.

Since then, things have changed a lot, and we've learned a lot.

One thing you'll have to get used to in my style is the personal approach, especially in this book, where a lot of what I'm discussing were things that I did, or was next to the guys who did it, or talked to the guys who did it. I will, however, from time to time use the editorial we as in we did this, or we learned that. Do not be confused: I am not saying I was standing next to Jeff Cooper when in 1977 we learned that a 9mm was hard-pressed to keep up with a .45 in the scoring system. I'm merely saying that the knowledge was quickly disseminated and the lesson learned so thoroughly that it is now something everyone knows. (Which makes it ripe for re-assessment.)

I bopped from gun shop to radio broadcasting and back to a gun shop while still doing on air radio, this time as an apprentice to a master gunsmith: Dan McDonald. I learned a lot, and when he retired (early, in the opinion of many) I worked for the new owner of the shop. Soon after came another change of hands, and I was pretty much on my own. Working as a self-employed gunsmith offers a lot of opportunities: the chance to work long hours, delving into the intricacies of many firearms; to drink huge amounts of coffee (OK, that one I learned from radio); and to seriously ignore one's social life. And to shoot vast amounts of ammunition.