MAZOC Firearms

MacCool

I own a Glock 17 but rarely use it. Never been a fan. I have an M&P 9L I use for gaming..I like that weapon for that purpose. My go-to pistol, the one that I carry on call-outs and the one I carry if-and-when-I-carry concealed is the P229 (German) I've had since 1996. It has been superbly reliable for over 10,000 rounds. I wouldn't trade it, but I wouldn't buy a current one. The failure rates of the current versions are simply too high. And while DHS awarded the most recent pistol trials to both Sig and HK, I think you'll find that most of those DHS agencies used the co-winner concept to be able to abandon Sig because of the failure rate and high cost of maintenance. Slide cracking, trigger bar failures, grips, and breech block pin are recurrent problems since SigArms took over. I have personally seen each of these failures in Sigs at various agency shoots and pistol courses over the last few years. IMHO, and in my observation, Sig's current reliability problems have passed into the realm of "conventional wisdom" among the LE professionals I hang around with, and virtually every nationally-known firearms instructor I've trained with since 2007.

As to Special Forces, the SEALs have been issued Sig P226 since 1986, but they're not buying new versions, continuing to use the ones in inventory. Individual units can use whatever they want, but the current acquisition trend is toward the HK USP in .45. Rangers are still using the M9, Delta, I don't know but Larry Vickers at a course last year said they're abandoning the Sig in droves. He indicated that they're moving toward Glocks, but I take that with a grain of salt because he IS a Glock fanboy (and has nothing good to say about Sigs other than their illustrious history).

Anyway, you can't use agency purchases as an indicator of quality, only of contracting price. A perfect example of that was the military pistol trials in 1985. Sig P226 actually won that competition by a handy margin but the Beretta was selected on the basis of slightly lower cost and the fact that they agreed to build them in the US. Most US forces including SEALs went with the M9, but in high round-count shooting such as the SEALs do, the Beretta suffered occasional slide-stop failures where the slide would fly off and hit the shooter in the jaw. It lead to the old saying "You're not a real SEAL until you've tasted Italian steel". That was the point at which they switched over to the P226 as their issue weapon. The more recent move toward HK has been precisely because of skepticism about current Sigs.

(edited to add info from a buddy I called this morning. He is/was a Navy SEAL, moved up to SOCOM and was there until he retired two years ago.)