Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns What are the 1911's weakness?

This is a topic that you will not be able to get a straight answer to. Some people love 1911. Some hate them. Some have had great experiences. Some have had bad experiences.

I'll share my personal experiences with the 1911 vs other pistol's I've owned and shot a lot. For pistols, I've owned 1911's from $350-$1000, Glocks, and Springfield XD's.
I always come back to the 1911 and trust it. Never had problems with the Springfield polymers, but I still don't shoot them as well as a 1911. 3 out of 3 glocks have given me problems with stovepipes, failures to extract, and double feeding. They gave my buddies the same problems.

I will get flamed for this, but I've had more malfunctions with Glocks than 1911's and Springfield XD or XDM. I don't trust them from personal experiences.

The 1911's I've owned have been the most reliable and accurate for me.
There are a few drawbacks, but the positives vastly outweigh the negatives for me.

-The 1911 can be considered heavy for carry. (I don't experience this problem my self)
-The 1911 can be a little bulky for carry, but conceals surprisingly well due to how thin the gun is.
-The 1911 has less magazine capacity. (This doesn't bother me because I always hit what I'm shooting at with a 1911)
-The 1911 is built around FMJ round nose bullets and some can be finicky with feeding really blunt hollow points or wadcutter bullets. (I've never had problems with feeding any quality hollow points, but have had some jams with semi wadcutters in a couple 1911's.)

There is a difference in a $350 1911 and a $1000+ 1911 and it isn't always reliability, or what you might think. High dollar 1911's are fit very tightly with focus on accuracy, beauty, and ergonomics. Sometimes this extremely tight fit can be less reliable than a cheaper 1911.
The cheaper 1911's might have rougher surfaces, a finish that wears off easier, a looser slide to frame fit, a grittier trigger, or may be missing some bells and whistles that some people like.

I've owned Ruger, sig, springfield, and rock island 1911's
The Ruger felt great, but they have some issues with the front sight breaking off, just from shooting it. Yes this happened to me. The sig was beautiful, but I was afraid of scratching it and I had a hard time shooting it with the blocky sites. The sig did feed EVERYTHNG including semiwadcutters. The springfield match had a very nice trigger and very tight fit, but would jam every once in a while because of such a tight fit.
The rock island was a little rough, the finish and surfaces look like a $350 gun, but it has been extremely reliable for me and I can hit what I'm shooting at. It is my carry gun and I trust it. I don't worry about scratching it, The standard GI model sights work great for me, and it just plain works.

So you can definately tell the difference in a $1000 vs $350 gun, but it is fit and finish, not reliability, and the $350 RIA will shoot almost as accurate as a $1000 1911. I took this guns out of the box, wiped the oil out of the barrel, took it to the range and started shooting. I put 500+ rounds through it before it's first cleaning and had 1 single stovepipe. I decided to clean it just not to push my luck since it was my carry gun.

high $$ equals tight fit, extreme accuracy, obsession, more cleaning

low $$ equals looser fit, still pretty good accuracy, reliability, not obsessing about every ding or perfection, and less cleaning.

Again, this is my personal experiences with the guns I've owned.
My $350 RIA GI copy is my go to gun for range and protection. it always shoots where I point it and never malfunctions.
In fact, I'm still at 1 single malfunction out of 1000+ rounds or a 0.1% failure rate