Each year gun makers try to introduce something new to keep their customers coming back for more. Many of these new guns are like incoming meteors in the sky, blazing across the horizon and attracting attention but soon disappearing and never heard from again. However, this year’s new SIG .45, the P227 seems to be much more than a piece of bright rock.
SIG, the Swiss based armaments firm that is today famous for its pistols, got into the handgun biz in the 1940s. They made the Swiss Army’s Model SP47/8 pistol just after World War 2. This gun, sold famously overseas as the SIG P210, is one of the most classic 9mm pistols in history. It was only replaced by a more modern double-action pistol, the Model P75 in the 1970s. This gun, sold overseas as the SIG P220, incorporated a locked breech short-recoil action with a fast and effective take down to make a pistol that was both reliable and easy to master. The P220 however was a single-stack magazine design. To garner more military and law enforcement sales with a higher capacity, the design was stretched in the early 1980s to make the P226 series pistol.
Able to carry a 15-shot 9mm magazine (or 13-shot in its later .40S&W half-brother); the P-226 became a fast favorite with operators of all sizes and backgrounds across the world. It was this gun, modified with a push-button mag release over its original heel-release, that would have won the US Army pistol trials in 1985 had its cost have been more on par with the Beretta Model 92. With a more flexible budget, elite units like the US Navy Seals adopted the P226 and have depended on it for years. The only gripe that users have ever complained about is that the gun just didn’t come in .45ACP.
That is, until 2013.
Read the rest in my column at Universtiy of Guns
