Or Light Double Action, ParaUSA's proprietary trigger system. I've been playing around with a .45 ACP from ParaUSA with the LDA trigger, and the more I shoot it, the more I like it. Now, I know it's "blasphemous", because that's not how God told John Moses Browning to design the 1911 when He revealed the secrets of Holy Firearms Design to His Servant JMB, but the fact remains that I like it.
It is quite honestly the best "out of the box" trigger on anything I've shot, excluding semi-custom shop guns like S&W's new Pro Series 1911s, because the actual break of the trigger is incredibly crisp. In fact, I like it so much that I'm picking up another Para with the LDA trigger, this time I'm going for "ultimate blasphemy", and getting a double-stack 9mm 1911, with an integral magwell and an LDA trigger. That gun may be an answer in search of a question, but let me tell you - it's an awesome answer to what was probably a pretty awesome question.
The one trick to an LDA trigger is remembering to let off it completely. If I shoot one of my standard configured 1911s for an while, I need to take some extended dry fire practice with my LDA before I'll run it in a match, because I'll have a tendency to not let my finger completely off the trigger otherwise. When you're shooting an LDA, you have to adopt the mindset of a revolver shooter when it comes to the trigger reset, namely "let go, Luke". If your finger comes completely off the trigger it guarantees that the trigger will reset completely, which means that you won't jam up your gun in the middle of a string.
Bottom line though: the more I shoot the LDA, the more I like it. If that means I don't get to receive the Sacrements from the Church of JMB, then I'll just have to find some thesis to nail on their doors.
Pictures have surfaced of someone who has actually received their ParaUSA GI Expert pistol, and apparently immediately after receiving it decided to fill it chock full of aftermarket parts. Here's the gun as it appeared at the 2009 SHOT SHOW (sorry for the darkness, the light at the Para booth was pretty much ass):
Now, hit this link to The Firearm Blog to see the "aftermarket" mods that were done to the gun. From the looks of it, the linked pistol has new grips, a new safety, slide stop, grip safety/beavertail, and a full-length guide rod. Definitely sexed the gun up a little bit, if you ask me. The stock ParaUSA GI Expert is pretty vanilla, so it makes an excellent platform for further modification. You can build it up into a real custom blaster, or build it down into a more traditional GI-platform gun. Either way, for $500-600 out of the gate, I'd buy it well before I bought a Taurus for the same price.
A picture has surfaced of the as yet to be launched GI Expert pistol from ParaUSA. Here is the gun that should be hitting around Q1 2009, like after SHOT. Click the image to enlarge.
As you can see from the picture, it's not exactly a "true" GI Pistol, in that it comes from the factory with a skeletonized hammer, speed trigger, and lowered ejection port. Presumably, this is do to the fact that the pistol is part of Para's new "Expert" series, which are going to include a new line of polymer pistols from Para as well this .45 ACP and a line of rifles.
While I haven't seen any official numbers on pricing for the GI Expert, I'd expect it to be priced in a region where it would be able to compete with entry level 1911s, but come from the factory with more features than your standard GI .45.
After spending a weekend shooting my ParaUSA LTC 9mm, one of the things I decided that I wanted was a single action 1911 platform pistol in .40 S&W for shooting Enhanced Service Pistol division in IDPA and Limited in USPSA.
Saturday, after trying out my Storm Lake Glock 24 barrel, I made the mistake(?) of stopping by Gander Mountain on my way home, and low and behold what did I see other than a ParaOrdnance 16-40 Limited, a 16 round .40 S&W on the 1911 platform. After hemming and hawing for a bit, I decided that since the gun was in great condition to go for it. That next day I went out to Eagle Creek with Tam, Roberta X, and Brigid to try out my new toy. For comparison, I took along my Glock 24, also chambered in .40 S&W.
Upon seeing the pistol, Tam declared on the spot "That is a serious Limited gun, right there", to which I agree wholeheartedly. The pistol itself has forward and rearward serrations on the slide, adjustable sights, a full length guide rod and all the other accoutrement that you'd expect on a purpose built Limited pistol.
After loading up the magazines, which was no mean feat, by the way; I tried running a few double taps from low ready - recoil was easily managed, especially if I remembered to grip the gun 20% tighter and bend my "shock absorbers". Doing fast double taps at speed, I was able to handily keep all the shots within the "Down Zero" zone of an IDPA target at 7 yards.
This gun, in addition to being pretty, can flat out shoot. This and my LTC (when I get my little mitts on it) are going to be my Steel and IDPA guns - which creates the ability for me to transition from platform to platform quite easily because they're both 1911s.
Compared to my Glock 24, recoil on the 1911 was a bit easier to manage - although felt recoil wasn't that bad, the Glock 24 had more apparent muzzle flip to me - the all steel construction of the Para 16 40 Limited seemed to cause the gun to settle quite nicely back on target after each shot.
The only thing I don't absolutely love about this gun is the magazines, which are absolutely murder on my thumbs. I'm actually keeping them loaded at all times in the hopes of breaking the springs down a little bit so that I can load them in the field without the aid of "Ahab's Reloading Kit", which consists of a toothbrush that I use to hold the spring down while I shove bullets into the mag.
This weekend is the IDPA match at Atlanta Conservation Club which is where I'll be in the morning, running my new Para 16 40 Limited. That match is part of the prep for the IDPA State Championships in October, which I'll probably run with this gun as well.
You know, I blame Todd Jarrett for all of this. Before going to Blackwater, I was content to live in a world without 1911s, I figured between my Glocks and Berettas I had everything covered. But I have to say, the 1911 is the most shootable gun I've ever played with. By "shootable" I mean that the pistol has a very low learning curve; plus the grip angle seems to make the gun want to point at what it to point it at.
This was an hour long special, covering all the topics from the recent ParaUSA shoot, everything from the ammo to the guns to the quality of the instruction and the facility. You can also listen via the embedded player below.
Spread this one far and wide - ParaUSA and everyone involved did a great job with this, and it deserves to get as wide recognition as possible.
ParaUSA was kind enough to provide me with a firearm for the duration of the event, a 9mm customized version of their LTC platform. Hit the link to check out the standard version of the gun. The pistols that we had in 9mm were slightly different from the standard version, as you can see. (Note: Click all pictures for the fullsize version.) The flash wiped out the coyote brown finish a little bit in this picture, but the rest of the details of the pistol should be readily apparent. It had a single action trigger, a fiber-optic front sight, adjustable sights on the rear, an ambi-safety, skeletonized hammer and trigger, and of course the cherry on the Sundae of Awesome, a pair of Crimson Trace laser grips.
When I first saw it, I thought to myself "this is a pretty cool heater", and then I flipped it over and looked at the right side of the gun, which pretty much cemented my decision to purchase right then and there. I mean come on, who wouldn't want a gun that said "Gun Blog 9" on the side, right? As to the actual shooting, I had not previously spent a lot of time with the 1911 platform, having maybe put 500 rounds downrange out of 1911s in my entire life, which really isn't a whole lot. I didn't have anything against the platform, I thought that it was a fine gun for stuff, it just didn't fit my needs.
Putting north of 1500 rounds through this gun changed my opinion of 1911s, not because I now think it's the ultimate weapons platform, but I understand the gun a lot better. I still don't like grip safeties very much, but I will say that the 1911 grip angle pointed more naturally than any other handgun I've ever run; the fact that when I listed to Todd Jarrett and did my part that the Para LTC would come right back on target didn't hurt either.
I shot more than 1500 rounds of ammo through this gun, and I had exactly 1, count it 1, failure to feed, fire, or eject. The gun was on it's 700th-ish round, and hadn't been cleaned and failed to fully chamber a round, a malfunction that was easily fixed by a sharp "whack" to the rear of the slide to seat the bullet. In terms of accuracy, the ParaUSA LTC is far more accurate than I can hold. In fact, once I figured out the Kentucky windage, I was able to easily knock down 8 inch steel plates at 35-40ish yards with the pistol, which was a fun sort of "bang-wait-clang" exercise.
Now, the LTC is designed as a carry gun - as soon as I get my mitts on mine, that's exactly what's going to happen to it, is it's going to end up riding around in a holster with me whenever I put my pants on. I'll get the adjustable sights lined up for 147 grain hollow points and then we'll be off to the races with my new gun. It's light, and even with a full mag will be much, much easier to conceal than my much beloved 92D.
Here's the part that hurts a bit. I liked the ParaUSA LTC so much that it turned me on to 1911s, and after spending 12 hours in a car with Tamara, I'm now equipped to make a smart decision on what kind of pistol to buy as a starting point to my .45 ACP 1911...which will end up getting used in Custom Defensive Pistol in IDPA and Single Stack Classic in USPSA.
If you were wondering how I felt about the Para LTC - Gun Blog edition, I loved mine. I'm (of course), going to buy it, and can't wait to get the FFL and all that other stuff squared away so I can get it in my hot little hands. If you're looking for a Commander sized 1911 but don't want the whack and roll of a .45, think Para LTC. Seriously, this was a fantastic gun. If you don't believe me, check out the video Sebastian posted. I'm the only one with an LTC in the video, and you can see it in action at around 2:37 mark. That's six steel plates, and we had to shoot them in the order 1,6,2,3,4,5. The gun was so fast back on target that I nailed them in about 4 seconds with no misses. My LTC is going to be used as carry gun, and an IDPA and steel gun, and I can't wait for my first match.
Day 2 at Blackwater was a blast, there was a lot, and I mean a lot of shooting today. Here's the scene from outside the BlackBear Inn around 0730 on Saturday morning. I'd make a joke about how you'll never find a more wretched hive of scum and villany, but I'm pretty sure that I'd be doing scum and villany (an Alec Guiness) a disservice by so doing. On the topic of the BlackBear Inn, I've been quite pleased with our accomodations. The room isn't huge, but it's nice and clean.
After breakfast, we headed over to the range in our fabulous Blackwater Limosuines - two SUVs that had been used for force on force (among other things) training, and were all shot to pieces, yet somehow still run and weirdly enough, the radio still worked. These are the most tactical vehicles every, as evidenced by their sweet "custom" windows.
But the range work, that's where the real fun is at. This was actually the best idea I've ever seen when teaching - if you enlarge the picture you'll see that he's drawing on Say Uncle's hand to give him a reference point for where exactly to put his hands every time he grabs the gun. This is seriously the best idea I've ever seen, it provides the student a repeatable example of proper hand placement on the gun, so that in slowfire drills they can then check their hand position, break the shot, check the hand position, etc. Being able to look down, and see if my hands were aligned with a quick spot check was excellent, and allowed me to practice indexing them so that the positioning became natural by the end of the day. Eventually, we actually shot some guns after practicing our hand position. Here's Joe Huffman running his gun (the Para LDA) in a drill on some targets at about 15 yards.
Of course, we didn't do "stand and blast", because after a while Todd Jarrett had us moving and shooting, as the below picture (again of Say Uncle) demonstrates. We shot several IDPA/IPSC style stages, included stages with moving targets, etc, reloads, shooting on the move, it was absolutely fantastic.
The guns are great, and so is the training. We'll have even more pictures up tomorrow, and listen up to the show this coming Tuesday for our ParaUSA Blackwater Wrap-up post.
Day One of the ParaUSA Summer Camp was pretty cool, right up until the part where Joe Huffman shot me. I’ll get to explaining that later, so instead I’ll begin at the beginning - getting up in the morning. I woke in the morning and I was amped, I had so much adrenaline pumping through my system that I didn’t know what to do with myself, as many of the bloggers can attest. Eventually we got calmed down, and we all got on the Blackhawk Bus, which is a site to behold. I took pictures of it, but forgot the sync cable for Camera number 1, and the battery was dead on camera number 2. I’ll hopefully be able to get all the day one pictures uploaded sooner than later. So, we went to the Blackhawk corporate headquarters, where we had a nice intro to some of Blackhawk’s products, including the Serpa holsters, the clothing line, and what I thought was the coolest thing of all, the Knoxx stock. It sucks up recoil, and if I have any money left over after buying the gun, then I’m going to pick up one of those Knoxx stocks for my Remington 870. After that, we got to Blackwater, where we were given a tour of the facility, had some chow, and eventually some classroom time with Todd Jarrett…and then the guns. I’m actually going to do a whole separate post on the guns tomorrow, because then Camera 2 will be up and running, and I can get some good shots. After the classroom time, we finally got out to the range to do some shooting - in less than an hour we managed to run about 100 rounds downrange from our guns. We shot quite a few relays, first at some paper then at some steel, but didn’t do a lot of shooting. What really impacted me was how much difference in my shooting a couple of minor adjusts made. Todd told me I wasn’t gripping the gun hard enough, so I tightened up my grip and got deeping into my stance, and next thing I know my group at five yards closed up quite a bit. I think I’m going to learn a lot from this. I’m still working out the details of our live show for tomorrow, however if tomorrow is anything like today, we can plan for an 8 or 9pm show, coming in live from Blackwater. Squeaky will be hosting and I’ll have to call in, but it should be a pretty awesome show after a day of shooting, and I’ll be able to give you a full update on the products and and everything that we’re doing out here. I’ve got some pretty good audio as well, so when we do the ParaUSA wrap up show, we’ll have a lot of different clips to play for the show. I will break the coverage down a bit and talk about some of the gear as well, we have holsters and mag carriers and gloves from Blackhawk - so far the best piece of gear that I have from Blackhawk hasn’t been the Serpa holster (which is good rig), but the GLOVE they gave me. The factory new 9mm mags were a little…rugged, so I was really happy to have that tactical glove from Blackwater to keep my thumb from getting all ripped to pieces loading these mags. Tomorrow is going to be a full day of shooting; we’re basically going to shoot all day, which means by the end of the day my trigger finger is going to be hurt and I’m going to be grinning from ear to ear. More to come as we get it! Remember, you can check out the coverage of the event at one handy place, the 2A Blog Bash.
Tonight's show was on the recently announce BloggerShoot at Blackwater, sponsored by ParaUSA. Our featured guest was superblogger and multi-media stud Michael Bane, who was more than happy to expound on the nature of the shoot as well as many other issues.
