History of the 1911: Gun Guys with Ken Hackathorn and Bill Wilson - Ep. 4

[Music] Phil Wilson Wilson combat here again with old friend Kent hackathorn Ken's been a proponent of a 1911 platform handgun for years he refers to it as the world's finest close-quarter fighting handgun and got one of his hackathorn specials here on the table can't tell me what led you to the conclusion that the 1911 is is by far the world's finest fighting handgun well first off I use that term 1911 - world's finest close quarters combat weapon it's a little bit in jest and that as you know there are a lot of people now particularly younger folks that didn't grow up with a 1911 and they don't quite know the history of 911 that often are critical of it and they'll so it doesn't have a hole enough hold enough bullets or it's not reliable enough the reality is and I always tell people I get it a lot of time well I hackathorn why do you carry 911 this is generally from I call the Glock crowd you know what I wouldn't carry one yet I go look you know what you carry what you want I get it that's your business you know they worked pretty well for me and I've been carrying one for a long time it is a unique piece of history I tell people I you know we there are certain guns that are famous you know a lot of people say well the Colt Single Action Army is a real historic gun it is you look at the Smith Weston say military police revolver the most tested and used revolver in in combat history the 1911 pistol certainly introduced in 1811 it's interesting here we are over a century later not only as it's one of the best-selling handguns in the world certainly America look at the amount of vendors done it's worked out pretty well for you as far as making a living so it's still a popular gun but I understand what some people say they would prefer something else and one of the reasons there's two things that I always say look one issue is people say about a today standards in the Glock world if you will and this is not making a mistake the Glock is the other popular fighting pistol in the world it's the world standard everybody says yeah but it holds you know 17 rounds or if it's a Glock 19 15 rounds so this thing only holds typically as a 45 say 8 or if it's a 9-millimeter actually with your 10-round magazines I can put 11 rounds at but I always say look first off I understand the emotion of magazine capacity in that if I laid this pistol on a table and say you made a Wilson hackathorn special that held only five rounds and one that only held ten rounds or you made one that held 15 rounds and you say okay Ken you're gonna carry a gun for self-defense which you want the emotional part of me says I'll take 15 rounds and more bullets is better the reality is if you really study what happens when people use handguns to set defend themselves soldiers police officers or people in the private sector the circumstances are usually fairly similar and rarely does the capacity of the gun ever have anything to do with the outcome unless you're a really bad shot so you know most shootings are over with the three or four rounds most gunfights quite often result in who everybody enters your gun so the capacity isn't the issue it's how well you can shoot if you can shoot well you don't need 15 rounds if but the emotional partner who told me I want him and then the other thing about the 1911 is the reliability when the 1911 was created for the first say let's say 50 60 years of it of its service it was built by craftsmen by skilled gunsmith who fitted the guns and everything worked well and quite honestly if you go back and look at the original GI gun say or the Colt made prior to say even in a 70s 1970s they were pretty well built fitted guns and they were made to feed in function one round 230 grain military spec card bolts everything about him was built around there and those guns worked beautifully only and probably in the say the 1980s for example Koli was the major vendor of 1911 pistols that's what we all started with they had some issues not in not least of which was a major strike involving the union workers and Colt it went on for a great many years so Cole took a lot of their salary people and put them out on the factory making guns these were not skilled trained guns mr. fitters and the quality control those guns got pretty ugly you could even say it was some of the horse guns they've ever made and the reputation of the 1911 pistol suffered severely because of the fact that Colt destroyed the reputation I mean there was a period I would have never carried one they were junk now by the way today Colts making the base night best 1911 pistols they've made in 35 years but a lot of other people decided getting a 1911 business because the demand was very high a lot of it because of that if secure created a demand for the gun every hide emanating Levin to be competitive you know that I know that's what took you from a revolver to a 1911 win that's why we revolver browning hi-power 1911 by the third match I was shooting 1911 yeah so the end result is a lot of man's people are making 1911 pistols this day some of them make good guns a lot of make guns that are assembled they're not fitted and this is the technology it requires a fitted gun if you just want to drop parts together and and put it out the door probably not gonna work very well the Glock on the other hand is a gun that was never designed to be fitted it's a gun that you take the parts and you train anybody to us basically put it together you've got a functional gun so that's something you'd understand but a 1911 that is correct properly fitted is extremely reliable the thing that I've always been impressed with and I know bill you came to love and learn is they're really easy to shoot well yeah the trigger itself is you can get a great trigger that the guns are tuned properly like Wilson comet guns that fitted up they're incredibly accurate they come with great sites the aesthetics are good with the functionally a location of the of the magazine released a lot people will say well it's got a manual safety you know what once you know how to use the manual safety it's incredibly safe gun yes there's and it gets back this I tell you if I were to lay this pistol on the table and let's say a Glock and the Smith MMP and some other guns and say okay Ken we're gonna have a shooting contest and Bill's challenged you and you're gonna have to shoot the most accurate shooting performance you can pick a pistol I would almost always guarantee I'll pick up a 1911 because I know I can shoot it better than some of the other guns so that that has always been with me tell you there are storing bill when I was about 14 years old always wanted a 45 because I grew up remember in the shadow of World War 2 my dad and I everybody I knew was a veteran or two so the Army 45 was something we were all intrigued with and whether when I was growing up the cool guy guns were either a lure or a 357 Magnum if you were a cool guy that's the gun you wanted to have but I had a I say an after-school job and on the way home in the town I lived in there was a couple supporting his tours and one was a little place that was sold basically fishing supplies stuff but they had some guns and hunting stuff remember going in there one day I rode my bicycle I went looking around and the guy who owned the place kind of tolerated you know and looking in the anahata in Iraq of handguns in the display case and there is a park rise 1911 he went pistol was Warmington ran and I was like oh man so I circ and I looked at it he gets it out in he hands it to me and it there it is the price tag was $22.50 now - is like 1962 or so so that was kind of the norm there were $25 back then but first time I'd seen one a place oh my god I gotta have this so I asked him can i buy this and make payments he saw no how much can you make I said how am I pay you $7 a week it said ok and that's what I could spare out on my what I made from after-school job and he said son when you come to get this gun you're gonna have one of your parents can I have to come that was pretty 68 but he said you your mom or dad or somebody got to come alright I won't sell you the gun so I paid it off until I got the point I was right for my last installment my dad went with me and my dad went in and anyway I paid for it by the way I had 20 to 50 of them enough money for tax my dad had to kick in attack so I've got the gun no bullets for it no ammo anything but I got the gun and we're driving home my dad I'm fiddle around with a gun in my desk well son you know you can't anything with a 45 you know and I said oh no he said I can tell you those things you can't hit anything with because that was his ignorance in the military so my sidekick Mike Patterson was my shooting buddy we're all jazzed up man you got an army 45 so back then you could go into a like a sporting goods store or a gun shop and you could buy individual rounds most most of them had a box of ammo and if it had an X on it with like a marker or grin that means was an open box I can remember back and ammo was expensive I mean I think I paid like maybe 18 or 19 cents around four to thirty grand harm oh there's a lot of money oh yeah so we had enough money between us we bought seven rounds a magazine worth of animal so we get our bikes we ride home and my clip cut on the edge of town so we go in and kitchen gets one his mom's pie plates out in the garage hammer nail book it up into the woods behind his house nail that pie pan up on a tree load up the magazine oh your protection no I'm Anthony I'm first my gun right load it up BAM you know God why am anyway banged off seven rounds I think and honestly it was probably seven or eight yards and I think it hit the eye pan once on the edge I'm like so I handed the mic and he's got his seven rounds he loads it up and he bangs when I get it twice we're like pretty silent right so we've got the empty gun you know ears ringing like crazy and we're walking back the trail down through the woods and kind of and his dad had been World War two Marines and it's I said the same thing oh you can't anything over 45 so we're walking down and and we kinda look to each other and wet I guess dad was right so I was like what have I done so I told one of my buddies that I had this gun he's like oh man tell it to me I remember taking it in my gym bag to school I sold it to him the next week for 25 bucks that was my first experience 8:11 I kind of concluded well they're my other gun I wanted was a Smith & Wesson 357 Magnum I wanted a model 27 but could only afford model 28 however I got it i interject my first experience with the 1911 you know I like you big time revolver shooter and I was actually you know as you were a really good shot with a revolver you know cut the 1911 llama yo-yo ma yeah about a llama 45 bucks ammo same thing go out the river you know set up some stuff to shoot at out the river and no air no ear protection though I protection nothing you know I loaded it loaded up first magazine and I've just you know blamming away you know I'm about the third shot the barrel bushing fails and the regula spring plug and the recoil spring goes to in there in the river that was I didn't even get through the first magazine with my first 19 those things were famous and I told people journey in the first hundred 50 rounds you could see parts flying about it I didn't get to the first magazine that's why Spanish guns had a bad reputation so I kind of abandoned a 45 a few years later my the guy that was my neighbor Charlie Gillis the guy was kind of got me interesting guns a little he had a 45 he knew what he was doing and he kind of gave me some pointers for shooting a pistol and I after I shot it a little bit he basically was triggered manipulation and I kind of hey you can chew on these things so I set out on a quest to buy and I bought a next gun I bought was a GI World War 2 Colt 1911 a1 and then I started shooting and back then you could buy GI hardball basically you know military I'm up for like $2 of digital there's a local guy he was in a National Guard or something and he would get ammo and salt and local sporting goods store so Edwin for 250 I could buy a box of mamelon that's a pretty good deal even then so I'd buy a box every week and I should write 11 actually other point right I was pretty decent with it did you pick up the hearing protection at that point you're still no you're what believe it or not when you started shooting and I started shooting anybody that warrior protection was a [ __ ] so I never warning and even though I was in the military there was no such thing as ear Pro I remember guys taking cigarette butts taking about anyway the end result one of the reasons that I obviously at this point in life have pretty severe hearing loss is because I wasn't smart enough to wear any kind of ear Pro and it wasn't prevalent I I never even saw a set of earmuffs if you will until probably sometime in the seven the early seventies when they became kind of a warm and and of course we know based on the recalled cycle in 1911 as far as hearing damage they're one of the worst so but I from then on I kept always having a 1911 around and it's interesting when tipsy got started I was you know carrying a 1911 but then as a duty gun but obviously the ammunition supply was an issue so I had to start reloading and I bought a Lyman Sparky that's the press that you can put the dies on so after you can just turn the head and so I started reloading and like a lot of guys I didn't have that was an expensive venture so I could afford you know you go out and pick up your brass and you know if you went to the range and you shot 200 rounds you're probably lucky to come home with 75 cases because the you lost him in the grass and stuff so I would come home and I loaded you know four and half grains of bullseye and them 200 grain number 68 bullet and that's what I shot a lot of the interesting thing is that people don't realize back in that era when we started saying ipsy a what was the loading machine you got a bunch of the old stars scars star loading machine was nearly $1000 that was a huge amount only there's dedicated or the most affluent people could afford one most of us loaded single stage presses and so you couldn't have the volume in practice ammo and I mean I was not making much money I mean the thought of buying a star press for me was virtually an impossibility I often tell people the thing that did the most to contribute to pistol shooting skill in America in the last 50 years was Mike Dillon yeah he made reloading on a progressive machine affordable and once I got a 550 man the world changed so I always tell people I've been around the gun I've cared that most of my life I've shot it a lot I've you know and people often tell me why that gun doesn't work and I see it real simple if your night to them doesn't work get it fixed if you can't get it fixed that that's why we have gun shows take it and get rid of it and get one that does and so even though all people often tell me that well I don't think it's a good choice for gonna go that's fine for you it works good for me I have no lack of confidence for carrying a 1911 pistol and people often say me well do you ever carry anything else yeah I sure do I'm in the training business I've been you know because it's a Glock world I use the Glock a lot in the training because that's what you should be using what the students use and of course one of the big changes in the 1911 world obviously I think one of the biggest revolution certainly in the last few years is a new x9 that you've brought out and I think that for the people want a 15 shot 1911 pistol that's the next step but nonetheless carrying a single stack 911 if you know you visited me my kind of everyday carry gun is an old CQB I got from you along they've been rebuilt twice that's why I get in the morning it's gonna put on when I go to bed at night it's gonna take off now I shoot a nine-millimeter because the 45 at this point I all that 45 ball ammo all that 44 Magnum all that stuff I beat my hands up pretty bad and if I ever go out today and shoots a 245 or hardball I wouldn't be able to hold on to my spoon to have cereal in the morning so I've kind of relegated to myself to shooting nines and a plus we have is that thanks to the change in ammunition technology the nine-millimeter round is actually a really good choice and round but I love a 45 I still shoot him some easily I call it the old geezer load I want a round it doesn't beat me up I use a 185 green version of the number 68 mola 4.3 oklet's and you shot it when you remind that's so if some old guy can shoot a bunch of without hurting but I'll give you example bill got a lot of 45s not as many as you I don't think anybody's got as many as you did but I went to a gun shop a couple weekends ago went to a gun shop Montana stopping a gun shop you know natural looking around I don't pay much attention to the polymer guns they're running the black kind of stuff and I look in a gun case and I wonder and there's a Remington Rand I GI 45 and it's a used one it's not a mint-condition gun so the kid runs chiapas let me look at that he gets it out look at it honest excuse me I'm not honest GI night - 1181 holster we're clean no apologies there they got a price tag at $1,200 one mmm that sounds pretty steep but in today's market that's actually not a bad price if your price try priced one so I asked me what's the best you can do on that and he said it's a consignment gun I can't it's a lady a widow whose husband Kurt and you know when he was in the military but he's passed she brought in to sell it she wants $1,200 I look it over real good everything's correct I think man the first one I paid $22.50 but that was a long time ago yeah pieces I can call or if you want to make an offer so I said well okay see what's your offer a thousand dollars even then I'm choking a little bit he had to say that he said hey I've ever had two people offer that and she's turned it down it's okay a thousand fifty bucks okay calls her kids obviously she said she really liked to have eleven hundred bucks less well and she can keep it he's well she said if you said that you can have over four thousand fifty five ought it took at home my buddy with me it's a that's my FFL transfers he picked it up took it home we transferred it to me in Idaho take it to the house and clean up it's bone-dry all the dried oil and stuff to clean it up the only thing that had been done to it the old geezer had it had painted it nabbed a little yellow on the front sight which we understand I understand that so I load it up get some two three a green ball load about three mags get out of the range 20 yards shooting man hits right on the money I shoot a group about like that yeah with up with those old GI guns that don't shoot lower those guns that aren't accurate and I think and I said you know this is like an alarm on since Winston used to say this is back when they made guns to save lives and win Wars not to make a buck and even when I finally wiped it off you know it cleaned it up with the rig on it put it in a rug took it in the gun safe with all the rest of them and kind of went why did I buy this and the reason is because I like them and I - you say well that I can't believe I paid that much for a guy's the truth the matter is that gun on the on the market today it's probably at 1,800 to 2,000 dollar gun in today's current 9/11 military pistol market that's why I bought it I try to rationalize that anyway but the bottom line is I like 1911 I've always had confidence in them I shoot them well this face that when you pick up a 1911 pistol you're picking up something American in history yeah and it's a piece of who we are and what we're about so I would say that as long as I can shoot as long as I can pack a gun I will probably pack a 1911 pistol cool and I know you're not too much you have this affliction for bredis but the reality is we both like brothers we both should I can remember when the Beretta m9 pistol came out oohs this were loyal 1911 guys were somewhat offended and remember they're replace the 1911 I remember like yesterday when we're at the shotshell and Greta made the announcement of getting that it's like oh you know the world's coming to an end you know and I I remember the same thing I was just offended I started calling pizza pistols but I was doing military training and I finally realized you know if I'm gonna have to teach it's kind of better get one and learn to use it so I got a Warren Barron at the time who worked for bread that's Warren I need one ok semi one give me a good price I got it I remember looking at it and going on so I started shooting it and you know I discovered something they're really pretty good gun incredibly reliable really accurate soft shooting and and I tell people I'm like I'm not nobody's like you but I get a lot of brothers and you got more than anybody on the earth but we've all learned it the reality is the brother is a superb pistol and you know you're about to introduce a new one here in a matter of days and I've already seen it and shot it and I'm on the list right but the kicker is I love what I've got a lot of different guns and I love shooting them and I'm because I'm about you know I'm a gun guy but I don't think I will ever lose my interest or my pride of caring and using a 1911 pistol yeah I feel the same way cool thanks for visiting again

Channel: Wilson Combat

Views: 298,980

Keywords: wilson combat, 1911, Gun Guys, Ken Hackathorn, Bill Wilson, wilson, combat, hackathorn, gun, guys, pistol, handgun, history, idpa, uspsa, ipsc

Id: sSQYZl7D_fI

Length: 23min 41sec (1421 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 23 2018