but such policies specifically exempt the underwriter from liability for a willful tort, that is, a deliberately inflicted act of harm. The lawyers could only collect if the homeowner shot the burglar by accident. Thus was born the heavy thrust of attacking guns with easy trigger pulls, and of literally fabricating the “cocked gun theory of the case.” Private citizens who kept guns for self-protection and were aware of these things began to see the advisability of double-action-only autos as well as revolvers for home defense and personal carry.
A two-pronged concern was now in place. Fear of accidental discharges of weapons with short trigger pulls, and fear of false accusation of the same. Police chiefs who had once authorized cocked and locked Colts and Brownings for officers now banned those guns. Detroit PD and Chicago PD are two examples. Many private citizens who carried guns and followed these matters saw the trend, and decided that a design that was double-action at least for the first shot might have an advantage.
Thus was born the interest in DA pistols. The compactness of the Walther .380 had already made it a popular concealed carry handgun. Smith & Wesson’s double-action Model 39, introduced in the mid-50s, had captured the attention of gun buffs. It was a good looking gun, slim and flat to carry in the waistband, with a beautiful feel in the hand, and it was endorsed by such top gun writers of the time as Col. Charles Askins, Jr., George Nonte, and Jan Stevenson.
The 1970s saw the development of high-capacity 9mm double-action designs, and of hollow-point 9mm ammo that got the caliber up off its knees. With expanding bullets, the 9mm Luger’s reputation as an impotent man-stopper in two world wars was rehabilitated to a significant degree.
These guns became known as “wondernines,” a term that was coined, I believe, by the late Robert Shimek. Known to gun magazine readers as an expert on handgun hunting and classic military-style small arms, Shimek was known only to a few as a career law enforcement officer who wore a 9mm SIG P226 to work every day.
These “wondernines” worked. In the late 70s and early 80s, the manufacturers refined the designs to meet the virtually 100 percent reliability requirements in the JSSAP (Joint Services Small Arms Project) tests that would determine the service pistol that would replace the ancient 1911 as the U.S. military sidearm. As a result, they were thoroughly “de-bugged.” The prospect of a giant, lucrative government contract proved to be a powerful incentive to “get the guns right.”
They would become the platforms of the .40 S&W cartridge in 1990, and of the subsequent .357 SIG cartridge. They would be enlarged, keeping the same key design features, to handle the .45 ACP and the 10mm Auto.
These were the guns that would change the face of the handgun America carried.
Beretta
Beretta snatched the gold ring when the ride on the JSSAP merry-go-round was over, winning the contract as the new primary service pistol of the U.S. armed forces. There were a few broken locking blocks and separated slides. Though some of these involved over-pressure lots of ammo that would have broken any gun, and others involved sound suppressors whose forward-levering weight didn’t allow the locking blocks to work correctly, jealous manufacturers who lost the bid amplified the “problem” to more than it was. Almost without exception, military armorers and trainers who monitor small arms performance in actual conflicts have given the Beretta extremely high marks for its performance in U.S. military service.
It has also stood up nobly in the U.S. police service. For many years now the issue weapon of LAPD (almost 10,000 officers) and Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (some 7,000 deputies), the Beretta 92, 9mm has given yeoman’s service. Thanks to its open-top slide design, it is virtually jam-free, and one of the very few pistols that can equal or exceed the Glock in terms of reliability.
The glass-smooth feel of the action as you hand-cycle the Beretta is the standard by which others are judged. The 92F series, with combination manual safety/decocking lever, may have the single easiest slide-mounted safety to operate. Two large departments, one East Coast and one West, mandate that their personnel carry the Beretta on-safe. Each department has logged numerous cases in which the wearers’ lives were saved by this feature when someone got the gun away from an officer, tried to shoot him or her, and couldn’t because the safety was engaged.
The Beretta is also a very accurate pistol. Five rounds of 9mm commonly go into 1-1/2 inches at 25 yards from the standard Model 92. The Model 96, chambered for .40 S&W, passed the demanding accuracy tests of the Indiana State Police and was adopted as that agency’s standard issue sidearm. The state troopers of Rhode Island, Florida, and Pennsylvania joined Indiana and issue the 96 at this writing. The city police of San Francisco and Providence also issue the 96.
A new wave classic, to mix a metaphor, the Beretta 92 proved to be an utterly reliable 16-shot 9mm, winning the U.S. Government contract and arming countless U.S. police agencies. This is a G-model, customized by Ernest Langdon, who won national championships with such guns.
Colt’s Pocket Nine, a 9mm Parabellum the size of a Walther PPK but lighter, was the company’s high point in double-action auto manufacture. For reasons explained in the text, it is no longer produced at this writing.
In .40 S&W, my experience has been that the Beretta is a notch below its 9mm cousin in reliability. For this reason, Ohio state troopers dumped the 96 for the SIG equivalent.
Beretta’s updated Cougar is a good gun. It is the issue weapon of the North Carolina Highway Patrol (in caliber .357 SIG) among others. The latest version, the polymer-frame 9000 series, is not particularly ergonomic and has not been so well received.
Colt
America’s most famous producer of single-action autos has not fared well on the double-action side of that table. Their first, the Double Eagle, misfired constantly in its original incarnation. When I broke the story on that, Colt was gracious enough to recognize the problem and correct it. The pistol, however, still looked like what it was: a Government Model with a double-action mechanism cobbled together in a fragile way to get past the Seecamp Conversion patent. It did not fare well and is no longer in production.
Colt’s All-American 2000 was a sad and ugly thing. Jams. Misfires. Pathetic accuracy and a horrible trigger pull. Heralded by the newsstand gun magazines as a great leap forward in technology, it soon died a well-deserved death.
Colt’s only good double-actions were their last, both DAOs. The little Pony .380 worked, and the Pocket Nine 9mm was a breakthrough: a full power, seven-shot 9mm Luger exactly the size of a Walther PPK .380 but 5 ounces lighter, utterly reliable, and capable of 2-inch, five-shot groups at 25 yards. While the triggers were heavy, they were controllable. Alas, only about 7,000 Pocket Nines were produced before a patent infringement suit by Kahr Arms shut down production.
Heckler & Koch
HK’s 1970s entries in the double-action auto market, the VP70Z and the P9S, did not succeed. The former worked well as a machine pistol and poorly as a semiautomatic. The latter, exquisitely accurate, was before its time. It needed its chamber throated to feed hollow-points reliably, and its decocking mechanism, which involved pulling the trigger, was enough to make police firearms instructors wake up in the middle of the night screaming.
HK’s ergonomic P7 shows off its “guaranteed head-shot accuracy” at 25 yards with two of the most accurate 9mm rounds available, 115-grain Federal 9BP and Winchester’s Olin Super Match 147-grain, both with JHP projectiles.