JOHN MOSES BROWNING died in 1926 just 15 years after our military adopted his 1911 pistol. At the time, this pistol was considered nothing more than a martial weapon, and even though Colt offered the pistol commercially, most police agencies and civilians relied on revolvers for defensive sidearms.
It wasn’t until 1976 that things started to change. It was in our bicentennial year that two very important things happened; Jeff Cooper opened the Gunsite Academy (then called the American Pistol Institute), and the International Practical Shooting Confederation (IPSC) was founded with Cooper acting as its first president. Cooper was a huge advocate of the 1911 as a personal-defense gun, and it totally dominated the sport of IPSC. What had once been solely a military weapon had now become a commodity.…
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Tactical Life (Digital) - 1 Issue, January/February 2023