If the weather rises above ‘effing freezing over the next few days, TTAG scribe and Army vet Martin Albright will make his way to Karl Lippard’s Colorado HQ. Martin will test the ex-Marines NCO A2 1911 and provide our readers with a full report. You may recall the NCO as the weapon competing with Springfield and Colt’s 1911s to become the Marine Corps official sidearm. Lippard and his men claim that their gun offers combat effectiveness at 400-yards—an assertion met with some serious incredulity amongst our Armed Intelligentsia and a little not-so-secret sniggering. We shall see. Meanwhile, now see this: the latest iterations out of the oven. Karl’s post-birth pronouncements on the the Lippard A2 Close Quarter Battle Pistol dressed in Marine Corps green and more gun porn after the jump . . .
I will see what USMC says about those. If not we send them to combat. If I don’t like the way they shoot will cut the Slides in half and tighten them up. If it doesn’t shoot, I have no use for it.
As much as one must appreciate Mr Albright’s efforts, a few things must be pointed out:
– I am sure the Lippard “A2” will be a perfectly lovely 1911 to plink at the range with. I am sure Mr Lippard is capable of building a competent 1911, and competently built 1911s are a lovely thing to shoot. Thus, a few hundred rounds down the barrel does not make it suitable for the purpose Mr Lippard claims.
– The best test of the claims would be quite simple; take 5 examples of Mr Lippard’s pistols, detail strip them to bare frames and slides, toss all those parts into a bucket and randomly re-assemble the weapons. Glocks, HKs, SIGs and Berettas can all pass this test with flying colors. No 1911 can.
– Have Mr Lippard furnish 4-5 random extractors and try them all, without any sort of tuning or polishing. A quality 1911 extractor is a 5000 round part (a week of shooting for a MEU(SOC) member) and that extractor must be tuned and fitted by a trained gunsmith. Again, if Mr Lippard has solved this, he is truly onto something that Colt and Springfield aren’t.
– Bring a mixture of magazines in a range of use states. Brand new Chinese production 7 round GI copies, Tripp Research Cobras that have been beaten to hell and have bad springs, Wilsons with feed lips you beat against a rock a few times. The 1911 is an EXTREMELY magazine sensitive platform, far more so than other modern pistols. See if Mr Lippard solved this.
– Inspect Mr Lippard’s production facilities. If Larry Vickers were willing to enter this competition, I am sure one of his hand built 1911s (the same ones that served as his unit’s sidearm) would pass with flying colors. Trouble is, Mr Vickers takes 4-5 months to build one. Can Mr Lippard supply 5000 of his pistols? Does he have anything approaching the capability?
– Bring along an M&P 45 and HK45 and shoot them in comparison (I would be happy to furnish both).
If Mr Lippard can pull off all the above tests in front of a skeptical third party, I’ll buy one of his pistols. He can’t though.
You’ve nailed it. It’s like the search for the Loch Ness monster (there has to be more than one and why only one lake vs. how are these guys going to build 5000), you have to ignore so much common sense before you even get to the starting gate.
Mr. Lippard’s 1911 makes me drool. But as it was stated above combat arms need to have interchangable parts. so that they’re easy to repair. Tight tolorances might just make it intolerable in the field.
Since when is 400 yeards considered “close-quarters?”
I remember watching an episode of mythbusters. I don’t remember exactly what they were trying to prove (I think it had something to do with having something land at the same time a bullet would hit it), but there was a part where they took a gov’t length 1911, and fired a bullet at a ~90 degree angle-it landed about 180 yards away.
How do they expect 400 yards then?
As curious readers of your fine post we expect a complete tear down and photo documentation of all the patented improvements Mr. Lippard made to the 1911.
Show me the pictures.
Show me the data.
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