Top two tiers of Handguns for Police, Military or HD ?

[MegademiC]

I would put mp, sig, and cz in the top. I have never used, nor known anyone that used an XD, hk or FN so I cant opine.

I had a cz for a few years, and sold it as I prefer striker and am better with my m&p, (and glocks), and support is better(holsters, etc), I got sick of having to hunt for, and or modify stuff I wanted and cz didn't make the gun I wanted at the time.

That said, I ran the thing hard while I had it and never had a problem other than mag issues of modified mags. If you want a hammer 9mm, I always suggest cz converted to SAO. Low price, reliable, durable, and accurate with a decent amount of support.

Sigs are nice, but I hate the way they shoot, and I have no reason or desire to convert myself.

Taurus, khar, and and ruger are 2nd tier. I know people with Taurus and hkar, have shot both and the owners had problems, I was not surprised. My one friend had a ruger p89 (p98?), and while its a great budget gun (reliable?) Id did not seem durable for high round counts, was not accurate, had terrible recoil characteristics(maybe personal), and had 0 support worth talking about. The worst thing was the ergos, and I would put beretta 92 in 2nd tier for this reason. A non-safety mounted slide version would be bumped to the top.

[Pappabear]

How do you define "Top Tier" from "Tier Two?"

You can do that. Duty Ready is how I define it.

[Pappabear]

How about a M&P 9 with HK accuracy and PPQ trigger.

I have one of those !

[Andrewsky]

This tiered rating system is nonsense.

You can assume that Taurus and Kel-Tec are near the bottom in quality, but a handgun by itself is never going to be duty ready and you should be careful assuming one handgun will be more reliable than another. Someone's "Tier 1" Sig or Glock could be junk while someone else's "Tier 4" Bulgarian Makarov will not stop working.

The user needs to purchase appropriate ammunition, verify reliability with 100s of rounds fired, and be able to maintain the pistol and its spare magazines.

[B Cart]

This tiered rating system is nonsense.

You can assume that Taurus and Kel-Tec are near the bottom in quality, but a handgun by itself is never going to be duty ready and you should be careful assuming one handgun will be more reliable than another. Someone's "Tier 1" Sig or Glock could be junk while someone else's "Tier 4" Bulgarian Makarov will not stop working.

The user needs to purchase appropriate ammunition, verify reliability with 100s of rounds fired, and be able to maintain the pistol and its spare magazines.

I get what you're trying to say, however from my experience, there are certain brands of pistols that have a higher reliability and QC right out of the box than others (hence the attempt at tier rating).

The same can be said for ARs. Are there some Bushmasters and Oly arms out here that run well? Sure. But are Colts, BCMs, DD, KAC, etc much more reliable out of the box on a large scale? Absolutely. Not all guns are created equal, and that definitely goes for pistols as well

[Slater]

Which tier would Steyr fit into?

[Andrewsky]

To do a valid rating of pistols for their reliability out of the box, there needs to be some actual data.

For example you could take ten pistols of a certain make and model and fire 1,000 rounds through them and compare them to others. You would probably want to test different manufacturing lots and date codes of each.

Hand waving, hearsay, and qualitative arguments are not valid.

I'm not saying that Taurus and HK should be considered equals, but in between those two makers things get pretty murky. Look at all the people having trouble with new Glocks and Sigs.

I get what you're trying to say, however from my experience, there are certain brands of pistols that have a higher reliability and QC right out of the box than others (hence the attempt at tier rating).

The same can be said for ARs. Are there some Bushmasters and Oly arms out here that run well? Sure. But are Colts, BCMs, DD, KAC, etc much more reliable out of the box on a large scale? Absolutely. Not all guns are created equal, and that definitely goes for pistols as well

[19852]

Which tier would Steyr fit into?

Would depend on who you ask. I wouldn't rate them highly. I've owned two and both were unreliable.

IMO we should be specific about which models we are rating. For example I would rate the Beretta 92 series in the top based on experience and reputation. Other models in the line not so sure. SIG's classics are usually well done. LAV would say [I read this somewhere] that Glock has some dogs in the line up. I had a bad HK but in general they are consistently good.

[B Cart]

To do a valid rating of pistols for their reliability out of the box, there needs to be some actual data.

For example you could take ten pistols of a certain make and model and fire 1,000 rounds through them and compare them to others. You would probably want to test different manufacturing lots and date codes of each.

Hand waving, hearsay, and qualitative arguments are not valid.

I'm not saying that Taurus and HK should be considered equals, but in between those two makers things get pretty murky. Look at all the people having trouble with new Glocks and Sigs.

This thread is comprised of questions and opinions based on the experience of users. It has never claimed to be absolute quantifiable data. If you want that, please feel free to test all of the pistols in question with thousands of rounds in exactly similar conditions, and we will all wait patiently for your perfect data before continuing the conversation. The beauty of this site, is that there are many real end users with LOTS of experience with multiple guns, so there is info to be gained by lots of end-user experience.

Between all the members on this forum, there have probably been 10s of thousands of rounds put through most of the pistols mentioned, with people relaying the results they have found. Based on a lot of user experience, it's pretty safe to categorize pistols based on a lot of broad gun community experience. That doesn't mean the data is perfect, or that there are perfect pistols out there. Even the best manufactures will have guns that have issues, but just like with ARs, there are companies and specific guns that seem to be more duty ready than others, at least a higher percentage of them.

[SkiDevil]

In over twenty years of carrying and shooting pistols the three brands which I preferred for reliability, durability, and accuracy are Glock, SIG, and HK.

These three brands are well represented in both LE and the military (world-wide).

My current choice is almost any HK pistol model in 9mm or .45 ACP.