I owned and carried a Colt Defender for many moons and I loved it until.....It became totally unreliable. I think if one shoots it occasionally and carries it, you could draw the conclusion that it's very reliable - mine was. However, I trained with mine and shot it at least once weekly - sometimes more. Within year two, I began to see problems and it came to a point where shooting 50 successful rounds were all but totally improbable. I tried replacing the magazine springs, then the magazines. I sent it into Colt for repair and they sent it back saying it was "fine" - which it likely was for their 7-round test. Totally clean, the gun would run "fine", but soon would begin to fail. Sometimes a failure to feed - other times a failure to eject, failure to hold open - even had a round chamber during firing, but the hammer followed the slide into battery, which of course required the hammer to be drawn back fully to fire the round. I replaced everything spring-wise - some twice. By then, I had lost all faith in it and traded it in on a ParaOrdinance 6.45LDA which I carried for two years and put a couple thousand rounds through with no issues whatsoever. I'd still be carrying it had I not discovered the joys of the 642 which rides in my front pocket every single day....The Defender seemed to have lots of potential early on, but lost it's luster with time and use....
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