Colt .45 pistol
 

i was watching Letters from Iwo Jima the other day and it was of course a great movie, Eastwood did a fabulous job, but i noticed something weird. When Ken Watanabe's character is given his 1911, the guy calls it a colt .45 pistol. being a 1911 fan myself, i always call it a 1911 or 1911A1, never a colt .45. any thoughts on this one?

Colt .45 has no place on the tongue of any true gun enthusiast. For that matter, neither does Colt 1911, Colt M1911, Colt M1911A1 or Colt 1911A1, basically anything that claims that the 1911 series is strictly Colt's property. Unless we have a particular 1911 or 1911A1 pistol that has Colt markings and is in fact a Colt manufactured 1911, you should not call it a Colt 1911/A1. It's just a 1911, or a 1911 with it's actual brand name preceding it, NOT a Colt 1911.

As for Colt .45, this is a further degrading of the describing of a 1911, and is not exclusive to 1911 style pistols. Single Action Army's in .45 Caliber can qualify as "Colt .45s". It's like saying Glock 9mm, you need to BE MORE SPECIFIC.

Sorry, I've got a strong opinion about that.

Well, didn't Colt produce the original M1911s off of Browning's design? So calling them Colt .45s insn't a major deal, although it has lost the meaning somewhat today. Since Colt was pretty much the only one who produced the Pre-1924 1911, calling the M1911 a Colt .45 is generally accurate. But again, you could mix that up with a Single Action Army as you said.

I just call it a 1911 if I'm not sure of which type, or I use M1911 or M1911A1 if I do know.

It isn't 1924 anymore, and you're more likely yo see a Kimber or a Springfield Armory than a Colt made 1911, so using it as a broad term to describe all 1911s is a major faux pas in my eyes. Like I said, if it is of Colt make, you can call it a Colt 1911, cause it is, but if you see a modern 1911 of another manufacture and say WOW A COLT 1911, you should be corrected.

Say you were a gun designer or manufacturer, who designed an excellent gun which served for many years under that name. Then the vast number of copies made it not okay to refer to that in that way anymore.

I guess what I'm saying is Colt was the first to sell it under Browning's design, so shouldn't he get the honor of general classification? You'd be amazed how many older guys call it a Colt .45, including my dad (then again, I'm still trying to get him to stop saying clip when he means magazine :rolleyes:.

Personally I'd just call it an M1911A1 but I think credit is due. It would have been cool if Browning had manufactured the 1911 in his own name or for FN, so the gun could still be called a Browning. Just think, the Browning Hi-Power has had quite a few copies but is still called a Browning.

Well, if you want to get that technical, only US military issue guns were actually marked 1911s. Commercial production guns were marked and sold as the Colt Government Model.

But there's no real need to get that technical, is there? You say 1911, Colt 1911, hell even Colt .45 Automatic, any gun enthusiast is going to know what you're talking about. You're talking about a specific model or variant, then by that specific. Otherwise, there's being corrent, and then there's being anal for the sake of being anal.

I'm not sure if it matters who made it first. It was designed by John Moses Browning, produced for the commercial market by Colt and then made by all sorts of industrial plants and sewing machine makers (Remington Rand, Ithaca, US&S, Singer, and Colt too) during WW2. We all know how many make them now..

That's like saying it's an insult to IBM to not call every x86-based computer (that is, pretty much every Windows-running computer ever and every Apple computer since 2006) an 'IBM-compatible' or 'IBM-based' PC. (although, not entirely correct since some of them aren't really IBM compatible any more but I guess that compares to the changes in the 1911 design as well..)

Colt built them first for military and civilian sales. The heritage on the 1911 series started back to the Colt 1902 pistol offered to the US Military. No other company built 1911's until the WWI then Colt, REM-UMC, Springfield Armory (The Government Arsenal) and North American Armaments in Canada. After World War One it was just Colt again until 1942 the Colt, Remington Rand, Ithaca, US&S and Singer built the for the the US Military. After World War Two it was only Colt until the late 60's that built the 1911 series pistol. Only Colt built them for Civilian sales from 1913 to 1970 so hence the name Colt .45 or Colt Government Model.

It like calling a B-17 bomber a Boeing B-17 even though Douglas and Vega Aircraft built them also.

My grandfather (a WWII vet) calls it a Colt .45 or just a .45. Which, I guess, was because it was easier to say than "Nineteen-Eleven" (too many syllables). But anyway, the Colt 1911 was the only Colt .45-caliber pistol that they were issued, so if you said Colt .45, anyone knew what you were talking about.

But again, that just applies to his generation.

Well, some were issued M1917 Colts in .45 ACP, so that was another Colt .45 to mix it up with. But still, saying Colt .45 or .45 is more simple.

Today there are so many .45 caliber handguns that calling it simply a .45 would be pointless.

Weren't the M1917s issued only during WWI, because there were shortages of M1911s?

I didn't think there were too many M1917s used during WWII (if any). I'm pretty sure that the M1911 was completely standardized by that time. So I guess that from my grandfather's perspective in the early/mid-1940s (when he enlisted), the 1911 was the only "Colt .45" in service with the U.S. military.

I believe the M1917 was used minimally by the Marines in the Pacific during World War II.

Anyhow, it doesn't matter who produced it first, it matters who produces the model you're talking about. The gun has a designation (1911/A1) and that designation is the true name. You can call it a .45 so long as it takes .45 Caliber ammo, that's fine, it lives up to the pseudonym there, but not all of the 1911s are Colt made, so saying any old 1911 is a Colt, a Colt .45, or even a Colt 1911/A1 is tipping the scale to Colt, I feel unfairly, who just so happened to produce it first. Other companies followed suit during World War II and made their own. It's really about the connotation that Colt was the best because it was the first. If you have a Colt made 1911, Call it a Colt 1911, cause it IS a Colt 1911, hell, you can even be satisfied that it is the original, the Colt, but don't pick up a Para or a RIA and say "WOO A COLT 1911", because it's not, it's just a 1911. The fact that the gun is a 1911, the first great automatic pistol, should give you that warm and toasty feeling, not saying "Colt 1911" when it isn't one manufactured by Colt, just a copy of the design made by some guy who just so happened to give it to Colt.

Also I mean no disrespect to veterans or most gun people who have used the term Colt .45 or Colt in the past, but nowadays we should consider our vernacular and be true to what we really mean and what is meant, rather than just saying what everyone else says.

I don't know about you, but I always refer to 1911s as "Berettas," just to piss people off.