Some things are just American institutions. You know, baseball, apple pie, 1911’s. Once in a while the powers that be mess with the rules of baseball, but, more or less, the game you can go to the park and watch today is the same game you could have watched in the 1980’s and that game was the same game you could have watched in the 1930’s. The faces and jerseys change, but a strike is still a strike and a hit is still a hit. The same can be said for apple pies, except that sweet old ladies that used to make them have generally been replaced by “Mrs. Smith” or some such factory made pie. Granny Smith apples, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, flour and lard make up the ingredients that your grandma used to make a pie and they are still used today.
What about 1911’s? For more than a century Americans have had a love affair with John Moses Browning’s creation, unceremoniously named after the year he made it, 1911. One thing that needs to be said about turn of the century manufacturing is that objects were well made and contained a lot of steel. The 1911 does not disappoint in this regard. Plastics were not in common use for things of this nature at this time so the main building components were wood and steel. In the case of the classic 1911, the slide, barrel, springs, frame, trigger, hammer and small parts are all made of high quality steel, and the grips panels were often made of high quality hard wood.
Over the many years since it was introduced to the American shooting public, the 1911 has remained, at its core, fundamentally unchanged. What has changed are things like the sights, grip panel material, trigger shoe, and hammer which are commonly modernized or at least customized items. But at the end of the day, a 1911 is a 1911.
And with that I would like you to be acquainted with one of the latest airguns to join the Umarex family, the officially licensed Ruger SR1911 Competition. Ruger’s touches on both the firearm version and our airgun version are not only practical, but extremely appealing to what some weirdos consider an outdated platform.
As you can see by the pictures scattered throughout this blog, the .177 caliber Ruger SR1911 Competition has a very attractive stainless finish slide with blacked out sides and a just-agressive-enough serration on either side of the slide, both fore and aft, the top half of the SR1911 looks amazing and feels great in hand. Moving down to the frame you will find continued classy touches like the flat faced trigger shoe, skeletonized hammer, extended beavertail, flared magazine well, and, once again, just-agressive-enough G10 grip panels.
What else does this sweet looking 1911 offer? Plenty. Powered by affordable 12 gram CO2, the Ruger SR1911 is a full blowback BB pistol. This just means the slide reciprocates just like a firearm does when it is shot. This is a cool feature no matter who you are. The magazine holds the CO2 cartridge and 18 BBs. The trigger pull is stated to be in the 5.5 lbs range, but it feels a bit lighter than that and breaks nice and clean. To match that crisp trigger feel and help ensure precise hits on target is a bright fiber-optic front sight and fully adjustable target style rear sight assembly.
So what I’m really saying here is that there is no downside to this replica. From the sugary good looks to the way it feels in the hand, the Ruger SR1911 Competition is far more than just some eye candy for the gun safe. It would practically be anti-American for you to not have this 1911 in your collection.