The facility where we did the accuracy testing allowed only 20 yards of shooting distance, not the usual 25. The test pistol had a Para-Ordnance barrel, not the match grade Bar-Sto of which Laughridge is so justifiably fond, but Bill had honed the factory barrel, recrowned it to eleven degrees, and installed a National Match barrel bushing. As a result, we found ourselves getting groups under 2 inches. CCI Gold Dot 185-grain JHP put five shots in a group measuring 1.48 inches, and Federal's Personal Defense 165-grain JHP delivered a 1.51 inches five-shot group.

That, my friends, is accurate.

Lasting, Durable Arm

The San Bernardino County Sheriff's Office tested the LDA with thousands and thousands of the hard-hammering rounds they issue for duty in their department standard Glock 21 pistols, the 230-grain Winchester Ranger-T +P. The LDAs stood up. They were approved for private purchase to carry on duty, and two of the senior firearms men involved in the testing brought their own to carry at work.

My friend and colleague Walt Rauch wrote, "I tested one LDA and, with the help of more than 20 shooters, fired 9600+ rounds of standard +P loaded .45 ACP ammunition of various bullet shapes and weights. There were two failures to fire when the cartridge didn't go completely into the chamber, but these were simply caused by a dirty chamber, since all of the test firing was done in hours not days. Other than this minor hesitation, the gun worked just fine."

One caveat, though: if you're going to shoot a lot of +P in these guns, put in heavy duty recoil springs and perhaps even a Wilson Shok-Buff system. Para-Ordnance CEO, Ted Szabo, once told me that the recoil force of +P .45 ACP ammo is so violent to the gun's parts that a pistol which can last 100,000 rounds with standard GI ammo will probably only last 50,000 rounds of the hot +P stuff.

Liability Diminishing Action

The US military got away from the 1911 pistol in large part because its single-action design was perceived as a risk factor in accidental discharges. The great majority of American police departments prohibit cocked and locked single-action guns on duty because of the same perception. Much has been made of the fact that single-action 1911s have been adopted by FBI's Hostage Rescue Team (Para-Ordnance) and SWAT teams (Springfield Armory), and by LAPD SWAT (Kimber). However, we can't escape the fact that FBI and LAPD issue these single-action autos only to their most elite, most highly trained units, and require either traditional double-action-only autos or Glocks for their rank and file armed personnel.

If only because sometimes "the perception is the reality," a huge segment of the handgun using public, armed citizens as well as law-enforcement, are more comfortable carrying double-action pistols for civil liability reasons. Since a traditional double-action auto cocks itself after the first shot, it is perceived by some as a possible "accident waiting to happen" until it is