M60
NES Member
What were you guys using at the time?Years ago myself and several other police firearm instructors (possible @lowbuckbob was with me this day but I can’t remember) were asked to test the ‘new’ Shield .45 when they were first introduced and police depts wanted to swap up from 9mm to .45
SW was offering a fair discount if we decided to then go with their offering. We said sure send us a couple cases for testing and a bunch of us went down to Hanson and started going over them.
No exaggeration at all, we had 9 catastrophic malfunctions on the very first day of testing.
Slides locking up to the point of being unserviceable, even after beating them with hammers they wouldn’t budge, triggers literally snapping in half on the range at that stupid hinge they have, I don’t remember the other issues (it’s been over ten yrs) but they were literally the worst pistol I had ever seen or fired in my life. We were dumbfounded that SW even let these things leave the building. We boxed up the rest of them unfired and sent them back with a big “lol no thanks we’ll pass”.
I did hear maybe a year or two later they came out with the new Gen or fixed whatever but ever since then I kind of twitch any time I see SW Shield anything. It was and should of been embarrassing for them to allow those things to leave the factory floor.