Smith & Wesson’s M&P45 got high marks for recoil control and for its sights. It was also the only pistol that offered interchangeable grip inserts. Photos by James Walters and Nathan Reynolds.

We decided to run the four pistols through a series of offhand drills that would emphasize handling qualities, real-world accuracy, rapid-fire capabilities, ease of reloading and reliability to find out if any of them displayed significant advantages over the others.

A few days before we met, I zeroed and conducted an accuracy test of the four test pistols from an MTM Predator rest at a measured 50 feet--as well as chronographing them--with 230-grain FMJ ammunition kindly provided by Black Hills. All four shot more or less to point of aim and produced groups ranging from two to three inches in size--more than adequate performance for service type handguns.

I then disassembled, cleaned and oiled the pistols, which would be the only maintenance they would receive during test firing other than wiping off visible grit or residue with a cloth. If a pistol choked up, the shooter would attempt to clear the malfunction and, if possible, keep shooting.

We met at the club on a cold December morning a short time before Christmas to be greeted by the first snow flurries and sleet of the winter. Jim Tosco had designed two stages of fire on which each shooter would engage various types of steel targets at ranges of 10 and 15 yards. Each stage required a minimum of 18 rounds to complete, which made reloading necessary.

I was unable to participate in these drills due to an injury, but my friends shot both stages with each of the four pistols (man, did we go through a lot of .45 ammo), timed with a PACT timer and scored with a simple system based upon actual time with added penalties of five seconds for each miss or procedural error. Lacking similar holsters for our test guns, the shooter began each stage holding the pistol at the Low Ready position while a pair of spare magazines were carried in Uncle Mike’s belt pouches.

Specifications
	Taurus 24/7 Pro	Smith & Wesson M&P45	Springfield Armory XD 45	Glock 21 SF
CALIBER:	.45 ACP	.45 ACP	.45 ACP	.45 ACP
CAPACITY:	12+1	10+1	12+1	13+1
OVERALL LENGTH(in.) :	7.1	7.8	7.3	8.1
BARREL LENGTH (in.):	4	4.5	4.5	4.6
WEIGHT(unloaded, oz.):	27.2	29.6	30	29.3
SLIDE FINISH:	stainless	Melonite	Bruniton	Tenifer
REAR SIGHT:	Heinie Straight 8	dual dots	dual dots	white outline
FRONT SIGHT:	white dot	white dot	white dot	white dot
PRICE:	$467	$695	$571	$599

As it was my intention to judge the pistols, not the shooters, scoring consisted of averaging the times of all five shooters with each pistol on both stages, which were then added and averaged again. The results are found in the accompanying table.

We then moved over to the next berm to try out the four pistols on the club’s steel plate racks. The drill here was simple. The shooter began standing 10 yards from a rack with six eight-inch plates, pistols loaded with 10 rounds of ammo, held at the Low Ready position. On the signal, they lifted the pistols and engaged the plates. Once all plates were down, they reloaded and repeated the drill three more times.

Scoring was the average time it took all four shooters to run four racks of plates with each pistol. It should be mentioned that before we began shooting plates, our test pistols were already dirty, but by the time we were done, all of them were downright encrusted with crud.

With our endeavors finally complete, I tallied up how much ammunition we had expended and discovered that we had run in excess of 1,300 rounds through the four pistols in less than four hours. Except on two occasions (see below), we did not experience a single failure to feed, fire and eject with any of them--a testament to the level of quality control exercised by the pistols’ respective manufacturers.

Springfield Armory’s XD 45 was tops in both speed drills and was judged best in class in ergonomics, ease of reloading and ease of disassembly. Photos by James Walters and Nathan Reynolds.