Frankly, the compact is my least favorite category. Not because there's anything inherently wrong with guns in this class, but for just a small increase in size we can have a much more capable middleweight. Compacts don't offer either the extreme hideability of smaller guns or the handling qualities and capacity of the larger middleweights or service pieces. They're kind of betwixt and between.

The great American service pistol is the single-stack 1911 .45 auto. This one is the author's personal Wilson Defensive Combat Pistol.

The appropriately named Para-Ordnance CCW is one of several Para offerings in a Commander-size 1911. This one features the LDA trigger system.

But that's just my opinion. For some people, the compacts are the cat's meow. These are the smallest guns that begin to offer us truly, deeply useful handling qualities: capacity and shootability. While they give us more of all the things we want from a defense gun than smaller pieces, for only a modest increase in size and weight we can have ever so much more.

MIDDLEWEIGHTS
This is a term I apply to guns intended to give most of the handling qualities and capacity of a full-size service piece but are considerably smaller and easier to carry and conceal. Included are snub-nosed medium-framed revolvers and auto pistols with slides and barrels shortened and butts chopped for greater compactness vs. a true service gun. Classic examples of middleweights are the 21?2-inch-barreled Smith & Wesson Model 19/66, the Glock models 19/23, the single-stack SIG P239 and double-stack P228/P229, the Smith & Wesson 3913 and 69 series and so forth. For a CCW self-defense handgun, this is the most generally useful class of weaponry.

For years my carry guns came from this class. I think the most impressive middleweights are the high-capacity 9mms. Personal opinion: The two best guns in the class are the Glock 19 and SIG P228/P229 in 9mm. I carried a Glock 19 and SIG P228 as my daily concealed carry gun for two years each. In that time I attended numerous training classes and shot (and won) matches with both. I never really felt disadvantaged against people firing larger service-size weapons. Of course, my skill level at the time wasn't such that I could appreciate the difference (more about that later).

The Glock 19 is a 16-shot handgun in a package not all that terribly larger than a Colt Detective Special. The SIG P228/P229 is a slightly chunkier 14-shooter. The popularity of middleweight Nines took a hit during the 10-year dark age of the assault weapons ban and prohibition of magazines holding more than 10 rounds. With nines, .40s and .45s in many designs equal in capacity, a lot of folks during this time frame figured, "If I can only have 10 rounds, I want them to be the fattest ones possible" and so passed over the nine in favor of cartridges starting with the numeral "4." The fortunes of 9mm middleweights have been revived in the post-AWB world.

Probably the definitive middleweight is the aluminum-framed Colt Lightweight Commander. Up until its introduction, we'd had tiny pocket/subcompact autos on the one hand and full-size service pieces on the other--and really nothing in the middle. These days tactically equivalent guns to the Lightweight Commander are available from numerous makers, primarily Kimber, Para-Ordnance, Springfield and Smith & Wesson.