We had designed a field course that combined USPSA cardboard targets (kindly provided by Dave Zimmerman of the Target Barn), which were partially obscured by no-shoots or range props, and various types of steel targets. The shooter had to engage targets from various ranges, from multiple positions, shooting around barricades with mandatory movement. As the magazine capacities of our test guns varied, we decided to use USPSA Production Pistol rules, which meant that magazines were loaded with no more than 10 rounds. This would, once again, level the playing field in addition to giving us a good idea of how easy they were to reload under pressure.

All of the pistols provided accuracy well within the range of acceptance for service arms. The Smith & Wesson M&P had the best group average.

We then set up one of the most famous and challenging Action Pistols stages, the El Presidente, and proceeded to run all five of our test pistols through it, over and over.

Each of us shot both stages with each of the five pistols, timed with a PACT timer and scored with a simple system based upon actual time with penalty points added for any hits outside the targets' A or B zones and for misses or hitting no-shoot targets. The results (and which pistol they shot their single-best run with) were as follows:

FIELD COURSE
Jim Tosco: 277.07 (M&P)
Dave Nichols: 285.85 (M&P)
Kim Nichols: 176.44 (XD)
Larry Mefford: 209.77 (Glock 17)
Paul Scarlata: 217.82 (M&P)

EL PRESIDENTE
Jim Tosco: 163.40 (H&K)
Dave Nichols: 202.67 (Glock 17)
Kim Nichols: 169.49 (Para LDA)
Larry Mefford: 123.75 (XD)
Paul Scarlata: 123.36 (M&P)

SHOOTER IMPRESSIONS
	Glock 17	H&K P2000	S&W M&P	Springfield XD	Para-Ord LDA
ERGONOMICS:	20	23	24	23	23
TRIGGER CONTROL:	16	16	19	18	19
RECOIL CONTROL:	19	18	20	20	21
SIGHTS:	17	17	19	17	20
ACCURACY:	20	21	22	20	22
EASE OF RELOADING:	21	14	22	20	21
A few observations are called for. Regarding ergonomics, the newer designs had an edge over the Glock, which has not really received an update in this area in many years. Since all five of us shoot competitively with single-action pistols, I found it a bit surprising that when it came to trigger control, the three pistols with the longest strokes beat out those with the shorter ones. The accuracy category was, for all practical purposes, a toss up, with all five pistols providing more than sufficient accuracy for police/defensive purposes or informal competition. Ease of reloading was another toss up, except in the case of the H&K. All of us are accustomed to pushing magazine-release buttons inward, and under the pressures of speed shooting we repeatedly forgot that the release on the P2000 moves in a downward direction.

The following weekend, Kim Larry, Jim and I met at the range again on a rather damp, foggy morning and spent several hours launching lots of 9mm projectiles in the direction of the club's steel-plate racks. The drill was simple: The shooters began with a pistol, loaded with 10 rounds of ammo, holstered. On the signal, they drew and engaged the six steel plates. Once they were all (hopefully) down, they reloaded and reholstered the pistol and repeated the whole process three more times. Scoring was the total time for four racks of plates with that particular pistol plus a one-second penalty for any plates left up. While in theory this meant the shooter could dispose of four racks of plates with all five pistols with a minimum of 120 rounds of ammunition, we expended a bit more than that. But then, that was the whole purpose of this exercise.

PLATE RACK
Kim Nichols: 135.72 (XD)
Jim Tosco: 174.91 (Para)
Larry Mefford: 104.08 (Glock)
Paul Scarlata: 113.12 (XD)

Seeing no reason whatsoever to haul unnecessary gear home, I gestured toward the pistols and ammunition laid out on the table and told my friends, "Y'all have fun." They proceeded to do just that, with gusto. It should be mentioned that before we began shooting plates, our test pistols were already dirty, but by the time we were done that day all of them were downright encrusted.

With our endeavors finally complete, I tallied up how much ammunition we had expended and discovered that in two days of shooting we ran almost 600 rounds through each pistol. Despite that, we experienced only one malfunction--a failure to feed with the Para LDA--and that was traced to a defective magazine. I found this to be a very positive statement as to the level of quality control exercised by the pistols' respective manufacturers.