Why do I love Sig pistols? Reliability, ease of operation, great triggers

I've been asked a question about "My short history with Sig pistols" that I think deserves elevation from a comment to a new post.

Kansas Scout said... I keep reading all these enthusiastic comments from Sig owners. I have not shot one yet. Being a fellow lefty, I assume they work well for you in that way. Tell us why you like them so much. I would like to know specifically what it is that makes folks like them so much.

Short answer is the Sig Sauer motto: "To hell and back reliability!" I have owned to date five Sig pistols, a P226 and two P229s, one plain and one Custom Shop, all in .357 Sig; and two P220 .45 ACP Single-Action-Only models, one full-size and one compact. And to date with hundreds of rounds fired in each of them, I have yet to have a single malfunction. Zero. A record of 100% perfect performance is the ultimate in reliability.

I have had pistols that were 99.5% reliable that I either got fixed or I sold. I will not carry a pistol I cannot depend on 100% of the time. All of my carry pistols have to meet that standard or they are gone.

No. 2 reason, my Sig pistols are simple to operate, even for a lefty like me. In the case of the P229s which are traditional double-action/single-action, chamber a round, decock the hammer, then holster it until needed. Then draw and fire. If time and circumstance allow, I will cock the hammer upon drawing to make the first and all following shots single-action. But if not, that first double-action trigger pull is smooth enough to make an accurate shot. I practice drawing and firing two shots, one DA and one SA.

With my two P220 SAO .45s, they both have ambi safeties that allow me carry them safely cocked. Draw, flip safety down just as on a 1911 and shoot. And an added feature of the P220 SAO is the safety does not lock the slide like a 1911. When I want to check to see if there's a round in the chamber, I can press-check the slide with the safety still on.

Number three I've already covered, great triggers. The Sig DA triggers are great and my P220 SA triggers are not only the equal of my good 1911 triggers, they're actually superior. Don't ask me why but I can shoot either of P220s with factory 5-lb. triggers better than any of the custom triggers of 3 to 4 lbs. in the 1911s I own. Maybe it's the legendary inherent accuracy of P220s, I don't know. I just know it works for me.

Ease of operation, great triggers and 100% reliability. What more do you need in a carry pistol?

New Sig Sauer subcompact 9mm DAO pistol announced

I work in a gun store that's a Sig Sauer dealer and I'd never heard of this one until I saw it online a minute ago.

SIG SAUER® P290™ Sub-Compact 9mm Pistol

Full Size Power in the Ultimate Conceal Carry

10.28.2010– EXETER, NH – SIG SAUER, the leading manufacturer of military, law enforcement, government agency and commercial firearms, introduces the SIG SAUER P290™ Sub-Compact 9mm pistol. The latest addition to SIG SAUER’s innovative conceal carry line-up puts all the power of a full-size 9mm in a lightweight and versatile polymer pistol design in the hands of responsible citizens and law enforcement officers.

The P290, in Double-Action-Only, has a snag-resistant, sleek design for conceal carry or used as a back-up for plains clothes or security personnel. The Stainless slide carries the popular SIG SAUER serrations and is finished in either natural stainless finish or a black Nitron® finish. Unique to the P290 are polymer customized grip plates in aluminum, wood and polymer that can be engraved with your initials for a truly personalized pistol (coming soon.)

SIG SAUER P290™ Specifications:

Caliber: 9mm
Overall Length: 5.5 in.
Overall Height: 3.9 in.
Overall Width: 0.9 (1.1 in. w/ slide catch lever)
Barrel Length: 2.9 in.
Sight Radius: 4.3 in.
Sights: Contrast/SIGLITE® Night Sights
Weight w/Mag 20.05 oz.
Frame: Polymer
Slide: Stainless
Frame Finish: Black
Slide Finish: Nitron® or natural stainless
Mag. Capacity: 6 – 8 rounds
Trigger: DAO
Grips: Customizable – aluminum, wood, polymer
Features: Customizable grips, optional laser
MSRP: P290 Nitron, 9mm, SIGLITE NS, 6-rd. mag. $530.00
P290 Two-Tone, 9mm, SIGLITE NS, 6-rd. mag. $550.00

I love Sig pistols so I guess one more just got added to my want list.

What I did when the annual gathering of Gun Nutz 'R' Us came to N.C.

So what did I do when the biggest national organization of Gun Nutz 'R' Us (AKA the NRA) held its annual meeting in my state? I had plans to go to Charlotte to become one of the 100,000 or so at that celebration of our Second Amendment rights.

But then my daughter called and said let's go shooting. So that's what we did, her, my grandson, shown shooting my S&W 22A-1, my son's father-in-law Steve and me, having fun in my son's backyard shooting into the woods. My son was at a ballgame with my other two grandsons. That's Steve in the red shirt holding his Kimber CDP II Ultra .45 ACP and me in my shorts and Crocs, watching my grandson shoot. Big dude burned up about 200 rds. of .22LR ammo and I loved every minute of it. Loaded his own magazines and every now and then announced he needed another box of ammo. Warms the cockles of a grandfather's heart to see another gun nut growing up in the family.

I hate I missed the big NRA doings, but actually shooting with friends and family is way better than just looking at guns and stuff and talking about it. Maybe the next time the NRA is in driving distance I'll go.

Anyway, a fun time was had by all.

My daughter was interested in a home-defense handgun to go with her S&W 638 .38 Special with Crimson Trace Laser Grips, so she tried out my Taurus 65 .357 Magnum and liked it. It's been slicked up by some unknown gunsmith with a bobbed hammer, a very slick trigger job, custom wood grips and a ported barrel. The porting certainly helps with recoil and she tried it out with some Hornady Critical Defense 125-gr. .357 Magnums and declared it about the same in recoil and manageability as her S&W 638.

So she's happy and I'm happy that the Taurus has now changed homes and hopefully will get the job done if something ever goes bump in the night at her house.

And I finally got the chance to try out my new Sig P220 Compact Elite, which I picked up almost a month ago and couldn't find the time to shoot it.

The P220 Compact is a special Single-Action-Only limited edition that I got from CDNN with  ambi safety for this lefty, Elite high beavertail frame, night sights, aluminum grips and perhaps the Sig Short Reset Trigger. I wasn't sure about the SRT until I shot it because Sig's labels on their factory boxes are pretty short. If a pistol has more than one or two extras, it doesn't print on the label, it just runs off the end unseen.

But now that I've shot it, there is no doubt whatsover, this Compact P220 definitely has the SRT. I fired a few double taps and a fast string and that trigger can reset way faster than I can shoot it. Yowza!

I even compared it to what I previously have said is the best compact .45 ACP I've ever shot, Steve's Kimber Ultra CDP II. I shot them both back to back and honest to God, I'd hate to have to live on the difference between the two. They're both the very best of compact .45s on the planet, IMHO.

And the P220 Compact shoots with typical Sig accuracy with 230-grain loads, for which the sights are dead-on. At one point in slow fire, I put two .45 slugs overlapping the same hole in the red bull of an 8" target at 10 yards. Woulda took a photo but I left my camera at home.

As usual, it ran without a hiccup and even passed my ultimate test for an auto-loader, an 8-rd. magazine of four different hollow-point loads mixed up. Like Sig says, reliability to hell and back, it ate the whole magazine without a stutter. I have yet to have a jam with any of the four Sig pistols I've owned thus far (not counting the .22LR slide conversions). It's hard to complain about a record like that.

I put about 75 rds. of hardball and about 25 rds. of mixed hollowpoints through it and I pronounce it now ready for carry duty. I suspect it's gonna be first on the duty list henceforth when I load up for work.

I only have one complaint. Those 6-rd. magazines for the Compact P220 are just way too short. And same for the 8-rd. magazines. I take a shot or two or three and all of a sudden that darn slide is locked again. Is that six already? Or eight?

I gotta get me some of those Sig 10-rd. P220 magazines.

Miss Bernadelli flunks the course; more fun with P229 .22 slide kit

Another sunny day here in the South and I made it back to Dewitt's range for round two of .22LR fun, sorta.

Plan A was to try out a V. Bernadelli .22 target pistol that I put on layaway at the gun shop where I work. It's probably purt near old as God with serial number 517, but it shows evidence of having been gunsmithed with jeweled parts and a red-fiber-optic front sight. Feels good in the hand and looks cool, so I fell in love with it. Until I shot it.

Miss Bernadelli flunked the course big-time. Maybe out of a dozen magazines I got two or three shots without a misfeed. I tried six or eight different loads, Remington, Winchester, Federal and CCI, and she wouldn't eat any of them without a hiccup.

Back to the shop she goes and I hope to God no customer asks me if she will shoot good. I don't wanta lie so I'd rather not be asked. Plan B is an Austrian-made Glock-wannabe .22 pistol I've had my eye on, the ISSC M22. I'll just transfer the cash I put down on the Bernadelli to start paying off an ISSC .22 pistol.

So then I proceeded on with day two at the range with my new Sig P229 .22LR slide conversion kit. Last Saturday I tried just Federals and the results were not good. So today I used two CCI loads, two Remington loads, two Federal loads and one Winchester Super X. It absolutely hates Winchester so that one is out.

The others were sorta so-so. It would shoot a while, then hit a dud, shoot some more, hit another dud. I was on a roll with CCI standard velocity when I got three duds in a row. And all the duds would fire on the second try.

End result is the best was from CCI Mini-Mags, which is the most expensive .22 ammo I had with me. So it appears she's got expensive tastes.

I did establish that Sig knows what they're saying when they said this slide kit is for the Sig P229R, the rail model. She works pretty good with my P229R and she works pretty terrible with my Sig P229 SAS Gen2 with no rail. All the problems with the P229R were duds. But the P229 had a lot of feed problems, as well as a few duds. So the slide stays on the P229R.

I thought I was going to use my new Caldwell Pistolero pistol rest (first photo) to zero in the sights, but instead spent all my time trying to find a .22 load the slide likes. All told I shot more than 500 rounds of .22 today. At least I didn't go broke doing it, which is the whole point of .22 shooting.

I finally used the Caldwell rest on my Sig P220 with the .45 ACP slide on it to see if I could do as good or better than I did last week standing up. First set of targets, 10 yards on the rest, has 16 holes in target at right and eight in target at left. Last week my best of three mags loads was all eight in the black. Today my best was at left, all eight in the 10 ring and at right with only one out of 16 in the 9 ring ain't too bad. This P220 is so easy to shoot well it makes me look real good. It's definitely a carry gun, even fits my Galco P229 paddle holster.

And since I had my P229R with a mag full of .357 Sig Ranger hollow-points, just in case some yahoo thought it would be smart to rob somebody at the range, I decided to try it from the rest also. The bottom set of targets on the left is 13 rds., one magazine full and one in the pipe. Not as good as the P220, but not too bad either. The post-dot contrast sights on the P229R aren't as exact for me as the three dots of the P220's night sights. Bottom target at right is a scattering of .22 shots with the 229 slide kit.

Teddy Roosevelt said there's something about the outside of a horse that's good for the inside of man. TR probably said the same thing about guns and he'd be right. I left the range as usual with a big smile on my face. See you there next Saturday if I ain't working.

A love affair with .45 ACP that started more than 50 years ago

Back in the summer of 2007, I had four carry pistols and decided that was enough, Steyr MA1 .357 Sig compact 4" barrel, Glock 29 10mm subcompact 3.6" barrel, S&W 669 9mm subcompact 3.5" barrel and Kel-Tec P11 9mm 3" barrel.

So I kicked off the search for the Baddest Tactical Pistol I Can Afford. That led to the purchase of my Llama IX-C wideframe, a full-size 5" barrel 1911 .45 ACP. I busied myself collecting mags for a while, starting with the 13-rd. factory mags then discovering I could hack Para Ord P-14 mags and even larger ones, like an aftermarket 20-rd. mag.

I bought some other full-size handguns during that kick, but most of them are gone now as I zagged the other way back toward carry pistols, mainly due to starting a new job a year ago in a gun store.

Which led to my next .45, a Para P12-45 with 3.5" barrel. A retired Navy chief sold it to us and it was love at first sight for me. He was a lefty like me and had installed ambi safeties as well as several other custom features done by the famed Cylinder & Slide custom shop.

And the retired chief also sold the gun shop a full-size Para P14-45, which was customized even further by C&S, also ambi safeties and an even longer list of custom features, including a flowerpot mag well.

So what could I do? When I got the P12 paid off, I put the P14 in the layaway safe until I could buy it too. If a compact .45 is good, a full-size .45 is more good. Both are great shooters.

And that's where things stayed for a bit, but along the way I had picked up a Sig P220 Rimfire Classic. That's Sig's name for their .22LR versions of their classic P229, P226 and P220 models.

I got a chance to pick up the gently used P220 single-action-only .22LR, which has ambi safeties, voila another lefty-friendly shooter. So eventually I had to get the .45 ACP slide conversion kit for the P220.

I finally did last week and it blows me away. I can shoot this P220 .45 better than either of the other three, and they all shoot very well. Don't get much better than that, four .45s that all shoot very well to excellent.

It's been a circuitous route, but I've come back full circle to my first love, the 1911 .45 ACP my dad first let me shoot when I was a lad of 10 or so. And the 1911 .45 ACP that I shot while I was in Uncle Sam's Navy during the Vietnam War.

I've got four 9mm pistols, four .357 Sigs, one 10mm, four .22LRs, three .44s, two .357 Magnums, one .38 and one .327 Magnum, but I gotta say of all of them, I still love .45s the best.

.22, .44, .45 and 9mm Day down on the farm at Dewitt's Range

Bad news is state budget cuts has closed the public range at Millstone 4-H Camp where I've been shooting for the past few years.

Good news is private enterprise is alive and well in Richmond County, NC. I found out a local sporting clays range has expanded from shotguns to rifles and handguns so I visited there today to check it out.

Shot six of my pistols, I'm happy as a pig in deep crap and joined up on the spot.

The range is Dewitt's Game Farm and you will find me there most Saturdays from now on, as long as the Good Lord's willing and the creek don't rise -- or I have to work Saturdays.

The Sig .22LR slide conversion kit I bought for my two Sig P229 .357 Sig pistols is not an immediate hit. For some stupid reason, I took two different Federal .22 loads to shoot in it, high velocity and hyper velocity, and it didn't like either. Feed problems. But that's stupid because I know Sig .22 pistols like CCI and I didn't try CCI first, then others later. Next week a diet of CCI for the Sig P229 slide, which fits and works equally well or badly on either the rail model or the non-rail model.

There were two unqualified successes of the day. First was the .45 ACP slide I just got for my Sig P220 Rimfire Classic. Shoots like a dream, witness the .45 holes in the target. It's easy to see which are .45 and .22 aside from the size. The .45 holes, all eight of them, are in the black from 10 yards standing, while the .22 holes are mostly high as I fiddled with the sights until I gave up on misfeeds.

Second unqualified success is what I did with the extra bucks leftover from the sale of my Glock 20 10mm after buying the P220 .45 ACP caliber exchange kit. I'd had my eye on a Hy Hunter Six Shooter .44 Magnum single-action pistol for some time, a copy of the Colt Single Action Army with a 6" barrel and genuine fake pearl grips. I even took it out for a test run some time ago and found it to be a great shooter (one of the benefits of working in a gun shop, shoot before you buy with used guns).

So I finally had some money for a fun gun and brought the Hy Hunter home the same day the P220 slide kit arrived. I did a bit of research on it and found out it was made by J.P. Sauer & Sohn in West Germany in the 1980s before the Iron Curtain collapsed. Sauer later merged with the Swiss pistol company Sig and became what we know today as Sig Sauer. So you could technically say I shot not three but four Sauer pistols today. Three Sig Sauer semi-auto pistols and one Sauer single-action revolver.

I also shot my Dan Wesson .22 revolver a bit and ran a few mags through my S&W 469 9mm pistol. They're both new-to-me so they need the work and so do I.

It was fun and as Bogey said, this is the beginning of a beautiful relationship: me, my pistols and rifles and Dewitt's Game Farm. See you there next Saturday.

Glock 10mm is gone and Sig P220 .45 ACP kit is on the way here

The big Glock 10mm is gone and my Sig P220 .22LR Rimfire is soon gonna be sporting a .45 ACP slide conversion kit.

I boxed up my Glock 20 10mm/9x25mm last week with all accessories and shipped it off to the gun show at Concord for the weekend.

One of my cellmates at the gun shop was looking at it in the booth at the gun show, thinking about buying it himself, when a guy walks up, does a double-take and sez "What is that!?"

It's a made in Austria full-size G20 with an extra Lone Wolf 9x25mm extended ported barrel, three 15-rd. mags and three 17-rd. mags with +2 extenders, Ghost 3.5-lb. trigger, stainless-steel guide rod and captured-recoil-spring assembly, with all standard Glock parts in the factory box with papers, plus 120 rds. of Double Tap Gold Dot JHP ammo.

Try saying that fast three times without taking a breath.

Anyway, my buddy Wes told the guy about it and he bought it on the spot.

So when the Sig P220 .45 ACP caliber conversion kit I ordered from Sig comes in, now I got the cash to pay for it.

This also means I now have only one 10mm pistol in my small arsenal, a customized G29 subcompact.

When the P220 conversion kit arrives, it will become my 4th .45 ACP pistol, one Sig, two Para-Ords, compact P12 and full-size P14; and one Llama IX-C wide-frame full-size.

I also have four .357 Sig pistols (two Sig P229s and two S&W M&Ps, compact and commander-size) and three 9mm pistols (one CZ P07, one Steyr M9A1, one Kel-Tec PF-9) to round out my carry choices. Plus of course, a few revolvers, one Charter .327 Magnum, one S&W .44 Magnum, one Charter .44 Special and two .357 Magnums (one S&W and one Taurus). I shouldn't say it out loud, much less put it in writing, but I'm pretty well set for carry guns now.

That does not mean I'll stop buying guns. I'll just start buying something other than carry pieces.

There's a .44 Magnum Colt-Single-Action-Army-clone at the shop I've had my eye on for some time, plus a dandy stainless Marlin 1894 .357 Magnum lever-action rifle that would make a nice pair with my .44 Magnum stainless Marlin 1894. Choices, choices...

Saturday will be .22 Pistol Day with 3 Sigs, 1 S&W and 1 DW

The .22LR slide kit for my Sig P229 .357 Sig pistols that I ordered at the gun shop where I work hath arrived and I got a pleasant surprise.

Sig says you gotta order the .22 slide kit for either a P229 or the P229R, with the "R" for rail. I've got both, so I just told the sales rep to send me whichever one they had in stock.

They sent the P229R kit, but lo and behold, it also fits my P229 SAS Gen2, which ain't got no rail, as well as the P229R. I tried it on both. Ain't took no photos yet, but that's the no-R 229 at right top.

Only way to see if the slide kit works on both P229s is to go shoot it, so I will on Saturday. Praise the Lord and pass the ammo, weather report for Saturday here in the soon-to-be-again Sunny South is 59 degrees and sunny!

I'll also be shooting my Sig P220 Rimfire Classic, which remains sans the .45 ACP Caliber X-Change Kit, which is still on order from Sig.

And not last and certainly not least, I will also be shooting my S&W 22A-1, which I fully expect to remain the most accurate and best shooting .22 pistol I've got.

It's got a trigger-pull weight of 1 lb. 12.4 oz. which makes it just about impossible to shoot badly. With the green-fiber-optic front sight plus the handsome and comfortable monkey-wood grip I added, it's got to be the easiest-to-shoot .22 pistol I will ever own, unless I spend a ton of money on some Olympic-quality target pistol.

And lastly, I'm also looking forward to zeroing the sights on my recently purchased Dan Wesson .22 revolver, which I have thus far only shot at the local clay bank with a bit of plinking to determine what brand of ammo it does and does not like.

It's partial to Federal, so I will be testing it and zeroing it with at least a couple of different Federal and American Eagle .22 varieties.

But mostly I'm planning to really enjoy shooting my pair of Sig P229s with .22 ammo instead of .357 Sig.

I love .357 Sig, but shooting up hundreds of rounds of ammo is just a bit expensive. I usually limit myself to about 50 rounds max, if that, when I shoot the .357 Sig pistols.

But with this new P229 .22 slide kit, I can shoot both my P229s to my heart's content and only blow a few bucks at a session. Good training with two carry pistols and lots of fun in the bargain.

Humility Day: Double-Tap 2 Bad Guys Drill at range with carry pair

Got a couple of hours of range time Saturday and started off with some forgotten fun, shooting a .22LR rifle.

I bought a Marlin-Redfield Model 75 carbine a while back because I had one just like it several years ago and really loved shooting it. I gave it to my son after he got grown and gone.

We had one like it marked down for clearance at the shop so I bought it because it was cheap.

Alas, I discovered my fuzzy eyes could no longer get the iron sights focused and aligned, the latter due to the Monte Carlo stock.

I bought the earlier Marlin carbine with a scope already on it so it never occurred to me I'd have a lefty alignment problem.

But Saturday morning I finally got around to mounting a Simmons 4X scope on it that had been gathering dust on my shelf for more than a year. So I started off the range trip with zeroing the scope.

The scope was so far out of zero I had to break out one of my few Blue Man full-size target to get the shots where I could find them.

Then since I already had the Blue Man out, I decided to invent a new drill to simulate two idiots who might try to rob the gun store.

Believe it or else, this actually happened a while back but they changed their minds about it quickly when confronted with a Glock .40.

So I set up a smaller black bull offset to the left of the Blue Man target, which simulates a second BG some distance behind the first BG.

I had already planned to do some draw and shoot practice drills with two shoulder rigs for my two favorite carry pistols, my Sig P229 SAS Gen2 .357 Sig and my Para Ord P12-45.

I drew and fired double-taps at each target as quickly as I could get the sights aligned, sorta practicing "panic mode" as in a genuine armed robbery attempt.

I wore the Bianchi rig for the P229 so I started off with it. I knew the long double-action pull of the first shot would likely adversely affect the first shot.

What I wasn't prepared for was the single-action shots at the second target also missing an equal amount of time. Shazzaam! as Gomer Pyle would say.

After the first round of 3 mags of 12, I had 12 holes in the blue man, 12 holes in the black bull and 12 holes off either target.

As the King James says, that sucketh. Can't blame that on the DA pull for the first shot.

So I put up a fresh set of targets and strapped on my Para 12-45 with its Galco leather shoulder harness rig.

After four mags of .45 ACP, one 12, one 14 and two 15s, I had only a very few holes out of the blue or black.

Conclusion: nothing beats a great single-action trigger in a 1911 pistol, not even the great DA/SA SRT Short-Reset Trigger in P229 SAS Gen2.

I think I'll be practicing more with my pair of Sig P229 .357 Sig pistols and carrying my Para P12-45 a lot more until I can improve my P229 shooting.

Nothing like a little simulated "panic mode" pistol shooting to remind me I ain't near as good as I think I am. More range time needed.

Then I finished off the day with a little double-action revolver shooting with my two backups, Charter .327 Magnum and S&W 65-3 .357 Magnum. The Charter with Crimson Trace Lasergrips is definitely a hand cannon as it's nearly the equal of the .357 Magnum in ballistics.

It's at least a slight insult to call either of these powerful wheel guns a backup, but until I get the Colt Cobra .38 in the layaway safe paid off, they'll have to assume that lesser role. When the Cobra is ready for action, I'll work out some other combo with the two magnums in lead roles.

When should you carry a concealed handgun?

What's the last thing you check before you go out the door as you leave home? Car keys? Wallet? Is the door locked? How about, "What am I going to carry today?"

I first got my concealed-carry permit in 2006 and did not carry at all for a while. Then I started carrying occasionally, just when I thought I needed to. Then I thought it through and eventually decided to apply a truth I learned as a Boy Scout. The Scout motto is "Be Prepared."

Since nobody knows what's going to happen when you leave home, how can you be ready to confront a deadly threat? Be prepared by never leaving your home or anywhere unarmed.

Here's a short answer to that question from a Sig Sauer Academy senior instructor.

"I only carry when I think I need to . . ."

Have you heard this before? I have, many times. Recently I was working with a large group of law enforcement personnel. We were having a casual conversation about what we carry "off duty" while out and about. I was surprised to hear the answers (no I wasn’t). Many of them stated they only carry when the think they'll need it. After about the third time I heard this I had to ask., "So, how do you know if you are going to need it?" The responses ranged from, "Well, if I'm going into a bad part of town", or, "If I'm going to be out with the family". The reality is that we will never be presented with a criminal intelligence update that tells us the day or time we may need our firearm. So how do we mitigate not being prepared for a deadly force encounter? We do it by carrying all of the time. Yes, this includes running out to the corner store on Sunday morning to pick up the paper or hitting the deli for a sandwich on your day off. Make the commitment to yourself right now. Never be accused of not being prepared. Especially when your life or the lives of others may depend on it. A wise NCO once said to a new paratrooper standing in the door of an airplane, "Son, you're about to become either a training success or a not too amusing anecdote."--Adam Painchaud, Senior Instructor

Here's the latest commercial from SIG SAUER Academy, "Training for Armed Professionals and Responsible Citizens." They have satellite classes in various locations around the country with the closest to me being Midland, Va. Maybe one day I'll be able to attend one of them.

Sig P250 9mm Compact Nickel Slide is tempting deal

Dang, just when I figure I'm gonna lay low for a while on purchasing handguns (before my wife kills me) the gun shop where I work gets this great deal on Sig P250 9mm compact pistols with a nickel-plated slide.

I guess free enterprise is at work here as the price has dropped significantly on the P250 since it was first released. Prices started out well above $700 but have been dropping since.

We have this same model listed on gunbroker with a camo polymer frame for $675 and now we're competing with ourselves with this great deal on the nickel slide model for only $485.

The P250 is a double-action-only pistol, unlike the classic Sig pistols which are all double-action/single-action. And the response from the buying public has been a bit lukewarm up until now. But with a price drop like this, I imagine demand will rise quickly.

One of my co-workers at the gun shop bought one of the camo models and likes it a lot. And it's a great concept, buy one any size or caliber and then change the polymer grip frame, slide and barrel to a zillion different combinations in 9mm, .40S&W, .357 Sig or .45 ACP in subcompact, compact or full-size.

At prices like this, even the old die-hard Sig classic lovers like me may have to come across. I've got several DAO pistols already, two Glock 10mm, G20 and G29; two S&W M&P .357 Sigs, commander size and compact; and a Steyr M9A1. So the DAO Sig P250 isn't off-putting to me.

It's just that I really love the Sig traditional double-actions. My two P229 .357 Sigs are my absolute favorite pistols and my next acquisition will be a Sig P220 .22LR I tried out over the weekend. Converting it to a .45 ACP Single-Action-Only Sig P220 is the follow-on plan.

After that, a P250 with nickel slide may be next.

What's better than a Sig Pistol? Three Sig pistols!

One of my favorite gun writers, Clint Smith of Thunder Ranch, says if you have a gun you really like, get another one just like it.

Well, I can't afford to get another Sig Sauer P229 .357 Sig SAS Gen 2, which is both my most expensive handgun and my favorite. But when the gun shop where I work bought a used Sig P229R .357 Sig at a recent gun show, that was close enough for me. The R stands for rail, which my SAS Gen 2 does not have, being strictly a concealed-carry pistol. And the P229R also has a couple of features the SAS doesn't have, a stainless-steel barrel and guide rod.

You'd think on such an expensive pistol as the SAS models, Sig would at least give you a staineless-steel guide rod instead of plastic. And the SAS barrel is Nitron-black finish, though it is stainless steel under the black.

Anyway, that's the P229R in the top photo and the SAS Gen 2 in the second. It does have lots of bells and whistles the P229R is lacking, night sights, stainless slide, fancy P229 Elite wood grips, Short Reset Trigger and of course the Sig Anti-Snag SAS treatment on the slide and frame, smoothing out all the sharp edges.

But there ain't nothing wrong with the new-to-me P229R, which has quickly become my second-favorite Sig pistol. It's what Sig calls a CPO, Certified Previously Owned, meaning it was a law-enforcement trade in that was completely refurbished by Sig.

• Before receiving its Factory Certified Pre-Owned status each pistol is stripped, refinished, refitted with original factory parts where needed, cleaned and lubricated, function tested and hand-inspected by a certified SIG SAUER armourer.

If it can pass the Sig factory armorer's inspection, that's more than good enough for me.

And the third photo is very likely destined to become my third favorite Sig pistol. It's a gently used Sig P220R .22LR pistol which some idiot traded in at the gun store.

It's one of a new series of pistol Sig calls their Classic .22s. Buy a Classic .22 Rimfire and you get a $400 coupon to buy the full-caliber slide, barrel and recoil system plus a magazine to covert the .22 into whatever caliber the frame is designed for. In this case, it's a P220 Single-Action-Only .45 ACP which comes with no decocker and ambi safeties. Which is just exactly perfect for a lefty like me. So I get a great .22LR pistol for training and plinking and also what is perhaps the best .45 ACP pistol on the planet, IMHO, including custom 1911s that cost multi-thousands.

All three of these Sig pistols went to the range with me and a shooting buddy on Saturday and we burned up a bunch of ammo and had a bunch of fun. I also took along my customized Glock subcompact G29 10mm (fourth photo) because my shooting buddy has a full-size G20 10mm and wanted to see how the G29 shoots. He loved it.

But this was also his first experience shooting .357 Sig pistols and guess what? This former "Gotta be .45 or 10mm or I won't have it!" guy has decided there is another caliber he loves.

Finally the last photo is my Sig P229R after I got her all cleaned up following the range trip and installed a set of Hogue Pau Ferro grips on her. She dresses up real nice, don't she?

(P.S. The unnamed shooting buddy referred to demands photo credits. OK, he took the first four photos. With my excellent digital camera. Set on "Auto" which makes it foolproof, even for this fool. And I'm leaving him unnamed because I outshot him so bad it would be embarrassing to name him. But I'll give you a hint: His first name is Jerry and his last name is Andrews.)

Sig Sauer offers 'Cash for Klunker Handguns' as trade-ups

We interrupt our regularly scheduled blogging for a message from one of our valued advertisers (in my dreams) Sig Sauer:

SIG SAUER - Gives you $200 "CASH For your KLUNKER^* Handgun"
Purchase a new SIG SAUER® P220®, P226®, P229®, 1911, SIG556 pistol, or SIG556 rifle from your dealer’s inventory from September 7th through November 30th, 2009, and SIG SAUER will give you $200.00 for your old KLUNKER* pistol or revolver.

Now there's a cash for klunkers program I can support. The wife and I briefly considered trading in her high-mileage Chevy Blazer for something better on gas during the recent guvmint economic stimulus plan for the nation's auto industry unions. (When it comes to "saving jobs" no group of workers ranks higher with the Obama administration than labor union members.)

But we just couldn't bring ourselves to take the ol' Chevy out behind the barn and shoot 'er in the head. She still runs good, gets fair to middlin' mileage and just because the federal guvmint wants to give you a welfare payment, is that any reason to take it? We decided the answer was "no" so we kept the Chevy off death row.

So Sig Sauer takes the idea and runs with it. Only problem I have is none of my handguns are klunkers. And I can't find a barely functioning piece of junk at the shop and use it for a trade-in because we have no "klunkers' at the gun shop. All our guns are there because we bought 'em or accepted them in trades and we don't take in no junk.

But if you've got a klunker, here's your chance to trade it on a genuine new Sig Sauer. Go for it!

Pau Ferro takes a back seat to Sig P229 Elite wood grips

Is there anything more pleasant than an unexpected gift? When I ordered a Sig P229 SAS Gen2 .357 Sig pistol from Sig Sauer back in February, the Sig factory rep promised the boss lady at the gun shop he would see if he could find me a set of the nice wood grips they used on the Generation 1 SAS model that were phased out for Generation 2.

That's the promised grips on the Sig Gen1 in the top photo, stolen from the Sig site where it's no longer to be found.

So when my new Sig 229 SAS Gen2 arrived May 1, it had black composite grips on it, as shown in the second photo. Nice and functional but not nearly as sexy as those SAS Gen1 grips.

So I figured maybe they'd arrive in a week or two. I waited. Then I waited some more.

After a month, my patience ran out. I've never been long on patience so a month is probably close to a record for me actually waiting for something.

So I googled wood grips for Sig P229s and found a nice set of Hogue Pau Ferro grips. Who is Pau Ferro, you may ask, and why can't he spell Paul?

Actually, Pau Ferro ain't a he, it's a Bolivian hardwood and quite a beautiful one at that.

My new Hogue Pau Ferro grips arrived in late June, I installed them, tested them at the range and was happy as a pig in deep mud.

And then, lo and behold, as King James often says, today that pleasant unexpected surprise arrived.

A package from Sig for me was thrown in with an order of various accessories, the long-promised but now forgotten Sig P229 Elite grips, as the package billed them.

The Sig Elite series is an all-stainless steel line of their various models and the grips are exactly the same as the former SAS Gen1 grips I so admired.

So today, I removed the Pau Ferro grips and installed the new Elite grips. Ain't they prettier than a speckled pup?

Now I gotta get me another P229 so I can have something to put my Pau Ferro grips on. And it just so happens that we have a CPO, which is Sig lingo for Certified Previously Owned, Sig P229 .357 Sig which someone traded in at a recent gun show. It's all Nitron black with a rail, vs. the 2-tone slicked-up Sig-Anti-Snag SAS, but I bet those Pau Ferro grips will dress it right up.

I shall ascribe to the wisdom of Clint Smith, the famed gunwriter and chief shootist of Thunder Ranch, who says if you have a pistol you really like, get two of them. Then if the one you carry has to go out of action for any reason, you've got a backup ready to step up to the plate.

Sounds like a perfectly good reason to get another P229 .357 Sig pistol to me.

And another little unexpected surprise also popped up last week. We have so many long guns at the gun shop that the boss marked a bunch of them down and set them out on racks out front to move them out of there.

And lo and behold again, there's a little Marlin .22LR semi-auto carbine that's the twin brother of one I had years ago. I shot the whee out that little Marlin when I was living on a farm and appointed myself the designated slayer of snapping turtles in a big pond in a pasture out in my front yard.

When I moved off the farm, I gave that little Marlin .22LR to my son and it's still being shot by him and his two grandsons. And here was another just like it, marked down to $85! As they used to say at the tobacco warehouses, "Sold American!" I bought myself an early birthday present.

Haven't been to the range lately, but I'll be there Saturday teaching my first NRA Basic Pistol Class, so the little Marlin is going along for the ride and its baptism by fire. It's gonna be fun.