taught to treat the slide-mounted levers on the latter brands as decockers, not safeties.
The time came when a deputy with a new Beretta was the first to respond to a psycho firing a shotgun in a public place. When the shotgunner came at him, the officer fired one round and missed. Still new to the semiautomatic, he failed to return the trigger far enough forward to re-set it for the second shot, and when he pulled the trigger, the gun of course did not fire. Thinking it had jammed, he racked the slide with his non-dominant hand as he had been taught, clearing a live round from the chamber and cycling another one in. However, his hand had inadvertently pushed the lever down into the “safe” position as he performed the stoppage clearance drill. Now, as he attempted to fire on the gunman who was rapidly closing on him, the trigger moved uselessly under his finger. His life was saved when another policeman, off duty at the scene and armed with a slick-slide 9mm, shot and killed the gunman just in time.
This P226 9mm is in its second generation of protecting the public. Originally issued to a trooper by the Michigan State Police, it was traded in when MSP upgraded to the more powerful .40 caliber version of the P226. This officer purchased it second hand, and wears it to work daily today. It still delivers excellent accuracy and, as he demonstrates, excellent control.
Author found extremely uniform accuracy with awide variety of 9mm ammo when shooting this P226 from the “auto hood position” at 25 yards.
It should be noted that in writing the above, I am not condemning the concept of a safety/ decock lever. I am simply saying that if the decision is made to carry the gun off safe, the gun probably should not have an “on safe” option at all. Moreover, that if the design chosen is “decocker-only,” the frame-mounted decocker as on the SIG makes more sense for more people than does a decocker mounted on the slide. I’ve carried the Beretta, the Ruger, and the S&W TDA autos on duty, but always carried them on-safe and always practiced the off-safing movement as part of the draw, and taught it to my officers who also carried that type of gun.
The SIG, of course, had other attributes. No competitive gun had a better trigger in terms of smoothness of the first double-action shot and controllability of single-action follow-up shots. The trigger re-set of the SIG-Sauer was just right for police work: Not so long as to be ungainly, but not so short as to allow a shaky hand to fire an additional shot unintentionally after the need to shoot had ended.
Accuracy is the P226’s calling card. Behold a one-inch five-shot group, fired at 25 yards from a bench rest with the most popular .357 SIG duty load, the Speer Gold Dot 125-grain jacketed hollow point (JHP).
There was the reliability factor, too. The SIG was simply extraordinary in this regard. The good “feel” and “pointability” repeatedly cited by the authorities quoted above made for good, fast shooting in the hands of the average cop. Competence and confidence were both enhanced by this.
The SIG’s inherent accuracy put it in the forefront, too. The experts cited above told you the straight stuff about that. In my job teaching nationwide, I got to not only intensively test every 9mm out there, but got to observe a great number of them in the hands of officers and instructors. As a rule, the SIG P226 would group tighter than the Glock, the Ruger, and the Smith & Wesson service pistols. Only the Beretta and two of HK’s entries, which eventually numbered four, could keep up. The VP70Z, a machine pistol designed for cheap mass-manufacture turned into a cheap semiautomatic pistol, was never in the same ballpark with the SIG for accuracy, reliability, or ergonomics, and was soon mercifully discontinued. The current HK USP is a good gun, and spectacularly accurate in .45 ACP, but not so accurate in the 9mm specimens I’ve seen. The P9S, discontinued in the 1980s, would stay with or even exceed the SIG-Sauer for accuracy in 9mm, but design quirks such as requiring a pull of the trigger to decock made it unworkable for American law enforcement. The HK P7, then and now, could be expected to keep pace with the SIG in the accuracy department, but its unique squeeze-cocking mechanism turned off as many police departments as its very high price.
The Texas Department of Public Safety and the Rhode Island State Police both issue this .357 SIG P226 to their uniformed troopers. These guns combine great power with extraordinary accuracy, very good controllability, and the highest order of reliability. Full cartridge capacity is 13 rounds in the magazine, and one more in the firing chamber.
Thus, if you’re talking about maximum accuracy in a 9mm service pistol, and you want traditional design plus high reliability plus affordability, you’re down to a two-horse race: SIG and Beretta. The two are almost indistinguishable in this regard, each occasionally beating the other, but if it came down to the wire I would have to admit that in my experience the average SIG P226 9mm will, just by a hair, shoot a little tighter than the average Beretta.
The P226 has a distinguished history in American law enforcement. It has been the service gun of the state police in Massachusetts, Michigan, and other states. Arizona troopers used to have a choice between two SIGs, the P226 in 9mm and the P220 in .45.
When departments have gone from the P226 to something else, it usually wasn’t a brand change, but a power upgrade. Michigan and Massachusetts state troopers still carry SIG P226 pistols, but in .40 caliber, not 9mm. On the other hand, at this writing the Orlando, Florida Police Department, nationally famous for its professionalism and high-grade handgun training and performance, is still using the P226 9mm after many, many years. Their duty load is the Winchester Ranger 127-grain +P+ at 1250 feet per second. In a long list of shootings, this 9mm round has stopped the bad guys with alacrity, curing the one thing that is really wrong with a 9mm, its limited stopping power in most available loadings.
The P226 Rail model set up for home defense or police tactical work. InSight M3 tactical flashlight is mounted to the rail at the front of the dust cover, and a 20-round extended magazine is locked in place.
Choice Of Experts
Supervisory Special Agent Gordon McNeill was team leader of the FBI stakeout group that engaged the armed robbery and murder suspects Edward Matix and Michael Platt on April 11, 1986, in a suburb of Miami, Florida. Armed with a short-barreled six-shot .357 revolver, he fired the opening police shots of the encounter. He wounded Matix, but emptied the gun. Between his fourth and fifth shot a .223 rifle bullet fired by Platt smashed McNeill’s gun hand. Unable to reload his revolver due to his injuries, he was about to turn back to his vehicle to grab his shotgun when Platt loomed up and shot him in the neck. The bullet left him partially paralyzed for life.
Largely as a result of this incident, the FBI soon authorized field agents to carry their own 9mm or .45 caliber pistols. Initially, only two brands were approved, SIG and Smith & Wesson. McNeill, still working for the Bureau in a teaching assignment despite his physical disabilities and still able to qualify to work armed, immediately purchased a 16-shot SIG-Sauer P226. After the horror of being helpless with an empty gun after six shots, Gordon McNeill wanted increased and highly reliable firepower on his side. No one in the world can blame him. His choice of pistol was an excellent one.
Evan Marshall has been a friend of mine for going on 30 years. A survivor of multiple armed encounters during his distinguished career
