In one famous shooting, during the transition period between guns, two Texas highway patrolmen shot it out with a gunman ensconced in the cab of an 18-wheeler. The senior officer’s P220 shot where he aimed it, but the wide, slow .45 slugs did not punch through the massive bodywork of the giant truck with enough authority to stop the offender. His rookie partner, however, was fresh from the academy with a newly issued P226 in .357 SIG. His 125-grain CCI Gold Dot bullets at 1350 feet per second drilled through the heavy cab and punched through their would-be killer’s brain, ending the deadly battle instantly.
Steel-framed P226s are now available. I haven’t really worked with them, except for the target model, which is just deliciously accurate and sweet to shoot.
The P226 is an eminently “shootable” pistol when the pressure is on. Firing in front of a large class of students to “set the pace,” author shot this perfect 300 out of 300 score with sixty rounds of 9mm on the combat course. Thanks to the P226’s consistency of performance, such a target is pretty much replicable on demand.
Personal Perspective
If I sound high on the P226, it’s not because it’s one of my favorite guns and my second favorite SIG. Rather, those things are true because the gun has proven itself in the manner described above. I use the P226 in its original caliber, 9mm, for several reasons that may or may not be relevant to your own needs.
First, I’m on the road a lot teaching, and usually flying. The airlines at this writing limit you to 11 pounds of ammunition in checked baggage. Eleven pounds of ammo means a lot more 9mm rounds than .40 or .45 rounds. When the Twin Towers were hit on September 11, 2001, my wife and daughter were in Nevada. Air travel shut down nationwide instantly, a situation that lasted for several days. Fortunately, I was able to fax my lovely bride a copy of her FFL, and she went to the nearest gun shop and bought the last suitable hardware that hadn’t been cleaned off the shelf by panicky buyers. Ammo disappeared from dealers’ shelves, too. They were stranded out there for a while. A lot of people had to make their way home on the ground, often hitch-hiking because the rental agencies had run out of automobiles, and the trains and buses were overloaded. If I have to make a long journey on foot or by thumb in a time of national emergency, I would find it much more comforting to have a lot of ammo in my backpack rather than a little. Unlike most police officers with issue ammo, when I’m on my own time I can carry whatever I want. Those 127-grain +P+ Winchesters, or Evan Marshall’s favorite 115-grain JHPs at 1300 or more feet per second, will get the job done quite nicely in 9mm.
Other more routine job-related requirements exist. If I have to buy training ammo on the road, 9mm is cheaper than anything else. If I have to ship thousands of rounds ahead to a training site, the lighter 9mm ammo costs less. I put a couple of thousand rounds of 9mm through my P226 at my last busman’s holiday at Chapman Academy.
I also compete whenever I can. The SIG pistol is very well suited to IDPA, where it is shot in the Stock Service Pistol (SSP) category. There, 9mm pistols compete with those chambered for .40 S&W, .357 SIG, and .45 ACP. I see no reason at all to have a .45 that only holds eight or nine rounds when IDPA rules let me have 11 in an SSP gun, and my 9mm SIG will take that many. I see no reason, either, to contend with .45 caliber recoil when I can shoot just a little bit faster against the omnipresent clock with a 9mm.
Each of us has our own job to do, and we pick our tools accordingly. However, in its broad caliber range of 9mm Parabellum, .357 SIG, and .40 S&W, the SIG P226 can literally offer something for everyone.
Of the many variations of the P226, and among the four P226 9mms that now rest in my gun safe, the one I prefer to use is the newest, the “rail gun.” The dust cover, or forward portion of the frame, is grooved to accept accessories such as an attached white light unit. (“White light” is the current way cool, high-speed, low-drag “tactical” terminology for “flashlight.”) I travel with an InSight M3 light in my carry-on luggage. At night, when I go to bed, I slide the flashlight onto the P226. I also do a tactical reload and swap out the pre-ban 15-round “carry magazine” of 9mm hot loads for a pre-ban 20-round magazine of the same ammo.
Do you wear a tactical load-bearing vest or magazine pouches to bed? Good. Neither do I. Police work has taught me that home invasions happen fast, and hotel room invasions happen faster because there’s less space to act as a buffer zone. I like the idea of one practiced movement putting everything in my hand that I need. A pistol with powerful ammunition; an ample supply of that ammunition already on board; light attached, with which to find, identify and blind my opponent; and, as icing on the cake, SIG-Lite night sights.
Another special-purpose P226 has already been mentioned: The double-action-only model as required by Chicago PD. For the armed citizen as well, the DAO concept bears looking at, if only from its civil liability defensibility standpoint, which, to be frank, is why so many police chiefs have specified it.
References
1. (1)Wilson, R.L., The World of Beretta: An International Legend, New York City: Random House, 2000, PP. 238-240.
2. (2)Karwan, Chuck, The SIG-Sauer P226, sidebar in Standard Catalog of Firearms, 13th Edition, by Ned Schwing. Iola, WI: Krause Publications, 2002, P. 958.
3. (3)Mullin, Timothy J., The 100 Greatest Combat Pistols, Boulder, CO: Paladin Press, 1994, P.381.
4. (4)Taylor, Chuck, The Gun Digest Book of Combat Handgunnery, 4th Edition, Iola, WI: Krause Publications, 1997, P. 226.
5. (5)Taylor, Ibid.
6. (6)Mullin, op.cit., P. 382.
7. (7)Karwan, op.cit.
8. (8)Clapp, Wiley, The Gun Digest Book of 9mm Pistols, Northbrook, IL: DBI Books, 1986, P. 209.
Chapter 4
The SIG P228
A more compact version of the P226 9mm, complete with the bigger gun’s reliability and accuracy.
Introduced in 1988, the P228 is essentially a P226 9mm shortened at muzzle and butt for easier concealed carry. I Despite a shorter (3.86-inch) barrel and proportionally shorter sight radius, the P228 delivers the same excellent accuracy of its big brother.
How accurate is that? I recently took a nearly new P228 to the range, equipped with a LaserMax sighting unit, which I turned off for the 25-yard accuracy testing. The 25-yard bench rest line I usually employ for this was in use, so I set up in one of the IDPA shooting bays, which had a Kriss-Kross barricade set up at the 25-yard line. This particular range prop gets its name from an IDPA match stage which forces the shooter to fire at three targets from each side of the barricade high, and each side of the barricade low, changing positions in a diagonal fashion. The cross beam marks the boundary between the high and the low positions. It is at a height where, with a minimum of contortions, I could brace the heel of the support hand on the cross beam and the back of that hand against the vertical portion of the wooden barricade at the same time. This allowed an unusually steady hold for a strong-side barricade position.
Five different loads were tested, running the gamut from 950 to 1250 feet per second in velocity and 147 to 115 grains in bullet weight, and encompassing four well-known brands.