Well, I plunked it down ....

Here's an observation that occurred to me while I was researchin' the old (Washington) Detonics guns. The negatives I found on the internet appeared to me to be posted by folks who may not have been very experienced shooters, and here's why: the typical, recurrring statements that made me think that were about new guns (meaning new weapons, not new manufacturers) that folks had only put a few rounds through, and included such statements (loose paraphrases here) as: "It jammed on the first magazine", or "It didn't lock back after the first magazine" or "It kicked real hard, and it failed to eject (a/k/a had a stovepipe jam)".

It has appeared to me, correctly or not, that folks who post comments like this about brand-spankin'-new, straight-outa-the-box pistols may not understand the concept of breaking in a new pistol and its mags, or more importantly what to expect during the process - especially that even the best-quality guns sometimes do NOT perform flawlessly right out of the box and take a few hundred rounds to settle down. And, if it's true that they are not knowledgeable about this fact, then they probably also may not be far enough along with shooting to be using decent form (e.g.: limpwristing), which can really show up on tiny and powerful guns like the Combat Master. Nothing wrong with that - we all have to start somewhere, and I'm not that much farther along, so not a value judgement - just point out something that sorta occurred to me. I found very few (and in fact I can't specifically remember any) negative comments about these guns from folks whose posts suggested to me that they have substantial shooting experience.

Best,
Jon