This John Browning patent gun, Model 1911, was so named for the year it was officially adopted for use by the United States Army.

The Browning design was so great, that it has been changed little in over 100 years of production.

The gun had many features unheard of in a factory pistol.

This included an adjustable trigger stop that limited finger movement so that the aim wasn’t skewed, grooves on the front of the receiver grip and wide super smooth, tuned trigger, and a special barrel and bushing (more on that later).

Since many of these guns used the exact same barrel except for the model name stamped on it, we have situations where an owner is convinced he has a rare, unknown model of aluminum frame Detective Special. What he has is an aluminum frame Cobra someone installed a Detective Special barrel on.

When he attempts to determine when his Colt was made, it comes back as a totally different model than what is stamped on the barrel.

To comply with the law, Colt began adding letters to the serial numbers as prefixes and suffixes to make each firearm have a unique number.

An added issue is Colt's often confusing serial number system.

The most widely produced, copied, used, talked about, written about and debated handgun in the world.In 1983 the Series 80 Models were introduced with an additional passive firing pin safety lock and the half-cock notch was also redesigned.The MKIV Series 70 Government Model Colts were available in blue or nickel plate and were chambered in .45, .38 Super, 9mm and 9mm Steyr (foreign export only).The largest portion of Colt Defense's business is now in sporting rifles, a line of business the company got back into during 2011.Military orders have been on the decline since 2009.In late 1999, Colt discontinued many of their consumer revolvers, but reintroduced both the Anaconda and Python Elite through the Custom Shop. The semi-auto pistols remaining in production are now referred to as Model "O" Series.In November 2003, Colt was divided into two separate companies, Colt Defense LLC (military/law enforcement) and Colt's Manufacturing Company LLC (handguns and match target rifles).