STI 1911 with an interesting heritage

Yesterday I stopped by the gun shop to get a new holster for a J-Frame.  As is customary, I left with a new gun instead.

I saw a railed 1911 that really caught my eye.  It was an STI Duty One that had been customized.  All my criteria for a good solid shooter were met:

- 5" barrel with GI bushing and guide rod
- Steel frame with integral light rail
- Dovetail front sight.  Stake-in sights are garbage.
- Novak rear sight cut for maximum compatibility with a large number of sights

This gun had the above mentioned barrel configuration,  FDE cerakote, flush-cut barrel crown, cut at 11 degrees with a mirrored polish, lanyard loop, and had been dehorned and lined up on all edges.  None of these are option from STI.  Nice.

Seeing as how a new one is $1300 and it had about $1100 of work or more, I figured the asking price of  was a fair deal.  My local shop (Ed's Guns in Vass, NC), always has great prices on used guns.  Actually, I have never seen a used gun in there I would consider overpriced. 

After doing some research, I found out this pistol was built by Superior Arms LLC in Kentucky and presented to the winners of the 2009 International Sniper Competition.  Some of you may have seen this on the Discovery Channel (shown as Top Sniper).  The pistol was one of two presented to a team of Army Special Operations Snipers.  I guess Ed had something he wanted more (that happens), because it wound up on the shelves that Saturday morning.  Lucky me.  It goes nice with my STI Tactical .40 SOF Test Pistol in the historical collection.