Many have said it, hell the article says it.

You can take a 1911, Glock, HK, Tokerav, or pretty much anything that is spec and absolutely the bees knees out of the box and fuck it up by wanting to improve it.

I've walked back into the gun culture after being removed from it for a number of years. The first thing I noticed is everyone has something to say about how to improve X firearm. The moment you have modified anything at all, that firearm is different than the designer intended. At that moment you have a custom gun, capable of custom failures.

Are the vast majority of these firearms reliable? Yes, or the active duty members of agencies all over the world wouldn't trust their lives to these devices everyday. However, the moment you have people monkeying with the trigger, the sear, a safety mechanism, stippling a grip...you have modified the structure and possibly the reliability of the weapon. I have also met very few people in the culture that have not wanted to show off their "awesome fucking gun," and talk about the modifications they have made to make it the greatest hot shit weapon on the planet. Seriously, we have almost all been guilty of that at some point, because we are proud of our hardware. Sometimes though we need to leave it the fuck alone.

I think while the author of the piece had some very good points, he also failed to address that simple fact, everyone that works with these weapon systems long enough wants to be a junior gunsmith or wants that extra edge. That mentality while admirable introduces failure points that most likely weren't there before.

I hate stock sights on a Glock; I get them replaced. I love the feel of 1911's. I love shooting them, but as so many of you have said, some are great some are shit. The primary difference is all about what have you done to the firearm, have you tested and re-tested under use conditions, put 500 rounds through it in a setting to see what happens. The failure isn't always at the weapon, often it starts with the operator fixing something that really didn't need fixing.