First question you ask why would Carryconcealed.net’s team of gun range junkies be testing a 40 round drum for a 1911. Our focus is CCW and home protection. Well, in some of our other articles, we talk about the ability to leave magazines for 1911’s in cars or boats and not have to carry additional magazines when carrying any of our 1911 guns. We were asked to test this one out for home defense against home invasions or a car-jacking situation. This would not be anything that you would want to put in your pants and try to hide.

The idea of being able to put one magazine into the 1911 pistol and have 40 rounds at your disposal is very cool. We have heard of situations where lots of bad guys run into a house or like my cousin have had to save themselves from large gangs.

The Promag COL-A8 for the 1911 works with the .45 ACP and has a retail price of $96 dollars. When the magazine is added into the handgun the drum is lower than the handle and is very bulky. The additional weight made the guns bulky but not unmanageable. We had 4 different 1911 models to work with. The Springfield Arms Micro Compact, two different Springfield 1911-A1s, and one Llama 1911.

The testing was short as we spent the entire time clearing jams. We were only able to get one 5 round burst from one of the 1911s. None of the 1911’s were able to shoot using the Promag 40 Rd Drum. We then tested every one of the 1911’s with 50 rounds each using regular magazines, and had not one failure. This proved that it was not the handguns, but rather the Drum. We are going to send this back to Promag and see if we can get a replacement and test it again.

As it stands now the Carryconcealed.net team gives the Promag Polymer 40 Rd Drum for the 1911 a 0 out of 5 stars. This concept of having lots of rounds handy is a great idea, but all of the testers agreed, that we could return lots of defensive fire with using normal magazines rather than a "Movie Prop".

We will update this article after we get a response from Promag. Happy trails and keep the lead down range. Clark –Carryconcealed.net