An overview and evaluation of the features and quirks of Star Model PD handguns.

by RK Campbell

The pistol in question is a handgun I have considerable personal experience with. I was an avid reader in school and first saw the Star Model PD on the cover of iiGuns and Ammo in 1975. A few years later I took an oath as a peace officer. I owned a Star PD chambered in 45 ACP by then. It was among a very few handguns I owned and at the time each had a specific duty.

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The Star was a life saver with its reliability, easy shooting, and a hard-hitting cartridge. Jeff Cooper hit the nail on the head in his review. He felt the pistol should be carried much and fired little. A 45 ACP handgun weighing 25 ounces could be controlled adequately for close range personal defense but it was not intended for long firing sessions.

The Star PD was not expensive but was feed reliable from the factory. The pistol fed most any type of wide mouth hollow point even though many factory loads of the time were not well designed for feed reliability. The answer if you wished to carry these loads in a Colt 1911 was to polish the feed ramp, a job commonly known as throating. Many pistols were ruined by gouging into the feed ramp with Dremel tools, especially those pistols with aluminum frame ramps.

On a side note many of these…

Read more in the January 2023 issue.

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