[erob3]

First I would encourage you to stay with a 9mm; unless you are reloading yourself it's much cheaper to shoot at the range, less recoil and like other calibers there is a wide variety of self defense ammo to choose from. With that said I have heard many good things about Sigs, however, I do not own one so I can't really comment too much about them. I do own a RIA 1911 9mm Tactical and love it. It shot great right out of the box and has not skipped a beat once. As already mentioned these are 2 different types of guns; the Sig is more of a tactical type of weapon with a longer / heavier trigger pull where as the RIA being a 1911 will have a shorter / lighter trigger pull. I have done a trigger job on my RIA and it is 4-5lbs and very crisp, after shooting a 1911 with a good trigger it spoils you quickly. I would like to throw one more in the mix for you to consider; CZ 75B. This pistol can be bought new for the budget you are wanting to spend and is a great 9mm, perhaps the best. If you want to compare 2 pistols the Sig and CZ would be a better comparison since they are both similar in type. Good luck.