Are revolvers for amateurs?

Telecaster

Telecaster

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In the current American Rifleman, a reader wrote in, "I believe that, for anyone who is not professionally involved with handguns, the revolver has inherently simple and effective safety features that cannot be accommodated by the semiautomatic pistol."

That kind of stuck in my craw. Professionals used revolvers for decades, till that Austrian guy undercut revolver prices. :cool: And the record of professional semiauto use is full of NDs and spray and prays. It's possible that us amateurs :rolleyes: have a similar ND rate, or worse, with semiautos but I know of no statistics on the matter.

Then, to suggest that semiautos can't "accommodate" a DA trigger? Pure silliness.

Of all the letters they receive, they chose this one to print. Sigh.
 
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Yes, and no.

For the average homeowner, non-gun enthusiast, who is simply going to leave it in the nightstand until they need it, the simplicity is a benefit. They are the definition of amateur.

If you are going to use a revolver professionally, you'd better be darn good with it, and that requires a little more dedication and skill than the average semi-auto. Not an amateur.

Having spent nearly 30 years teaching cops to shoot, I don't believe the 'spray and pray' changed much over the years, though the supply of bullets in the gun got larger... ;)
 
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I agree with this!


Revolvers tend to be pretty simple to operate handguns. Maintenance is also pretty simple. Semi-auto pistols require a reliable magazine, ammo that will reliably feed and extract/eject, the slide has to be racked in order to chamber a round, and cleaning requires a degree of disassembly of the pistol. Revolvers are a better choice for the first time handgun owner. Sadly, revolvers are expensive to manufacture, polymer receiver pistols are much less expensive to manufacture, so the buyer goes into a gun shop with a budget and revolvers may be beyond their budget, so they get a plastic pistol.
 
I agree totally with Rodan and Stansdds. When I do basic handgun instruction (not very much any more), it is much simpler to teach someone to use a revolver properly than to use a semiauto, plastic or not. "Simpler" does not equate to "better", as far as their competence goes, or their accuracy when shooting it. There are less steps to learn with a revolver; the safety of handling a revolver is inherently better, as there are no safeties that have to be activated or released, no slide to cause difficulties for those with weaker hands when chambering. A revolver is basically 'loaded' or 'unloaded', whereas a semiauto , when loaded (and assuming chambered), can be "safe" or "off safe" when loaded, in addition to being unloaded, which a novice might confuse with being loaded and on safe (believe me, it happens). Semiauto models vary widely regarding these manual safeties, so you have to teach them all and the owner has to know which gun has what, if he owns more than one type. There's more to it than that, but revolvers are easier to learn.
 
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Magazine editors and publishers often print "readers letters", provocative articles-
Charlie Askins said he was often asked to do this-to stir up controversy, get people to write in. "Those in the know" know that the only safety is behind the eyes and between the ears and nothing takes the place of proper safety practices and training. Revolvers are better for training new shooters IMHO, an analogy I use is learning to drive with a manual transmission vs. an automatic. Another advantage to using a revolver to teach marksmanship is, if an instructor sees a student has a flinch or is anticipating they can hand the student a revolver with alternating live and fired rounds, then point out the problem. Getting a new shooter to engage the safety after each fired round also takes practice.
And revolvers are more reloader friendly.
 
Is it still true that a lot of LEO only shoot once or twice a year, at a range?
 
I'm personally aware of an obsolete, maybe 70+ year old revolver loaded with maybe 25 year old ammo (manufacturer long out of business) that decisively resolved a deadly threat situation in a family run grocery. Judging by appearance, that revolver sat on a store room shelf for decades unused and with minimal, if any, care until needed by (great?) grandma to protect her (great?) grand daughter.

While that certainly isn't advisable and it's only a sample of one, the manual of arms is much simpler for the revolver. Aim gun, press trigger, repeat as required. Reload when and if necessary.

The one disadvantage to the revolver is that while it's simpler to use, it's far more mechanically complex. Going with a used example (or very heavy practice) might require some remedial work and there are far more people who think they know how to work on revolvers than actually know what they're doing.

OTOH, if I'd had a dollar for every time someone stared in wonder during qualification at their slide locked back semi-sometimes after several attempts to pull the trigger with no results-before the "reload" light bulb went on, I'd have retired much sooner. Very likely to a far different place.
Then there were the ones who weren't paying attention to the stage instructions that included a reminder that a reload under time was part of the stage. :(
 
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Telecaster said:
In the current American Rifleman, a reader wrote in, "I believe that, for anyone who is not professionally involved with handguns, the revolver has inherently simple and effective safety features that cannot be accommodated by the semiautomatic pistol."

That kind of stuck in my craw. Professionals used revolvers for decades, till that Austrian guy undercut revolver prices. :cool: And the record of professional semiauto use is full of NDs and spray and prays. It's possible that us amateurs :rolleyes: have a similar ND rate, or worse, with semiautos but I know of no statistics on the matter.

Then, to suggest that semiautos can't "accommodate" a DA trigger? Pure silliness.

Of all the letters they receive, they chose this one to print. Sigh.
Click to expand...

You gotta remember. Some people's heads are like gourds....Hard on the outside and hollow on the inside......Just smile and keep on walkin.
 
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R

WR Moore, That's partly my point, where are these "professionals"?
 
Telecaster said:
Is it still true that a lot of LEO only shoot once or twice a year, at a range?
Click to expand...

There's "shoot" and then there's training and/or qualification. T&Q requirements are generally set either by the state or organization. The liability insurance carriers get some input also. The last are why T&Q with .38 wadcutters and .357 duty ammo isn't done anymore. Those requirements don't limit anyone who wants to "shoot" or even train on their own.

That said, there are admittedly, many sworn personnel who carry only because regulations require it. The attitude carries over to actual use/practice. Mayberry type (very small) departments officially will do only the minimum-possibly due to budget.
 
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If the question is are revolvers inherently safer and more appropriate for someone new to shooting and carrying a pistol, I would tend to agree, especially for something with a concealed hammer. The double action pull and lack of things to play with means there are fewer things to go wrong. Of course this has to be balanced with how effective someone is with a revolver v.s. something else, and does it serve the purpose it's intended for.
 
Telecaster said:
WR Moore, That's partly my point, where are these "professionals"?
Click to expand...

See post 12. Just because they've got a job title doesn't mean they have all the skills, knowledge and ability they'd have in a perfect world. Put another way, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink. However, we did have one mare that discovered the creek (and the water trough) is fun to play in. Not real sure she ever drank from the creek.
 
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If you look at persons firing handguns on virtually any gun range these days, you'll seldom see a revolver shooter; they're almost all semi-automatic pistol shooters.

You can't just take a cursory glance and weed out the skilled shooters from the inexperienced ones. Before purchase of a handgun, novices are greatly influenced by their friends (experienced, mildly experienced, or possibly proficient), YouTube, and other questionable sources, so they generally choose a semi-automatic. They're mostly hardcore and ill-informed newschoolers and don't really know if they would be better off with a revolver or semi-auto. That's not a criticism, rather it's what happens.

There's certainly nothing wrong with either handgun type if one trains. You can do this on your own but experienced guidance will allow you to do it faster and more efficiently.

This is America and if something can't be at least a little complicated, then it's not current, it's not worth doing, or it's not worth owning. A revolver is too simple for some and these folks may never know that simplicity is never a disadvantage.
 
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Way back in the prehistoric days when the LAPD was first thinking about going to semi-autos they did an interesting experiment. They took a small group of academy cadets who stated that they had ZERO previous firearms experience and took them to the range. They set each of them in a firing point with a B-27 at 3 yards. Put an empty revolver on the shelf and six rounds of ammo and gave the rookies a very basic instruction. They were told simply "load the gun, shoot the target." Each had an instructor watching them to make sure they did not doing anything dangerous but they did it completely cold. No orientation, no dry training. Each of the rookies managed to load the weapon and put six rounds into the target in what was thought to be a reasonable period of time. They then did the same thing with a semi-auto. Some of them could not even get magazine out. From this they concluded (correctly I believe) that a revolver was OPERATIONALLY SIMPLE compared to a semi-auto and that it would take fewer training hours to adequately teach the use of a revolver than it would a semi-auto. I have seen people load ammunition into a magazine backwards. I have seen people jam a magazine backwards into a semi-auto so hard it had to be driven out with a hammer. It is much harder to goof up a revolver. Not impossible, but harder. That maybe-probably means a person who is not wiling or able to get a lot of training and practice and is not "mechanical" in general is better off with a revolver. That does not, however, mean that somebody who carries a revolver is an amateur. There is a difference.
 
Any time a inexperienced shooter asks me "what should I get?" My standard answer is start with a DA revolver. Most are just looking for something for home defense. They'll likely only shoot it once or twice and then put it away. Maybe take it out again every couple of years.
The revolver is the original "point and click" handgun. Nothing is simpler. ;)
 
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