For hundreds of years hand held single shot firearms (short guns) were referred to as pistols. I refuse the notion that an automatic "should" be called a pistol but a revolver "can not". My revolver has more right (historically) to be called a pistol than an automatic. I believe the semi-auto guys have hi-jacked the terminology of pistol, then tell us we can no longer call our guns that anymore.
Not for nothin' but it's a revolver and NOT a pistol!...unless we're talking semi-auto handguns.
Wrong. Revolvers were pistols before semi-autos were invented.
I quoted these three for a particular reason.
First, for clarification, the word
pistol originates from either the French, the Italian, or the Czech, and a form of that word was first uttered in the 16th century in one or all of those languages, and it referred to a hand held device, perhaps a hand cannon, or some form of hand held shooting device that originated in a town of similar name. So there is no doubt that the term is aptly applied to revolvers.
What is more interesting, however, to me, anyway, is the fact that most of you call the handguns that, in this discussion, are essentially flat, to wit, not revolvers, by the term "semi-auto". It is a fact, however, that for several generations, and actually only until recently with the popularity of semi-automatic rifles versus submachine guns or assault rifles, full automatic versus semi-automatic, with semi-automatic being the politically and legally correct term now, the pistols you refer to as semi-auto were called "automatic pistols". They were never referred to as semi-anything until the late 20th century. Automatic pistol is actually the originally correct term.
Modernity and politics changed it.
