More revolvers and women
Continuing the discussion, Caleb:
If there is one thing I learned from firing over 10,000 rounds through a revolver last year, it’s that these things are hard to shoot well.
And Michael Bane:
You guys know I’ve been really hot lately on getting beyond the whole “best gun” meme. It’s tiring because it’s just BBs rattling around in an empty tin can…I seriously doubt whether your average miscreant is going to feel worse from a .45 ACP out of a Kimber than from a Hi-Point.
Read the whole thing.
August 25th, 2010 at 10:42 am
“If there is one thing I learned from firing over 10,000 rounds through a revolver last year, it’s that these things are hard to shoot well.”
Well ya know, there’s this feature on the hammers of revolvers called a spur. When you thumb back that spur it cocks the revolver, just like you would with a single action revolver, and your trigger pull is MUCH lighter and, hey, it shoots more accurately!
While I personally shoot pretty good in double action with my S&W model 10, doing the above is something I do a lot too. Remember, the idea is to put the rounds where you want ’em, not how fast you can crank them out.
August 25th, 2010 at 10:50 am
If you do 35 MPH around the Nurburgring, you can probably apex every corner perfectly.
August 25th, 2010 at 11:20 am
“it’s that these things are hard to shoot well.”
Of course they are, Caleb! That’s why everyone on Top Gun was thumbcocking the M9.
Can we just stop here and acknowledge the fact that the 1911 is the best pistol in the history of gunmaking?
August 25th, 2010 at 12:44 pm
I hate revolvers. I hate the way they look. I hate the way they feel. I just hate ’em. But, I cannot miss with my sister’s 8″ ported Rossi .357 loaded with .38. Just can’t miss. It’s a cheap piece of crap and I easily out shoot my fancy-pants 1911 with it. Argh!
August 25th, 2010 at 1:31 pm
There’s a trick to shooting double action. It needs a second “brain”. You use the trigger during the three-mile long pull 😉 to bring the gun on target.
I suppose at the marksman levels, it could mess up your other trigger habits. (Not that I have ever achieved those levels.)
August 25th, 2010 at 9:17 pm
P.S. Elmer Keith could walk a shot from a four-inch barreled .44 Special wheelgun into a ten-inch target at 300 yards. But he practiced all his life to get to do that.
There were other people who could shoot a dime out of the sky with the big frame Colts and S&Ws but that’s likely inborn ability as well as practice.
August 26th, 2010 at 11:23 am
To hit the target, keep the sights aligned during that period when the trigger is in motion, particularly that last bit at the end where the bullet is moving down the barrel.
The longer and heavier the trigger pull, the harder this task is. Guns that have two different trigger pulls require the user to learn to master two skills instead of one, doubling the difficulty. Rifles and shotguns have the same trigger pull for every shot, and 99% of all rifles and shotguns have good triggers out of the box.
Honestly it’s criminal that so many gun writers and shooters continue to act as though trigger pull is irrelevant, when those that teach shooting continually point out that trigger control is the single most important skill? Wiley Clapp’s latest puff-piece on the new S&W “SD” models in the NRA magazine breezes by the fact that gun has a crummy trigger and he shot it poorly, buried in the next to the last paragraph, with a weasel phrase about how it was “good enough”.
If you train to run a 10K race, and you are willing to train hard, you can get pretty fast running in steel toed work boots, and probably out-run a bunch of other people that aren’t as fit and didn’t train as hard as you did. That doesn’t make steel toed work boots the “right gear” to run a 10K – and just because someone can shoot up to an average/decent level with a gun with a crappy trigger doesn’t make it an ideal choice either.
August 26th, 2010 at 4:43 pm
The way I was taught, the point behind recommending a DA .38 or .357 to new gun owners (not just wimmenz) was that they were someone who was not going to be going to the range a lot, shooting all the time, hanging out at gun stores and on internet gun fora, and the simpler manual of arms for a DA revolver would be easier for them to master. The concept may be debatable, but it was a specific reason which had little to nothing to do with “easy to shoot“.
At the same time, we were advised–strongly urged, just short of required–to strongly urge them to visit the local indoor ranges (something we have several of in the South Puget Sound area) and make liberal (!) use of their rental case, to find what would suit them best.