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Jesse's Hunting > Gun Room Articles > The Gun Room > Making a Case for the Revolver
Making a Case for the Revolver
Andy Moe- JHO ProStaff
- Frozen Wastes, Montana
March 07, 2007
When Clint Eastwood leaned his S&W 44 mag into the bad guys face and said, “Make my day,” a revolver frenzy erupted that lasted a good 15 years. Despite the retail of only $273, after “Dirty Harry” was released you couldn’t touch a S&W Model 29 for less than twice that, anywhere. The revolver was the darling of the public.
Such is not the case now. With the exception of Cowboy Action Shooters and the few dedicated handgun hunters that still tote revolvers, America’s passion for the wheelgun has cooled.
I love revolvers. Maybe it’s my age, or maybe it’s my contrary shooting tastes that keep me spinning cylinders, but I just won’t be without one. Don’t get me wrong. I like some autos… mostly in .22LR but there is the 1911 Colt. I mean, no serious shooter can ‘dis’ John Browning’s brain-child can they?
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Maybe my zeal for revolvers is fueled by my growing need for simplicity. Autos these days are getting more complicated and you just can’t get any easier operation than that of a revolver… especially a double action revolver. Is it loaded? Unlatch the cylinder, swing out the crane and look. Not only do you know if it’s loaded, but you know exactly how many rounds you have left. No dropping magazines and “peeking” the slide required. In a single action, you simply rotate the cylinder after the loading gate is opened. There are people I wouldn’t trust to load an office stapler that could get this chore done without shooting themselves or someone else.
There are less orthodox methods of checking a revolver’s state of readiness. I know a big game hunting guide that has the unnerving practice of just swinging his .44 around so it’s not quite pointing at his face and viewing the cylinders askance, to do a quick check on the condition of his hiking companion. I can’t break him of that safety faux pas and certainly don’t recommend that practice. Frankly, I think he does it just to irritate me. Well, it’s his face. One thing he has right: Like the thugs old Clint held at bay, there is no mistaking a loaded six-gun when you see it front-on.
Many moons ago, I worked at a large gun shop where the staff were plagued by couples coming in looking at handguns for home defense. The little lady –the proposed principle user of the weapon- would be standing there nervously silent while the man of the house looked over Desert Eagle .44 mags, or the then new Glock, the Beretta 92’s or the 1911 Colt 45’s.
These were guns that his wife couldn’t get her hand around; much less learn to operate without having at least a smidgen of desire to do so. Most women just stood there looking scared while hubby racked and clacked the slide and safety and magazine release, punctuating the display with the nerve jangling slam of the slide coming off of the slide lock and a deft passing of the weapon to the bewildered spouse asking “What do you think, honey?”
The poor woman looked like she had been given a crash course in landing an airliner and was now expected to take the yoke. After much discussion I would steer the couple towards a police trade-in Model 10 Smith &Wesson chambered for 38 Special and a box or two of inexpensive commercially reloaded target wadcutter ammunition. Why?
Simple: Double action, point-and-shoot operation using an accurate cartridge that will expend its energy quickly upon impact. Easy to load and unload. If left with the hammer down it is completely safe until the trigger is pulled. No safeties, nothing to think about other than squeezing the trigger in the general direction of the bad guy. Yes, it was simple (there’s that simplicity thing again) and at the time, quite inexpensive. The K-Frame grip was pretty manageable for anyone over 4 ft tall, and recoil, using the target wadcutters would be negligible, insuring at least one decent practice session.
The man usually brought up the point that a revolver only held six rounds, which I countered by asking how many rounds he’d expended in his last gun fight. The 38 Special was a wimp, he’d say. I’d suggest that it was good enough for police forces all over this country for the previous 50 years so it would probably do OK in his home as well…not to mention it ballistically trumped the 9mm.
The more the guy argued towards loading the credit card with the Desert Eagle, the more transparent his motives became. Often the couple left empty handed with the wife tugging the husband along by his elbow while he glowered hatefully in my direction. However, if they were reasonable folks with the genuine intent of buying a self defense gun, it was an easy sell. With a couple of complimentary targets and some foam ear plugs they were out the door promising to be back the following week for a couple more boxes of ammo.
The husband may not have gotten the gun he hoped to have but the wife had found a way out of the Gun Ordeal without breaking the bank and, perhaps, fostering a grudging willingness to learn. (And just maybe the secret satisfaction that she had denied Hubby the new testosterone enhancer he was so desperately wanting.) Sure, I made the sale –which was nice- but I also knew that should the time arise when that woman needed to use a firearm for self defense, she had probably learned enough standing at the sales counter to get the job done. Revolvers are a natural for the novice or the unmotivated.
My old friend and shooting mentor E. Stanley Johnson –one of the finest shooters I have ever had the pleasure to share a range or a cup of coffee with- used to opine that an auto was more accurate than a revolver. He was right in his frame of reference which was the target auto; Stan shot Olympic Rapid Fire and Bullseye. Both of these disciplines use highly refined auto pistols that would easily out shoot their similarly chambered wheelgun counterparts.
Stan would however, also say that most revolvers could shoot better than their owners and routinely terrorized the 200m NRA Pistol silhouette competitions with his S&W Model 57, 41 magnum -or the Hunters Pistol using his old 1st Model S&W break-top in 44 Russian… this at a time when the T/C Contenders and Remington XP-100 single shots were the dominant force in the sport.
Stan was right about the average revolver being able to out shoot its owner. A good revolver, firing factory ammunition, will shoot under three inches from a rest at 25 yards with a competent shooter behind the trigger. I used to accurize revolvers and found that for the non-competitive shooter; there was little that needed to be done to a stock, quality-made revolver. Most shoot well right from the get go, and will only get better with adjustment in bullets and loads.
With handloads, mated to the gun, accuracy levels are very much increased. There is nothing tricky here. A simple matching of the bullet diameter to the throat of the gun will result in a spectacular reduction of group size. Only the best centerfire autos will deliver out-of-the-box accuracy comparable to a good revolver. If you find a well-used revolver and just can’t make it shoot, take it to a qualified gunsmith. A basic tune up and inspection by a competent gunsmith will find and fix any misalignment of the barrel and the chambers.
How accurate can a revolver be with six chambers instead of just one? Sure seems like it shouldn’t be accurate, but it can, depending on the gun. My old Colt Shooting Master will cluster 38 wadcutters into the “X” ring at 50 yards. The Shooting Master was the epitome of target revolvers, however, and any slight misalignment of the chambers and the forcing cone was handled by the bullet in transition from the cylinder to the barrel.
As in all things, quality counts… the better your revolver, the better the results. A young shooter friend of mine just bought a used-but-sterling S&W model 57 six-incher in .41 Magnum. With S&W’s signature, crisp, single-action trigger and factory, PMC, 210-grain HP ammo, I was clustering my shots at 20 yards, off hand. Amazing! These results are from a used, “untuned” factory revolver. After thirty years of working on revolvers I still think there’s a bit of smoke and mirrors involved…or perhaps even genuine magic.
What was once the familiar gear of every law enforcement officer in the country has been replaced by hi-capacity autoloaders. Take a good look. Chances are the next policeman you see will have never fired a revolver.
Hollywood seems to be in love with the boxy-black autoloader. In the movies, good guys and bad both seem to favor these guns. Only the lowest grade of criminal carries a revolver… usually pulled from a wrinkled, brown, paper bag just before knocking over some Mom and Pop convenience store. The revolver has become a cinematic symbol of crude lethality, laying a notch above a club or a knife; a sad fall from grace on the silver screen, where the nickel-plated six-shooters were once the plume d’guerre of the guys wearing white hats in Saturday matinees all across the country.
There is hope for wheel gunners, though, and plenty of good guns out there just waiting for us. Shooting tastes run in cycles and I am certain the revolver will someday climb back in the limelight. Maybe Clint will make another movie with the new S&W 500? I hope so. I’d stand in line to watch it.
Go ahead Clint. Make my day…
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