A couple posts back, I opined that I was not backwards enough in this day and age to still distrust Autos. The Other Ryan, in comments stated that if anything, he believed that Autos were more reliable than revolvers. He stated that taking a quality revolver off the shelf and having it go heads-up against a modern service pistol, such as a Glock or M&P, and he would bet that in shooting a wheelbarrow of ammo through each would result in reliability issues with the revolver before the auto. He defined reliability issues as the gun failing to function at a 95% level. In other words, the first gun to fail to work 95 shots out of 100 would lose the competition.
Thing is, I tend to agree with him. Given THOSE conditions. I still trust a revolver more. Here's why.
I've shot a lot. I shot guns all the time growing up. I grew up in the 80's and 90's, the son of a cop in a rural town. Know what we shot? Revolvers. Smith & Wessons.
I grew up and went into law enforcement, and continued shooting. Only now, my shooting mostly focuses around my service weapon. Know what it is? An Auto. A Glock, to be exact.
Now I know that competitive shooters, and serious gun writers, and hell likely some hobbiests shoot more than me. But I know I shoot a hell of a lot more than the average cop, and a good bit more than the average gunnie. Until I moved to the Big City in May, and lost easy access to shooting land, I shot several boxes each month. Easily over 1000 rounds each year. Sadly, since moving, I haven't shot nearly as much. Maybe 500 rounds all told, with less than 300 of that being handgun shooting. (I went to a carbine course, and shot a few hundred rounds of .223.)
I say all that to say this: I have never had a revolver fail on me. I have once SEEN a revolver get decommissioned due to faulty powder in the ammo. The bullet got stuck in the bore. But if the next round had been fired, it would have shot. It would have also likely caused a catastrophic failure in the gun, too. Revolvers can also have their timing go to crap, or have parts of their lockwork fail, causing the gun to fail. At that point, the revolver is nothing more than a paperweight.
Now, I've also shot a lot of autos. Have I had them fail on me? YES. Was it a less than 5% failure rate? Yes. Was it because of the gun itself? Sometimes. Sometimes it didn't want to feed the particular ammo I had. Sometimes I was limp-wristing. Sometimes, when I was simulating firing from the hip on close targets, I had the gun in too tight to my body, and the slide hit my belly, causing it to not fully cycle. All of the failures I have experienced I have been able to clear with a tap, a rack, and a trigger pull.
But they still failed.
I have never had a revolver fail. And over the course of my life I have probably shot a revolver twice as much a an auto.
So, is Ryan correct in his opinion? Given the 95% function rate, I believe he may be. As I said, I have had probably a few dozen failures with an auto, but I would bet that they still functioned at over 95%. Given Ryan's guidelines, I have never had a gun become "unreliable".
Thing is, when a revolver fails, and it is an actual failure of the weapon, not bad ammo, you will likely need tools, if not a gunsmith to get it working again.
With an auto, when you have a failure, you can often fix it quickly, right there, just by going through a failure drill.
So in my completely biased opinion, a revolver will work 100% of the time, until it doesn't, at which point it will likely be useless in the field. An auto will work better than 95% of the time, and a failure you will likely be able to fix right there, on the spot.
So by the standard of 100% reliability, I feel like the revolver will get the nod, every time.
Think of this: lots of people have done a 2000 round torture test of semi-auto handguns, and the results can be illuminating. I feel as if a 2000 round test of a Ruger GP100 would be pretty boring. I bet that if ammo reliability was not a concern, it would reliably shoot every single round, first to last.
So that's my thoughts on that. And that's why I like revolvers.
6 comments:
Can't disagree... And there are 'certain' semi-autos that probably DO fail on a more regular basis, but I'm like you shot many thousands of rounds through revolvers and other than the occasional light strike, they go bang every time. Revolvers were built to be simple AND reliable. Period...
Well send me that kahr then😉👍
The worst jam I ever saw was at an IPSC match, where a guy shooting a revolver tried to feed a round with a high primer. He was stopped, right there, and he couldn't get the round out at the range (couldn't even remove the cylinder on his double-action revolver).
The worst jam I ever saw in a semi-automatic pistol was my own Beloved Kimber last fall. I tried to insert a new magazine, and it just would NOT feed! Turned out the trigger bow had bent .. somehow ... and there wasn't room in the grip channel to feed a new magazine. Replaced the trigger and it shot consistently again.
I don't know how the trigger bow got bent, but the gun had fired over 20,000 rounds *(not a typo) and I assume the metal just was over-stressed.
Generally speaking, autos fail because of ammunition. If you seat the bullet too deep in the case, or too shallow, it will not feed reliably. If the powder charge is too light it will not cycle properly.
The other most common failure is a stove-pipe, which can be resolved with a fast-action "swipe the top of the slide" to kick the jammed case out of the ejection port. Again, it's not a failure of the design, it's an ammunition failure.
Unless you yourself don't keep your pistol reasonably clean
Even at that, I've fired a 1911 for six month, running over 800 rounds a month, without minimal cleaning other than lubricating with a light oil and experienced no stoppages.
I have a stainless steel single action that gets fussy if not well lubricated.
Another issue that does not get discussed much is "dropped" guns.
Yes, I know that it is a mortal sin to drop a gun. Still, things get dropped or knocked off of horizontal surfaces. A semi-auto is far more likely to survive that misadventure than a revolver.
Good science demands that we own several samples of each.
Thanks, all, for comments. I've been watching r hem for a few days. I agree with NFO, who agrees with me. My brother, Matt, can have my Kahr as soon as he sends me that M&P... Jerry has some interesting anecdotal evidence...
But JoeMama takes the prize. Agree completely, JoeMama. You are entirely correct that we all need a few of both. And that dropping guns happens. In fact, my 638, my first carry gun carries several scratches from where I dropped it on concrete when I was new to CCW. :)
One area where a revolver outdoes a pistol is in shooting from inside concealment clothing. Consider the following.
Pocket carry: A shrouded or concealed hammer (e.g. a S&W 442/642, etc.) means that a revolver can be fired from inside a pocket if necessary. Try that with a semi-auto and the slide will bind with the cloth on the first shot.
Shoulder holster: A friend of mine had to literally shoot an attacker off his left side some years ago. He was carrying a S&W Model 66 with 2½" barrel in a shoulder holster, loaded with .357 Magnum Winchester Silvertip 145gr. JHP's. He drew the gun, aimed it through his suit jacket, and fired four rounds. He gave himself a hellacious flash burn from the cylinder gap, but got the guy off him before he could be stabbed more than a couple of times (neither fatal or critically injurious, fortunately for him). I don't think a pistol would have functioned without its slide binding with material from either his shirt or his jacket.
Another aspect is contact shots. If your semi-auto pistol is shoved into someone's side, it's likely that the slide will move backward, thereby taking the pistol out of battery. Most pistols won't fire like that, and the few that will . . . well, let's say you might not want them to, because any blowback will come out of the partly open ejection port, right into your face! A revolver, on the other hand, has a fixed barrel. Shove it as hard as you like into someone's side, you won't take it out of battery.
I own more pistols than I do revolvers, and like them, but I have no problem whatsoever defending myself with a wheelgun. Give me five or six powerful rounds in a caliber beginning with '4' and I'll regard myself as well-armed. It won't do in a melée with a dozen gang-bangers, where you want as much ammo capacity as you can get and the ability to reload rapidly; but for non-LE civilians, that's a rather less likely situation, particularly if we don't "go stupid places with stupid people to do stupid things".
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