Gun Digest – August 2019

(^18) | GunDigest the magazine AUGUST 2019 gundigest.com
HARDWARE TALK // PATRICK SWEENEY
Revolver Myths Dispelled
Don’t underestimate the wheelgun.
D
espite the inroads pistols
have made, there’s still
a place for revolvers as
carry guns, and a lot of
people carry them. But,
we need to make sure you
don’t walk around in a fog of miscon-
ceptions about revolvers—because a
lot of gun store guys are not as up on
their wheelgun knowledge as you (and
they) might think.
Myth #1: Revolvers never jam.
As someone who has carried revolv-
ers off and on for some 40 years now
and competed with them for 30-plus
years, that just ain’t true. You can
have a bullet jump forward on recoil,
stick out the front of the cylinder and
prevent rotation. You can have un-
burned powder fl akes fall under the
extractor star on a reload so that you
can’t get the cylinder closed. Heck, I
even fl at-out broke a revolver at the
IPSC World Shoot in Greece and had
to fi nish with a loaner.
If it’s made by the hand of man, it
can break.
Myth #2: Revolvers are both
easy and diffi cult to shoot.
Easy, as in “all you have to do” is
squeeze the trigger. And hard, be-
cause “the trigger pull is heavy.” Yes, a
double-action revolver is easy in con-
cept. Squeeze, repeat. But most people
don’t squeeze; they clutch. And the
jerky slapping of the trigger is what
causes them to miss.
Stroke smoothly through the trigger
and don’t anticipate the loud noise to
come, and you will hit what you aim at.
Doing it quickly is a matter of repetition
in practice.
Myth #3: Revolvers are always
slow to reload.
I’ll admit that, compared to a pistol, it
does take more time to get the ammo
supply topped up in a revolver. But you
can speed up that process. The exem-
plar here (and pretty much in all things
revolver) is Jerry Miculek. He can re-
load a revolver faster than most pistol
shooters can reload their 9mms. It is
a matter of practice and proper tech-
nique. That so many revolver shooters
are so bad at it is more a matter of not
having been taught right than any in-
herent inadequacies of the wheelgun.
If you are using a revolver in EDC,
you can learn from police from de-
cades ago: the “New York Reload.” Sim-
ply put—a second gun. Rather than try
to stuff fi ve or six more rounds into
the now-empty gun, drop it, draw the
backup, and continue solving your
problem.
Truth #1: Revolvers are the
lowest-cost practice to be had.
You can practice at zero cost. It is called
“dry-fi ring”; and, unlike with pistols,
you don’t have to break the sequence
to re-cock the striker or hammer. You
simply double-action-stroke the trig-
ger again and again. Thousands and
tens of thousands of repetitions of the
DA stroke not only strengthen your
hand and improve your aiming, they
also smooth the parts. Called “bur-
nishing,” it is the polishing of metal
surfaces by rubbing them against each
other. A revolver that has been dry-
fi red a bazillion times (and not abused)
Revolver power at the .357 Magnum level is just the start.
Pistols top out pretty quickly after that, but you can get
revolvers that have as much power as some rifl es.