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01-16-2008, 02:02 AM
We live in the era of the semi-automatic handgun. Since the dawn of the 20th century, semi-autos have evolved from clunky curiosities, passing through a stint as military-only sidearms before emerging onto the civilian market in force during the last quarter of the century. Semi-auto domination of the market seemed certain and, some would still argue, remains the current state of the handgun world. For all this, though, the revolver refuses to die.
http://230grain.com/images/articles/revolvers/img/tn_1858.jpg (http://230grain.com/images/articles/revolvers/img/1858.jpg)
Remington New Model Army, .44 cap and ball, 1858.
Why? What does a design introduced well over a century and a half ago continue to offer in the face of relentless technological advancement? Some would snidely suggest nostalgia and recalcitrance in the face of change, but the numbers don't support that theory: There aren't enough crusty old guys around to keep revolver manufacturers solvent, much less fuel the growing market for six-shooters. Whether dismissed by those who conflate modernity with superiority or overlooked because its advantages are not trivially discerned, the revolver is too often underrated, when in fact it is in many ways superior to its autoloading counterparts.
http://230grain.com/images/articles/revolvers/img/tn_angle.jpg (http://230grain.com/images/articles/revolvers/img/angle.jpg)
Ruger Redhawk, .44 Magnum, 2008.
Rather than examining why people would dismiss revolvers offhand (because any unconsidered opinion is correct only through luck), let's look at a few of the pros and cons attached to wheelguns.
[Reliability]
The phrase, "six for sure" is almost as irritating as "they all fall to hardball," but it's true. The highest praise that can be brought to bear on a semi-auto is that it has revolver-like reliability. Revolvers don't suffer feed jams or extraction issues and they don't need to balance spring weights to ensure consistent cycling dynamics. Rotating the cylinder doesn't rely on vagaries of momentum, but on the deterministic mechanics of the revolver's lockwork. If a round fails to fire, retrying with a fresh round is the work of a single trigger pull. Feeding and extraction are performed manually while loading and unloading, respectively, instead of being regulated by an automatic mechanism. Every motion a revolver makes is at the behest and under the control of its user. Removing randomness means that a design that works will continue to work without malfunction until something breaks.
http://230grain.com/images/articles/revolvers/img/tn_check.jpg (http://230grain.com/images/articles/revolvers/img/check.jpg)
Six-- er, five for sure.
Yes, revolvers can break. Praising revolver reliability would be disingenuous if their unique failure cases weren't also acknowledged: Bullets backing out of the crimp can lock up the cylinder, as can carbon buildup on the cylinder face if there's insufficient forcing cone clearance. The ejection rod can unscrew under recoil and lock up the cylinder. Dirty chambers can make ejecting cases difficult. The rough rule of thumb says that failure in a semi-auto can be cleared relatively quickly, but a failure in a revolver takes it out of action until you can get to a workbench. That being said, revolver ammunition malfunctions are entirely preventable given proper testing; parts breakage is about as likely as a semi-auto breaking one of its major components and, like a semi-auto, can be prevented with regular inspection and maintenance.
http://230grain.com/images/articles/revolvers/img/tn_internals2.jpg (http://230grain.com/images/articles/revolvers/img/internals2.jpg)
What could possibly go wrong?
For the majority of use cases, revolvers will beat semi-autos when it comes to reliability, but their dominance becomes unquestionable as size shrinks. When semi-auto size decreases, the margins of error bracketing reliable performance dwindle right along with it. Smaller slides cycle faster, leaving less time for the magazine to move the top round into position. Tiny parts require tighter tolerances, and a minute imperfection that would never be noticed on a full-size gun will plague a pocket pistol with failures. Less material means what remains must bear more force, so wear and structural deficiencies appear with alacrity. To be fair, the latter issue is a factor for small revolvers, which must sometimes limit the power of the rounds they shoot to avoid stretching the frame; however, power level limits usually occur well above what most shooters can comfortably control in a tiny revolver. Where mechanical reliability is concerned, the slight size reduction in size required to fit revolver internals into a tiny gun does nothing to compromise their reliability.
[Simplicity of Use]
It doesn't get much simpler than a revolver. A single-action is conceptually easy: cock hammer, pull trigger; if the hammer's not cocked, the gun won't fire. It's about as manual a process as you can get without stuffing gunpowder and a patch down the bore. Double-action revolvers are even simpler: Pull trigger to fire. No safeties, no magazines, no slide releases, no decockers, no question about whether there's a round chambered. The reliability mentioned above comes into play here, as well, since learning how to clear a jam isn't nearly as crucial for someone with a revolver as it is for his counterpart with a semi-auto. Checking loadout and making the gun safe don't require juggling both the gun and magazine; the cylinder just swings out. Emptying and reloading the gun doesn't beat up cartridges, cause bullet setback, or force one to chase ejected ammo because cartridges just drop in and drop out.
http://230grain.com/images/articles/revolvers/img/tn_right.jpg (http://230grain.com/images/articles/revolvers/img/right.jpg)
The original point-and-click interface.
Add to all of the above a fairly heavy double-action trigger, and you have an almost idiot-proof handgun. Every argument in favor of Glocks, XDs, or Sigs due to their simplicity of use applies doubly well to revolvers. Such simplicity is especially valuable when a gun must be used by someone who lacks the time or enthusiasm required to make the multiple operational modes of a semi-auto second-nature. A DAO revolver is the only intelligent choice when selecting a handgun that may have to be used by someone with no interest in or preference for guns.
[Ammo Flexibility]
Because revolvers don't use the inertia of a firing round to reset their firing mechanism, the same can successfully shoot an enormous variety of power cartridges. The apex of this property is reached in .357 Magnum revolvers, the most versatile handguns ever created. A .357 Mag revolver can shoot anything from target .38 Special wadcutter rounds at 600 FPS to bear-busting 180-grain hardcast magnums. As long as the bullet clears the barrel and the round doesn't blow up the gun, it's good to go. The same principle applies, albeit with slightly more recoil, to .44 Magnum revolvers: Here, you can choose anything from nuclear magnum loads that leave you signing checks left-handed for a while, to .44 Specials at .45 ACP power levels, to lightweight black-powder .44 Russian rounds designed not to blow up antique guns. The S&W 460 XVR revolver kicks it up a notch by using .45 Colt as its "light" round, .454 Casull as a moderate cartridge, and .460 XVR as its maximum power level. Leaving aside the ludicrous concept of .454 Casull as a "mid-level" cartridge, that's versatility.
Additionally, there's no need to feed ammo, so the bullet shape is irrelevant. The compromises seen in semi-auto hollowpoints simply don't apply, so bullet shape can be chosen on the basis of behavior instead of ease of chambering. This gives revolvers an exotic menagerie of bullets unseen in the semi-auto world: Wadcutters seat flush with the case mouth and are perfectly flat to make nice round holes in the target; conical bullets provide great accuracy because they self-align in the forcing cone; the semi-jacketed hollowpoints introduced decades back provide awesome expansion and penetration, but semi-autos had to wait for technology to catch up before they could share in this performance. And where modern technology has been applied to revolver bullets, it has been done without compromise: You could get drunk taking shots out of Speer's .45 Colt Gold Dots' hollowpoint. (You'd also get lead poisoning, but you wouldn't care because you'd be drunk.)
http://230grain.com/images/articles/revolvers/img/tn_ammo.jpg (http://230grain.com/images/articles/revolvers/img/ammo.jpg)
All these rounds can be fired from the same gun.
Then there's power: Revolvers don't need to unlock the barrel after pressure has dropped, so instead of using a tiny sliver of metal to hold thousands of pounds of pressure, they use the entire topstrap of the gun. This permits extensive use of rounds that would shoot a semi-auto to pieces in short order, to say nothing of cartridges clearly designed as drunken pranks; i.e. .454 Casull and the S&W supermagnums. You can even get revolvers chambered in rifle rounds. (I say "you" because there's no way in hell I'm touching one of those off.)
Finally, it's a Godsend for those who reload to be able to drop all their spent casings in a box instead of grovelling about on the shooting range floor.
[Grip Size]
All popular semi-autos use the same feeding method: a box magazine inserted into the grip of the gun. Although the grip is the logical location for a magazine, locating the magwell where it is means that magazine function and grip ergonomics become a game of tradoffs: magazine thickness vs. grip thickness; grip angle vs. feed angle; ammo capacity vs. grip length.
http://230grain.com/images/articles/revolvers/img/tn_assembled_magtest.jpg (http://230grain.com/images/articles/revolvers/img/assembled_magtest.jpg)
Semi-autos build the gun around the magazine.
Revolvers have no such constraints beyond what the shape of the frame imposes, and there's plenty of leeway there. Grips can run long to provide solid finger purchase, cover the backstrap to avoid recoil, or be pared down to minimal slivers of wood in the interests of reducing bulk. Some designs, such as Ruger's GP-100 and Super Redhawk models, don't even extend the frame to the grip area; instead, there's only a small stud to which grips are fastened, permitting any imaginable design. Revolvers let one choose a handgun on the basis of functional features, secure in the knowledge that if a given wheelgun doesn't feel perfect in the hand, the solution is just a grip swap away. Even if the profusion of grip options can be overwhelming, it's preferable to being locked away from a handgun by ergonomics alone.
http://230grain.com/images/articles/revolvers/img/tn_grips.jpg (http://230grain.com/images/articles/revolvers/img/grips.jpg)
Compact grips with Tyler T-Grip adaptor.
[Disadvantages]
Revolvers have disadvantages, of course; there's no such thing as a free lunch. In the interests of an honest evaluation, here are what I see as revolvers' largest drawbacks. Intellectual honesty demands disclosure of the fact that I consider the following shortcomings fairly minor and the description reflects that attitude. Also, astute observers will notice a distinct disparity between the number of advantages and disadvantages I can identify. (But then you probably shouldn't be reading an article entitled "In Praise of Revolvers" with expectations of clinical objectivity.)
["Firepower"]
More commonly known as "ammo capacity", the number of rounds carried in a revolver is one of its more famous drawbacks. A six-shooter sounds downright quaint when semi-autos carrying upward of 15 rounds abound. But if holding a lot of ammunition is an advantage for some semi-autos, it doesn't necessarily follow that revolvers are at a disadvantage. For the elite tactical operators living high-speed low-drag lives, who start hyperventilating and tearing up at the thought of not being able to top off their 15-round 10mm magazines, the prospect of being "limited" to six rounds is apt to make them thrash around on the ground, wrinkling their carefully-pressed multicam as they kick and scream, tears running down their flushed cheeks. I bow to these people's highly-trained and lethal skillset, and would not wish to saddle them with equipment that would compromise their ability to Get The Job Done. Because, as we all know, the type of gun you use and amount of ammo you have on hand are the sole predictors of your survival in a dangerous situation. For the rest of us, though, revolver capacity is a tradeoff that must be weighed against the numerous advantages the platform provides.
http://230grain.com/images/articles/revolvers/img/tn_m60_ammo.jpg (http://230grain.com/images/articles/revolvers/img/m60_ammo.jpg)
Not exactly a pile of ammunition.
[Trigger Pull]
While revolvers' single-action pulls are for the most part sweet enough to bring tears to a connoisseur's eyes, the double-action mechanism must rotate the cylinder and pull back the hammer against the pressure of the mainspring and rebound slide. Retaining an accurate sight picture throughout this process takes work to perfect. More accurately, a double-action revolver trigger unflinchingly reveals every single flaw in one's trigger technique. This is exacerbated in snubbies, where the short sight radius, small sights, small grips, and the use of a coil mainspring has garnered snub-nosed revolvers a reputation as "belly guns." (This isn't really the case; the mechanical accuracy of snubbies is almost identical to their larger brethren, but they're just harder to shoot well.) My experience has shown that unpracticed shooters do equally well with a double-action revolver as a single-action semi-auto, but once the initial learning curve has passed most people tend to do better with single-action handguns. For those willing to invest the effort, the revolver's double-action trigger is not an insurmountable obstacle, but it does require more practice than lighter mechanisms.
[Conclusion]
Too often, our race to embrace new and improved technologies prematurely consigns the serviceable and advantageous to the dustbin of history. Newer is often better, but that doesn't necessarily mean that old is bad or has no advantages over the more recent innovation. These facts are often overlooked with respect to revolvers, leaving a truly excellent handgun technology underappreciated to the detriment of all, most especially those who would have benefited had they given the old-fashioned sixgun a second glance.
http://230grain.com/images/articles/revolvers/img/tn_686.jpg (http://230grain.com/images/articles/revolvers/img/686.jpg)
S&W 686 with a 2.5-inch barrel.
All the pedantic pontification in this article aside, for the longest time I was one of those people who wrote off revolvers as relics. Careful consideration and the wise words of others led me to reconsider; although I can't guarantee any particular wisdom content in this article, I hope those who are otherwise skeptical about sixguns will reconsider and take a second look at the venerable (yet still quite relevant) revolver.
(c) 2008 C. Kaukl - All Rights Reserved
Reprinted with permission.
http://230grain.com/images/articles/revolvers/img/tn_1858.jpg (http://230grain.com/images/articles/revolvers/img/1858.jpg)
Remington New Model Army, .44 cap and ball, 1858.
Why? What does a design introduced well over a century and a half ago continue to offer in the face of relentless technological advancement? Some would snidely suggest nostalgia and recalcitrance in the face of change, but the numbers don't support that theory: There aren't enough crusty old guys around to keep revolver manufacturers solvent, much less fuel the growing market for six-shooters. Whether dismissed by those who conflate modernity with superiority or overlooked because its advantages are not trivially discerned, the revolver is too often underrated, when in fact it is in many ways superior to its autoloading counterparts.
http://230grain.com/images/articles/revolvers/img/tn_angle.jpg (http://230grain.com/images/articles/revolvers/img/angle.jpg)
Ruger Redhawk, .44 Magnum, 2008.
Rather than examining why people would dismiss revolvers offhand (because any unconsidered opinion is correct only through luck), let's look at a few of the pros and cons attached to wheelguns.
[Reliability]
The phrase, "six for sure" is almost as irritating as "they all fall to hardball," but it's true. The highest praise that can be brought to bear on a semi-auto is that it has revolver-like reliability. Revolvers don't suffer feed jams or extraction issues and they don't need to balance spring weights to ensure consistent cycling dynamics. Rotating the cylinder doesn't rely on vagaries of momentum, but on the deterministic mechanics of the revolver's lockwork. If a round fails to fire, retrying with a fresh round is the work of a single trigger pull. Feeding and extraction are performed manually while loading and unloading, respectively, instead of being regulated by an automatic mechanism. Every motion a revolver makes is at the behest and under the control of its user. Removing randomness means that a design that works will continue to work without malfunction until something breaks.
http://230grain.com/images/articles/revolvers/img/tn_check.jpg (http://230grain.com/images/articles/revolvers/img/check.jpg)
Six-- er, five for sure.
Yes, revolvers can break. Praising revolver reliability would be disingenuous if their unique failure cases weren't also acknowledged: Bullets backing out of the crimp can lock up the cylinder, as can carbon buildup on the cylinder face if there's insufficient forcing cone clearance. The ejection rod can unscrew under recoil and lock up the cylinder. Dirty chambers can make ejecting cases difficult. The rough rule of thumb says that failure in a semi-auto can be cleared relatively quickly, but a failure in a revolver takes it out of action until you can get to a workbench. That being said, revolver ammunition malfunctions are entirely preventable given proper testing; parts breakage is about as likely as a semi-auto breaking one of its major components and, like a semi-auto, can be prevented with regular inspection and maintenance.
http://230grain.com/images/articles/revolvers/img/tn_internals2.jpg (http://230grain.com/images/articles/revolvers/img/internals2.jpg)
What could possibly go wrong?
For the majority of use cases, revolvers will beat semi-autos when it comes to reliability, but their dominance becomes unquestionable as size shrinks. When semi-auto size decreases, the margins of error bracketing reliable performance dwindle right along with it. Smaller slides cycle faster, leaving less time for the magazine to move the top round into position. Tiny parts require tighter tolerances, and a minute imperfection that would never be noticed on a full-size gun will plague a pocket pistol with failures. Less material means what remains must bear more force, so wear and structural deficiencies appear with alacrity. To be fair, the latter issue is a factor for small revolvers, which must sometimes limit the power of the rounds they shoot to avoid stretching the frame; however, power level limits usually occur well above what most shooters can comfortably control in a tiny revolver. Where mechanical reliability is concerned, the slight size reduction in size required to fit revolver internals into a tiny gun does nothing to compromise their reliability.
[Simplicity of Use]
It doesn't get much simpler than a revolver. A single-action is conceptually easy: cock hammer, pull trigger; if the hammer's not cocked, the gun won't fire. It's about as manual a process as you can get without stuffing gunpowder and a patch down the bore. Double-action revolvers are even simpler: Pull trigger to fire. No safeties, no magazines, no slide releases, no decockers, no question about whether there's a round chambered. The reliability mentioned above comes into play here, as well, since learning how to clear a jam isn't nearly as crucial for someone with a revolver as it is for his counterpart with a semi-auto. Checking loadout and making the gun safe don't require juggling both the gun and magazine; the cylinder just swings out. Emptying and reloading the gun doesn't beat up cartridges, cause bullet setback, or force one to chase ejected ammo because cartridges just drop in and drop out.
http://230grain.com/images/articles/revolvers/img/tn_right.jpg (http://230grain.com/images/articles/revolvers/img/right.jpg)
The original point-and-click interface.
Add to all of the above a fairly heavy double-action trigger, and you have an almost idiot-proof handgun. Every argument in favor of Glocks, XDs, or Sigs due to their simplicity of use applies doubly well to revolvers. Such simplicity is especially valuable when a gun must be used by someone who lacks the time or enthusiasm required to make the multiple operational modes of a semi-auto second-nature. A DAO revolver is the only intelligent choice when selecting a handgun that may have to be used by someone with no interest in or preference for guns.
[Ammo Flexibility]
Because revolvers don't use the inertia of a firing round to reset their firing mechanism, the same can successfully shoot an enormous variety of power cartridges. The apex of this property is reached in .357 Magnum revolvers, the most versatile handguns ever created. A .357 Mag revolver can shoot anything from target .38 Special wadcutter rounds at 600 FPS to bear-busting 180-grain hardcast magnums. As long as the bullet clears the barrel and the round doesn't blow up the gun, it's good to go. The same principle applies, albeit with slightly more recoil, to .44 Magnum revolvers: Here, you can choose anything from nuclear magnum loads that leave you signing checks left-handed for a while, to .44 Specials at .45 ACP power levels, to lightweight black-powder .44 Russian rounds designed not to blow up antique guns. The S&W 460 XVR revolver kicks it up a notch by using .45 Colt as its "light" round, .454 Casull as a moderate cartridge, and .460 XVR as its maximum power level. Leaving aside the ludicrous concept of .454 Casull as a "mid-level" cartridge, that's versatility.
Additionally, there's no need to feed ammo, so the bullet shape is irrelevant. The compromises seen in semi-auto hollowpoints simply don't apply, so bullet shape can be chosen on the basis of behavior instead of ease of chambering. This gives revolvers an exotic menagerie of bullets unseen in the semi-auto world: Wadcutters seat flush with the case mouth and are perfectly flat to make nice round holes in the target; conical bullets provide great accuracy because they self-align in the forcing cone; the semi-jacketed hollowpoints introduced decades back provide awesome expansion and penetration, but semi-autos had to wait for technology to catch up before they could share in this performance. And where modern technology has been applied to revolver bullets, it has been done without compromise: You could get drunk taking shots out of Speer's .45 Colt Gold Dots' hollowpoint. (You'd also get lead poisoning, but you wouldn't care because you'd be drunk.)
http://230grain.com/images/articles/revolvers/img/tn_ammo.jpg (http://230grain.com/images/articles/revolvers/img/ammo.jpg)
All these rounds can be fired from the same gun.
Then there's power: Revolvers don't need to unlock the barrel after pressure has dropped, so instead of using a tiny sliver of metal to hold thousands of pounds of pressure, they use the entire topstrap of the gun. This permits extensive use of rounds that would shoot a semi-auto to pieces in short order, to say nothing of cartridges clearly designed as drunken pranks; i.e. .454 Casull and the S&W supermagnums. You can even get revolvers chambered in rifle rounds. (I say "you" because there's no way in hell I'm touching one of those off.)
Finally, it's a Godsend for those who reload to be able to drop all their spent casings in a box instead of grovelling about on the shooting range floor.
[Grip Size]
All popular semi-autos use the same feeding method: a box magazine inserted into the grip of the gun. Although the grip is the logical location for a magazine, locating the magwell where it is means that magazine function and grip ergonomics become a game of tradoffs: magazine thickness vs. grip thickness; grip angle vs. feed angle; ammo capacity vs. grip length.
http://230grain.com/images/articles/revolvers/img/tn_assembled_magtest.jpg (http://230grain.com/images/articles/revolvers/img/assembled_magtest.jpg)
Semi-autos build the gun around the magazine.
Revolvers have no such constraints beyond what the shape of the frame imposes, and there's plenty of leeway there. Grips can run long to provide solid finger purchase, cover the backstrap to avoid recoil, or be pared down to minimal slivers of wood in the interests of reducing bulk. Some designs, such as Ruger's GP-100 and Super Redhawk models, don't even extend the frame to the grip area; instead, there's only a small stud to which grips are fastened, permitting any imaginable design. Revolvers let one choose a handgun on the basis of functional features, secure in the knowledge that if a given wheelgun doesn't feel perfect in the hand, the solution is just a grip swap away. Even if the profusion of grip options can be overwhelming, it's preferable to being locked away from a handgun by ergonomics alone.
http://230grain.com/images/articles/revolvers/img/tn_grips.jpg (http://230grain.com/images/articles/revolvers/img/grips.jpg)
Compact grips with Tyler T-Grip adaptor.
[Disadvantages]
Revolvers have disadvantages, of course; there's no such thing as a free lunch. In the interests of an honest evaluation, here are what I see as revolvers' largest drawbacks. Intellectual honesty demands disclosure of the fact that I consider the following shortcomings fairly minor and the description reflects that attitude. Also, astute observers will notice a distinct disparity between the number of advantages and disadvantages I can identify. (But then you probably shouldn't be reading an article entitled "In Praise of Revolvers" with expectations of clinical objectivity.)
["Firepower"]
More commonly known as "ammo capacity", the number of rounds carried in a revolver is one of its more famous drawbacks. A six-shooter sounds downright quaint when semi-autos carrying upward of 15 rounds abound. But if holding a lot of ammunition is an advantage for some semi-autos, it doesn't necessarily follow that revolvers are at a disadvantage. For the elite tactical operators living high-speed low-drag lives, who start hyperventilating and tearing up at the thought of not being able to top off their 15-round 10mm magazines, the prospect of being "limited" to six rounds is apt to make them thrash around on the ground, wrinkling their carefully-pressed multicam as they kick and scream, tears running down their flushed cheeks. I bow to these people's highly-trained and lethal skillset, and would not wish to saddle them with equipment that would compromise their ability to Get The Job Done. Because, as we all know, the type of gun you use and amount of ammo you have on hand are the sole predictors of your survival in a dangerous situation. For the rest of us, though, revolver capacity is a tradeoff that must be weighed against the numerous advantages the platform provides.
http://230grain.com/images/articles/revolvers/img/tn_m60_ammo.jpg (http://230grain.com/images/articles/revolvers/img/m60_ammo.jpg)
Not exactly a pile of ammunition.
[Trigger Pull]
While revolvers' single-action pulls are for the most part sweet enough to bring tears to a connoisseur's eyes, the double-action mechanism must rotate the cylinder and pull back the hammer against the pressure of the mainspring and rebound slide. Retaining an accurate sight picture throughout this process takes work to perfect. More accurately, a double-action revolver trigger unflinchingly reveals every single flaw in one's trigger technique. This is exacerbated in snubbies, where the short sight radius, small sights, small grips, and the use of a coil mainspring has garnered snub-nosed revolvers a reputation as "belly guns." (This isn't really the case; the mechanical accuracy of snubbies is almost identical to their larger brethren, but they're just harder to shoot well.) My experience has shown that unpracticed shooters do equally well with a double-action revolver as a single-action semi-auto, but once the initial learning curve has passed most people tend to do better with single-action handguns. For those willing to invest the effort, the revolver's double-action trigger is not an insurmountable obstacle, but it does require more practice than lighter mechanisms.
[Conclusion]
Too often, our race to embrace new and improved technologies prematurely consigns the serviceable and advantageous to the dustbin of history. Newer is often better, but that doesn't necessarily mean that old is bad or has no advantages over the more recent innovation. These facts are often overlooked with respect to revolvers, leaving a truly excellent handgun technology underappreciated to the detriment of all, most especially those who would have benefited had they given the old-fashioned sixgun a second glance.
http://230grain.com/images/articles/revolvers/img/tn_686.jpg (http://230grain.com/images/articles/revolvers/img/686.jpg)
S&W 686 with a 2.5-inch barrel.
All the pedantic pontification in this article aside, for the longest time I was one of those people who wrote off revolvers as relics. Careful consideration and the wise words of others led me to reconsider; although I can't guarantee any particular wisdom content in this article, I hope those who are otherwise skeptical about sixguns will reconsider and take a second look at the venerable (yet still quite relevant) revolver.
(c) 2008 C. Kaukl - All Rights Reserved
Reprinted with permission.