Revolver ID?

[Lang]

Terry,

I did not mean to cast aspersions on your old uncle, I am sure he was an excellent shot. It's just my experience with pistols puts them in the class of replacing a sword or club at close range.

When I was a kid I was a platoon commander in a recruit training bn for a few months at the height of the intakes for the Vietnam war. Mainly because I liked shooting I finished up with the job of range officer for our bn. Using the 7.62 SLR, 9mm F1 smg and Browning pistol I put probably 500 other kids (with the help of a couple of sergeants old enough to be my father!) through their basics.

The whole point of this ramble is we used man sized/shaped targets at 25 metres for the pistols and smg's. I would swear in court that the average pistol hits - anywhere on the target- was 5 out of 11. This was with people in a calm situaton being quietly coached. Even the old sergeants who had been teaching weapons since WW2 and could consistently empty the whole pistol magazine into the target had groups which ranged from the scrotum to the eyebrows of the "enemy".

Always on full auto and few mastered tapping off single rounds, the smg was a device invented by ammunition companies. If the targets got 10 hits from a 25 round magazine shoulder fired or 5 hits instinctive fired from the hip the shooter would deserve a trophy. An excellent weapon for shooting opposition gangsters lined up 5 metres away in a garage in Chicago.

A pistol hanging from your belt might look and feel good but I think unless I was an armour crewman, pilot or in some other restricted access job my weapon of choice would be a rifle (which have become shorter and more convenient). Apart from that I bet more people have been shot with pistols through mishandling accidents than have ever been shot in anger!