This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Working Title: Revolver of Badass.: From YKTTW
Gattsuru: Revolvers, assuming they have a similar ballistics profile and weight and are using similar ammunition, tend to have significantly greater recoil than a comparable semiautomatic; the semiautomatic's springs are built to absorb recoil and use it for work, while revolvers have no comparable mechanic (excluding the Mateba or similar designs). The world's fastest accurate shooters use revolvers instead of semiautomatics : the former's cycle time must be as fast as trigger pulls are, while the latter must wait for the slide to absorb recoil, push back forward, and reenter battery. The difference isn't trivial. Look up Jerry Miculek sometime. He can fire a good 5 rounds in six tenths of a second with a revolver. That's faster than a lot of semiautomatics cycle. It's cool stuff.
PG 556: Going from experience with Magnum firearms, semi auto's have greater force applied to the shooter (especially with guns like the Desert Eagle, which need more powerful/hotloaded ammo to function) but as you said, it gets used to reload the chamber, which makes the impulse lower (half is used by the slide, which doesn't transfer to the shooter until it stops) A revolver, though, has a massive impulse from transferring all the energy at once. It's like comparing a semi-auto rifle to a bolt-action- I've heard that the Russian SVD semi-auto has much less noticable recoil than the Nagant bolt-action rifle, despite being roughly the same weight and using the exact same ammo.
Dyle: Okay, is the gun in that photo for real? Or is it just a joke prop?
Double J: Apparently, the thing is real. There's even a webpage for it here.
Nemo: About the Sky Captain example- is it ever explicitly shown that he doesn't just carry multiple guns?- the fact that he uses different guns in chronologically distant scenes seems poor evidence of a continuity error.
(random passer-by): actually the FBI changed a lot of things in their training, doctrine, and equipment after the 1986 Miami shootout, but they were already issuing 9mm semiauto handguns, and that is what most of the FBI's participants in that particular incident used that day. Revolvers were already being phased out. One of the changes was semiauto handguns in larger calibers. They issued a big stainless steel 10mm semiauto from S&W for a while, and I've read that some are still in service, but most agents now being issued .40 caliber handguns from Glock or SIG, as well as a few 9mm Glocks for those who have difficulty shooting the .40 well.
Kersey475: Another possible reason why revolvers are just better is that revolvers are easier on the fingers. In a pistol, you need to cram down each bullet into the magazine one-by-one (unless you're using a speedloader), press the slide stop once you load the magazine in, and when the magazine is empty you need to push the magazine release. Revolvers, on the other hand, you only need to press the cylinder release mechanism, easily load the bullets into the swing-out cylinder one-by-one, and then you just lock the cylinder in place and fire.
- Um... at the range, for practice, you reload mags from a box of ammo. In combat, one carries multiple spare loaded mags—shoot to slide lock, drop the empty mag, slap in a full one, release the slide stop, and go. There do exist speedloader tools for revolvers also, typically holding six cartridges in a plastic wheel with the same spacing and locations as the cylinder for the specific model they're intended for, with a spring-loaded device that pushes them all into the chambers when the user turns a knob or depresses a catch, and in practiced hands this can be as fast as swapping mags.
Fallingwater: "A steampunk mod for Unreal Tournament featured a revolver with a cylinder consisting of four ordinary revolver cylinders. " <— can anyone tell me what steampunk mod that is? Thanks.
