re my gun is like my american express card in article qie rinn b cae cad gatech edu vincent cad gatech edu vincent fox writes in u uicvm uic edu jason kratz u uicvm uic edu writes deleted and as far as fully automatic weapons you can be a lot better armed if you want to hit what you aim at what seems to be happening here is the situation getting totally blown out of proportion in my post i was referring to your regular patrolman in a car cruising around the city vs gang members of course the police have access to the things that you mentioned but do they use tanks and such all of the time of course they don t and that s the point i was trying to make every day when i go out to lunch i always see cops coming in the majority that i see are still carrying revolvers not that there is anything wrong with a revolver but if you re a cop that is up against some gang member with a couple of automatics in his coat i mean semi auto handguns you re going to be at a disadvantage even with training i have been at a shooting range where gang gang members were practicing shooting they were actually practicing taking out their guns as quick as possible and shooting at the target and they weren t doing too badly either the university cops here who are are state cops are armed better than the chicago police it seems most state cops are every city and suburban police officer i ve seen around the twin cities in the last two years has carried a semi auto of some type different brands though i haven t seen any glock s with regard to this discussion we are getting dangerously far from the usual rantings of t p g and close to the realm of r g but i d like to put my two cents worth in while there s nothing wrong with a revolver especially a large frame s w in magnum my favorite there are valid advantages to semi autos i suggest reading massad ayoob s i know some people can t stand him and think he s full of bull but i think that in general his material is very valid and useful book the semi auto pistol in police work or something like that he defines a number of ways that semi auto s are different and that different is good the main advantage is not in increased firepower but in more accurate followup shots when you go to single action mode there is also a certain propriatory nature of each gun that takes some familiarity to learn this may have diminished with time as more criminals become familiar with different models of semi autos but it was cited as stopping or at least slowing down criminals who had grabbed a police officers gun define armed better go shoot a revolver and a semi auto like the colt does one fires faster than the other nope aside from which faster rate of fire is usually not desirable sure it makes the other guys duck for cover but just you trying hitting anything with a thompson in hose mode this is why the military is limiting it s m now to round burst fire simple semi auto would be better but the troops like to be able to rock and roll even if it is wasteful of ammo something often in short supply when the enemy is plentiful a revolver is equally capable as a semi auto in the same caliber a revolver also has the advantage that if it misfires you just pull the trigger again a double action revolver almost all of them can be hand cocked first but will fire merely by pulling the trigger yes but this is best done with a two hand hold with a single hand you either pull the gun far off target to cock or must fire double action the da semi auto has the same advantages plus is always sa after the first shot a misfire in a revolver merely means you must pull the trigger again to rotate to the next round i m not sure if this is meant to be different from your first point in a da semi auto you can pull the trigger again to try dropping the hammer on the same round an advantage you don t have in a revolver where the next trigger pull will always go to the next round discussing this point now this is fine with a dud but what about a hangfire situation granted it s very rare but your round will now go off confined in the cylinder with no place to go slingshotting the slide on a misfire takes very little time a revolver can be carried with the th chamber empty and under the hammer for maximum safety but still can be drawn and fired with an easy motion even one handed actually with modern revolver designs incorporating hammer blocks this is not necessary or usually recommended a revolver would have to fall hard enough and at the right angle to actually break the hammer and driver the firing pin into the round to set it off speedloaders for a revolver allow reloads almost as fast as magazines on semi autos can be faster depending on users the best speedloader users especially those using the spring loaded speed loaders are very fast a problem is that ejecting the spent cases is a two handed job where dropping the expended magazine is one handed this means that while you can be inserting a fresh magazine as soon as the old one clears the gun with a speed loader you have to go through more motions that will always take more time you also don t have the advantage of tactical reloads replacing a partial magazine to bring you back to full capacity the partial magazine can still be used if needed later a misfire in a semi auto will require you to clear a jammed shell first time spent which can be fatal and a vital second or so is often lost as you realize hey it s jammed before starting to do anything about clearing it yes the time to recognize the problem is just as important as the time to clear it really though in either a revolver or semi auto the odds of an actual misfire with factory ammo are awfully small you are more likely to get a jam in a semi auto but even these are exceptionally rare with modern quality guns sigs glocks et al most semi autos must have the slide worked to chamber the first round and cock the hammer some police carry their semi autos with the chamber loaded and hammer cocked but a safety engaged i do not consider this safe however you must trade off safety to get the same speed of employment as a revolver there are some double action semi autos out there but the complexity of operation of many of them requires more training all common semi auto s can be carried with a round in their chamber without any safety problems while i put that out as a statement that i believe i should say that this applies to all of the ones i ve looked at for the da semi s it s no different from the revolver situation the guns all have hammer or firing pin blocks they also have a safety because there s no real advantage carrying one of these cocked and locked you have the same safety and speed of employment as a revolver plus the advantage of sa followup shots i m not familiar with sa semi autos except for the a i admit that i was initially skeptical about carrying this cocked and locked but after examining the design trying to defeat the safeties gun unloaded of course and shooting it a lot i see no inherent safety problems with it especially in a thumbreak holster with the strap under the hammer this design also gets you more speed for an accurate first shot than a revolver some police departments switched to glocks and then started quietly switching many officers back to the old revolvers too many were having accidents partly due to the poor training they received not that glocks require rocket scientists but some cops are baffled by something as complex as the timer on a vcr yeah the infamous glock i still can t figure out how it s worse than a revolver for safety if you don t pull the trigger it doesn t go off i imagine that if all your revolver shooting was done double action then you could pull the glock trigger far enough to fire before you realized it in addition if you had developed that nasty habit of keeping your finger on the trigger when holstering your gun and relying on your thumb on the hammer to remind you to take it off before you blew off your foot then you d have problems when the hammer wasn t there anyone who goes anyone saying that the criminals obviously outgun the police don t know nothing about firearms turn off cops and hunter and pay attention i do not seek here to say semi autos are junk merely that assuming they are better for all jobs is stupid a cop with a revolver on his hip and a shotgun in the rack is more than equipped for anything short of a riot i think this is even okay for a riot as long as it s a small one b gun control is hitting what you aim at if you whip out a wonder nine and fire real fast you may find you don t hit anything good controlled fire from a revolver is more likely to get you a hit i own a mm beretta myself but consider it inferior as a carry weapon to something like the ruger security six revolver if i haven t hit what i m aiming at in the first shots something is quite seriously wrong somewheres while i might like having the backup capacity of those extra shots in certain cases overwhelmingly the of shots fired in criminal encounters is less than i have the poor man s beretta taurus and consider it inferior as a carry weapon to the springfield oops mm vs arguments are relegated to r g you are right though if you don t hit what you aim at then the shooter gun combination has failed i don t ascribe failures in the the fire real fast with a wonder nine scenario you mention to the gun this is a shooter failure whether through lack of discipline or lack of training what do crooks overwhelmingly use in crime why the same nice simple revolvers that the police often use well actually some police prefer the much heftier magnum but anyway mm s are becoming more popular with crooks too though the does still lead the list and like i said around here semi auto s seem the rule for the street cop don t know about the state patrol however they may still carry the highway patrolman obplea don t flame me i prefer semi autos for most things but they introduce unneccessary complications to something as nerve wracking as an abrupt encounter with a lone criminal vincent please don t take any of this as a flame just my whoops looks more like worth and much of it is imho but do check ayoob s book if everything had gone as planned everything would have been perfect batf spokesperson on cnn regarding failed raid attempt in tx
