I had the opportunity to attend a refresher class for my concealed carry (CCW) permit recently, and walked away with a few quick observations I wanted to share with you. It seems like these biannual classes always provide something interesting and relevant to comment on, when you’re a RevolverGuy.
Good news
I went to a new vendor for the state-mandated, eight hour class this year, and was honestly quite happy with the program. Longtime readers will recall I was quite unimpressed with the previous vendor from the last several cycles, but this one ran a very professional operation. I was happy with their safety protocols, how they managed the live fire range, and the quality of the classroom instruction.
As an instructor myself, there were certainly some things I would have said or done differently if it were my class to run, but I was generally pleased with the operation, and think the typical student would certainly benefit a lot from the experience. I considered it time well spent.
Where’s all the revolvers?
So, the new company’s program was a definite change from the past, but one thing that was very familiar was the dearth of revolvers in the hands of students. My class had about two dozen students, and most all of them had their three guns to qualify with [our state requires you to list the serial number of the gun(s) you will carry on your permit, and prohibits you from carrying a gun that’s not listed. The state generally limits you to three guns total on the permit, and you’re required to qualify with each of them]. We had somewhere in the vicinity of 60-70 guns being fired, and I’m pretty sure I had the only revolver in the crowd. There may have been another, but I didn’t see one, and didn’t hear anyone else identify as a revolver shooter when the instructor asked.
I never expect to see a lot of revolvers in a class like this, but I do expect to see more than one. One gun out of sixty or seventy is a pretty poor showing for our team.
The near total absence of revolvers tells me a few things:
1.) They’re not being effectively marketed as self defense tools. Even the largest makers of revolvers don’t spend much effort promoting them, and when they do, they’re often portrayed as recreational tools, not defensive ones. Sadly, some of these marketing teams don’t even understand their own revolver products well enough to promote them.
2.) The people who have the greatest influence on buyers (friends, family, sales staff, instructors, social media “influencers,” etc.) aren’t steering them towards revolvers. I’d venture to say that most of the potential influencers don’t have much revolver experience themselves, so they’re unlikely to suggest them to others.
3.) I don’t need to feel bad about writing the occasional article that promotes revolvers, because there’s apparently a large number of people in our gun culture who could still benefit from it. Our readers are “the choir” that I don’t need to “preach” to, but there’s still plenty of room, and need, for a defense of the revolver in these pages.
Alternatives
Another entry in the, “I’ve seen this movie before” category: I saw a few shooters in the class who were struggling with the subcompact autos they’d brought to qualify with. In some cases, the manual of arms seemed a little overwhelming to them, and in other cases, they were just having a hard time shooting the little guns well.
It was interesting to see that some of the students were complaining about the manual safeties on their autos, because they were difficult to operate. The Kalifornia-approved versions of guns like the S&W Shield-series or Ruger Max-9 have tiny safety levers that are difficult to disengage, and even more difficult to engage, because the control has such a low profile and often requires more force than the shooter can generate (with a reduced purchase) to run them. Other guns, like the Sig Sauer P238 have adequately-sized levers, but they’re located in places where the reach is awkward to work them, on the small frame guns. Even the otherwise excellent Sig P365 pistol can be a little awkward to Off/On-safe, in Kalifornia drag, depending on the size and flexibility (arthritis, anyone?) of the shooter’s hand.
Our instructor acknowledged the problem, and admitted most students ran the guns like the Shields and 365s without using the safety at all. To the instructor’s credit, they did admit this could cause a problem for a shooter who was habituated to ignoring the manual safety, if it was unknowingly bumped to the On-Safe position, but didn’t really offer any workable solutions for dealing with the problem.
To my way of thinking, the problem and solution were clear–you’ve got the wrong gun if you can’t work the manual safety, and it needs to be replaced with one you can properly operate. As a RevolverGuy, I’d be quick to note this is one of the principal advantages of a gun like a snub revolver, that it can be safely carried and put into action without concern for the operation of a manual safety lever. Long before the computer mouse was a thing, revolvers had perfected the “point and click” user interface!
Operating an autopistol’s slide can be tough for many shooters, and the process is more difficult with the subcompacts because the recoil spring has to be so much stronger, and there’s less slide for the hand to get a purchase on. I saw a few folks “doing the dance” and really working hard to get this task accomplished, and thought to myself they’d be better off with a revolver that didn’t require any feats of strength to load, unload, or clear a stoppage.
Too, some of the same shooters had difficulty shooting their 9mm subcompacts accurately, because the recoil was too substantial for them. How many of them, I thought, would be better off shooting a smaller caliber or a reduced recoil loading? These are things the revolver excels at, but many autos struggle with, because the revolvers don’t use the recoil generated by the cartridge to work the action of the gun.
Capacity Craze
I suspect many of these shooters were led to believe that they needed the enhanced capacity of an autoloader, and the ability to quickly reload it, for self defense. How many salesmen, do you think, turned up their nose at a mere five or six-shot revolver, because it didn’t hold enough ammo, and steered their customer towards a gun they couldn’t operate or shoot properly?
I’ve got nothing against capacity, and think it’s pretty helpful to have more ammo on board, but I also think it’s useless to chase capacity at the sake of being able to get your gun into play with safety and efficiency, and getting good hits on target. All the ammo in the world won’t help you if you flinch and miss, or can’t get the gun to work, methinks.
But I guess RevolverGuys can be silly like that.
Prejudice
One thing that stood out to me at the class was the subtle autopistol bias that permeated the instruction.
In discussing the various types of handgun actions, for instance, there was zero discussion of revolvers. Striker-fired, single action, and traditional double action autos were all discussed, but there was no mention of revolvers, for example.
The same carried on into the discussions about shooting techniques like grip (thumbs forward was the recommendation), trigger management (riding the sear was recommended), and getting the gun running again when it stopped (Tap-Rack, of course!).
Round guns need not apply.
A written exam was administered at the end of class, and the bias showed in the test questions, as well. One of the questions that sticks in my mind was based around the presumption that you would always be shooting an auto, and would need to angle the ejection port away from cover that you were shooting around.
Another that raised a cynical chuckle from yours truly read like this:
Only ________ ammunition is recommended for self-defense.
A. Full Metal Jacket
B. Wadcutter
C. Hollowpoint
D. None of the above
Obviously (!) the correct answer was C . . . and there I was, feeling silly, because I thought a wadcutter from a snub would do the job nicely. ; ^ )
I suppose it makes little sense to dedicate much effort to providing revolver-relevant instruction if nobody is actually showing up to class with the things, but I have to wonder if the auto-centric instruction guarantees that result? Is there a chicken-egg argument, here?
Furthermore, I do fear that a novice shooter armed with a revolver would fail to get any useful advice on how to run the gun from the program. I suppose that’s job insurance for us RevolverFest instructors, but it is a shame that these excellent self defense guns, and their users, are being ignored.
Comparisons
One thing I found interesting was that I shot my S&W 640 as accurately as I did my Glock 26 on my county’s mandated course of fire. Now, the course only requires the shooter to shoot out to 15 yards, with over half of the rounds fired at 10 yards, but at these close distances, the snub gave up nothing in terms of practical accuracy.
The sights on the Glock 26 were better, and allowed me to acquire them a little faster (particularly between shots fired), but I was capable of the same level of precision with the snub, which is so frequently derided as an “inaccurate” gun by those who haven’t learned to shoot them well.
Onward!
It’s an autopistol world, for sure, and I don’t expect that will ever change, as long as we’re shooting gunpowder.
However, the revolver still has a place in our defensive preparations, and I think it does some jobs better than anything else. All guns have Pros and Cons, and our revolvers are not exempt from the rule, but they’ve got a lot going for them and don’t deserve a second-class treatment.
It’s up to us to educate our friends and family about them, and keep them an active part of the conversation. As friend Grant Cunningham once advised:
