THE word pistol is, of course, used in its broadest sense covering single shot pistols, revolvers and automatics. They may be properly divided into five classes: pocket and home defense guns; target pistols; meat-getters for the camper; man-killers for offensive and defensive uses; and, lastly, general purpose weapons.
There is a broad field of choice in all five classes, and it cannot be gone into thoroughly in the space of one short article; consequently, I will only attempt to give my personal choice, backed by some logical reasons gained in the school of experience. It should be borne in mind that the gun that suits any individual’s fancy the best is the one for him to use. He has confidence in it and will therefore attain better results with it.
As a pocket or home defense pistol no better choice can be made than a .32 or .380 Colt, Remington or Savage Automatic; or the .35 Smith & Wesson Automatic. They are safe, reliable and more suitable for the pocket than a double action revolver, as they are less bulky and easier to draw without fear of catching in the clothing. And they are more accurate for rapid fire. No one can operate a pocket revolver as a self-cocker and be sure of hitting anything a few feet away without a great deal of practice.
Usually such a weapon spends most of its time reposing in a bureau drawer at home, and it should be such a gun as your wife could depend upon in your absence and use with safety to herself. Here again the automatic is the proper weapon, for the average woman, with her small hand, cannot cock the hammer of a double-action revolver unless she uses both hands and runs the risk of having the hammer slip under her thumb with the possibility of driving a bullet through her foot; and, of course, she cannot operate it as a double-action weapon accurately any more than a man could.
The recoil spring of an automatic is also too strong for a woman to pull back to feed the first cartridge from the clip into the chamber. So the best plan is to keep the pistol in a safe, handy place with a cartridge in the chamber and the safety on. But first make her fully familiar with the pistol, impress it upon her that the gun is ready to fire the moment she turns the safety off, and make her practice with the gun empty, pushing down the safety and squeezing the trigger, until she knows it thoroughly. It is then the best gun for her to have around, and she will be more careful in handling it because she knows its danger.
I have no use for target revolvers or saloon pistols doctored up with special sights. It should be borne in mind that the pistol is a defensive weapon, and that some day you may want to use it seriously, and it is more profitable to learn to shoot well with a practical weapon,—particularly the one that you have decided is best suited to your needs. Nor have I much use for long range, slow-fire practice. The pistol is distinctly a short range weapon, and the man who can draw quickly from pocket or holster and hit a moving object the size of a man at any distance up to twenty-five yards, is a great deal more useful in an emergency than the man who can knock the eight inch bull out of the L target at fifty yards, taking a lot of time to rest between shots doing it.
I recommend the Smith & Wesson Model 1905 for the .38 special cartridge, or the Model 1908 for the .44 S & W special load if a large calibred weapon is desired, and, of course, that is desirable, for one thus has an excellent general purpose arm as well. There is no more reliable gun made than the Smith & Wesson, and its fine construction and smooth pull make it the ideal target revolver. If, however, one desires to indulge in target shooting purely for target shooting’s sake, there are no better guns than the .22 Colt Automatic or S & W Model 1911 .22 calibre revolver with 6 inch barrel. These guns lend themselves more to restricted districts where the range and noise must be considered.
As a meat-getter for the camper the .22 Colt Automatic is in a class by itself. It is light in weight, accurate as a one hand gun can be made; it does not make much noise, and as the ammunition is light a lot of it can be carried, and it is powerful enough to kill all such small game as one would need it for about camp, when a hollow point bullet is used.
Personally, I do not care to bother with a pistol on a hunting trip. No matter how well you shoot, and the average hunter is, to say the least, an indifferent pistol shot, you cannot do as well with it as you would with a supplementary chamber in your hunting rifle for the partridge, squirrel or duck you run across. When you carry your rifle and a supplementary chamber, you are ready for anything, without the bother and extra weight of the pistol to carry about, and a second gun to clean and care for at the end of the day. You never see the “old-timer” tote a pistol into the woods on a hunting-trip—he has learned to forego any extras that don’t add to his comfort.
As a killer to knock down a dangerous man and keep him down, there is no gun on a par with the Colt Government .45 calibre automatic. This brute was designed with one idea in view, to kill and kill quickly the most dangerous game on this earth, an armed man with blood in his eyes—and for that purpose the .45 Automatic is unexcelled. It has a punch in each of its seven big slugs and the powder behind them to discourage the most determined assailant, and one does not have to hit him in a vital spot to do it—the smashing effect is demoralizing to man at least. It is reliable, simple in construction, easy to clean, readily dismantled, has little recoil, great rapidity of fire, is quick to reload, and accurate.
The old Colt’s .45 and .44 single action has a similar shocking power, and is quicker to draw from the holster. But it is slower to load and has not the rapidity of fire, except in the hands of the “old-timer” who knows how, and it takes years of practice and costs lots of money in these days of high price ammunition to acquire the skill. The old single action still has its place but it is not as a fighting weapon; for that purpose it is passé. To begin with, the ability of the “old-timers” to shoot with them has been grossly exaggerated, and if they had our automatic arms they would have learned to shoot well in half the time it took with the old guns, and it would not have required half the practice to retain the ability to shoot fast as well as accurately. Don’t believe the old worn-out stories of the natural born shots of the plains. Some men learn quicker than others and some can never learn to shoot a pistol or revolver well. But the really good ones the world over, now and in the past, practiced and practiced hard to acquire their skill, and, although they don’t all admit it, if they want to keep in form they keep on practicing. In other words, to get back to the point in question, of speed and accuracy of fire combined, it took the “old-timers” years of practice to gain the same rapidity of fire with accuracy that the present generation can get with the automatic in a few months.
Lastly, we come to the general purpose pistol and of course there really is no such ideal obtainable, but there is one that nearly approaches it, and it is not a new invention. By general purpose gun we mean one that is good medicine to have about the house for a stray burglar; to take along on the spring fishing trip in the mountains where you might run into a cross old she-bear by accident; to carry along if you must have a belt gun to take into the big woods on your hunting trip—as a second to your rifle to shoot small game—or to help out if that wounded moose charges when your rifle is jammed (if he does, ten to one you lose anyway); to shoot at the target; and, lastly, for your Western hunt where you want a reliable belt gun that is safe to carry and use mounted. That gun is the Colt Single-action Frontier Model—for the .32-20 cartridge. This may seem contradictory after what I had to say about it before—but then I was talking of man killers for present day conditions. There is one place where the single action gun is supreme—and that is for use mounted—no double action or automatic is as safe on horseback as the single action. It cannot be squeezed off unless you have deliberately cocked it to fire, and after the single discharge it is as safe as before, The automatic is not until you have put the safety on, and the double action gun never is. Many valuable horses and lots of men have been accidentally killed because the horse reared and plunged as the pistol was fired, and naturally the rider instinctively grabbed for the reins with the weapon in hand, thereby firing a shot into the horse’s withers or hitting a nearby companion. This cannot happen with the single action. Another advantage is its strength and simplicity of construction which makes it ideal to take out into the wild sections.
A word should be said in conclusion regarding the European one-hand weapons. It is not patriotism which prompts me to say that in this branch of gunnery America has always led the world; the best European authorities frankly extend to us the palm for revolvers and automatic pistols. The only revolver worthy of mention of foreign manufacture is the Webley and beside a Colt or a Smith & Wesson it is a clumsy misshapen thing indeed.
As one would naturally expect, because of their mechanical genius, the Germans came to the fore with the automatic, the best known of which are the Luger and the Mauser, but they are both very much more complicated than the Colt automatics, and are consequently more apt to get out of order when subjected to severe use. The military Mauser is so clumsy that it is out of consideration except for military purposes. And the Luger, while superbly balanced and of splendid design, is subject to the worst fault that an automatic can fall heir to, namely that it is very prone to jam.
I have shot with several pre-war Luger and Mauser automatics and they were all bad offenders in this respect, while my old .45 Colt Automatic, which I have shot thousands of times, never jammed but once and then on what I afterwards found to be a faulty primer. There is also a Mauser pocket automatic but it is far below the Colt, Savage or the Remington in operation or simplicity of construction. They one and all should be avoided by those who desire a thoroughly dependable weapon.