Which should you choose?

Semi-Automatic Vs. Revolver: Another View

By Ryan McAndrews

This article originally appeared in a slightly different format on THR, an online discussion forum. It was so good that I just knew it had to be mirrored here for Cornered Cat readers to see. Thanks for letting me reprint this, Ryan.

~ Kathy

I've noticed that when people new to firearms select their first handgun for concealed carry, they often fall into one of two categories. There are those who immediately select a semi-automatic pistol without even considering revolvers, and those who do the opposite.

Most new shooters who are set on a semi-automatic look at either the magazine capacity or overall size compared to a revolver, and wonder why such seemingly obsolete firearms are still around. Those that only consider revolvers usually pick that platform either because a “snub-nosed” revolver (a compact, short-barreled revolver) is the traditional concealed carry piece, or because a friend, instructor, or gun store employee recommended it (and such recommendation is usually made because of tradition).

Neither approach is a good idea. Both platforms have inherent advantages and disadvantages to them, which must be weighed carefully when buying your first concealed carry handgun. It is also quite important to “try on” numerous handguns for fit and comfort, and preferably shoot them as well before deciding, though this is not always a possibility. People who do not really take much time to consider their first purchase are often happy enough with it, but this is usually due to luck, because they never bother to try anything else, or because they're really good at coming up with justifications for bad choices.

To start with, let's look at a fairly typical semi-auto.

Many people, including me, find the Glock 23 to be a nearly perfect balance between concealability, power, controllability, and magazine capacity. As long as you don't mind .40 S&W recoil, it's a great all-around gun. And if the kick is a little too much, there's always the Glock 19.

The SP-101 has quite a following. Rugers are often underestimated by “gun snobs,” but it's a very solid weapon. An S&W J-frame snubnose would be smaller and lighter -- much lighter if it's alloy-framed -- but recoil would be proportionally worse. The SP-101 strikes a good balance between wearing it comfortably and shooting it comfortably, especially when using .357 magnum ammunition.

Both guns are very good compromises between size and power. In either caliber, either platform, you could go smaller or larger, more or less powerful. But I'd say both guns are representative of a handgun that's intended for daily concealed carry on the belt, under light clothing. So how do the two stack up next to each other?

Sizewise, they're pretty similar, though the SP-101 has a slight advantage. The G23 is about 8.5” diagonally from muzzle to butt, while the SP-101 is 8”. The main differences are the back of the G23's slide, and the SP-101's cylinder.

In terms of weight, similar yet again, though this time the Glock takes the lead. The G23 is 25 ounces with an empty magazine and 34 ounces loaded with 13+1 rounds of 180 grain ammunition, though mine has a tungsten recoil spring guide rod. A stock G23 would be one ounce lighter. The SP-101 is 25.5 ounces empty, 28 ounces with 5 rounds of 158 gr ammo.

For power, they're similar yet again, if you don't handload.

But first, one thing you need to keep in mind about barrel length. A revolver's barrel length is measured from the front face of the cylinder to the muzzle of the barrel. A semi-auto's barrel is measured from the muzzle to the breech face, where the back of the cartridge rests. To compare the two more directly, you need to add the length of the cylinder, plus the small gap between the back of the cylinder and the breech face, to a revolver's barrel length. For the SP-101 and most other .357 magnum caliber revolvers, this adds about 1.64”. Using a caliper to measure the actual distance from the muzzle to the breech face, we find that the Glock 23 has a barrel length of 4.03”, and the SP-101 is 3.94”. Very similar, which shouldn't be surprising, given how close the guns are in overall size. Thus, a 4” barreled .357 magnum revolver actually has an equivalent barrel length to a 5.64” automatic.

With that in mind, on to the comparative power levels.

.357 magnum, 4” barrel1 (Federal)	.40 S&W, 4” barrel (Remington)
130 grains at 1410 feet per second	155 grains at 1205 fps
158 grains at 1240 fps	165 grains at 1150 fps
180 grains at 1080 fps	180 grains at 1015 fps

I would have preferred to compare the same brands, but Remington and Winchester both use 8” barrels for their 180 grain .357 loads, and Federal's .40 S&W velocities are unusual in some weights, since several of their lines of ammunition include reduced-recoil offerings.

From those numbers, it's fairly clear that .40 S&W and .357 magnum factory loads would be just about identical in power, if fired through truly equivalent barrel lengths. If you make your own ammo, and go for power above everything else, the edge goes to the .357 magnum. But maximum power .357 ammo through an SP-101 sized gun would be very uncomfortable to fire for most people, and is not always very accurate.

So, other than potential for more powerful handloaded ammunition, what benefits are there to using a revolver?

The main one is ergonomics. A semi-auto's grip has to accommodate a magazine in it, while a revolver's grip only has a spring or two. A Glock would be one extreme of the spectrum. If you don't like a Glock's grip, there's very little you can do other than have a very expensive grip reduction. With a revolver, there are many aftermarket grip options, which can change the shape of the grip completely.

Here's a Kahr MK40 with the grip panels removed.

That's pretty much all the grip customization you can do to most semi-autos. You can use thicker or thinner side panels to change the width of the grip, and you can change the shape of the back a little bit, but that's it.

On the other hand, the Ruger barely has anything under the grip.

Want something other than the factory grip? Bigger? Smaller? Different angle? Different shape? No problem. You could even hand carve a set of grips yourself, with some basic woodworking skills. The sky is the limit. The grip frame on a S&W revolver is slightly larger, but not by much at all.

Many revolver advocates will make several other claims as to why revolvers are a superior platform, but most of them are not entirely true. The most common claims are that revolvers are simpler to use, require less strength, are mechanically simpler, are less prone to jam or otherwise fail, and will operate with a wider variety of ammo.

Guns are not particularly difficult machines to learn how to use. The vast majority of semi-autos will have, at the absolute most, 8 different main controls; trigger, hammer, magazine release, manual safety, slide stop, decocker, loaded chamber indicator, and takedown device (for disassembling the gun). The Glock 23 has 5 of these, lacking an external hammer, manual safety, and decocker. In comparison, a typical revolver will have 4 controls; trigger, hammer, cylinder latch, and extractor rod.

Some people claim that you can forget to disengage a manual safety, but this should not be an issue for most people. With proper practice, forgetting the manual safety would be akin to forgetting to start your car before stepping on the gas. If you end up selecting a handgun with a manual safety, you should practice often (preferably daily; 5 minutes per day of dryfire practice is fine), drawing and presenting the gun while disengaging the safety. If the gun is in your hand, the safety is off; if you're holstering it or putting it down, the safety goes back on. Eventually it will become second nature.

The only significant difference in using revolvers and semi-autos is how they are loaded. A revolver is simpler to load using loose cartridges, but a semi-auto is simpler to reload once empty, as long as you have another magazine already loaded.

To reload a revolver, you must open the cylinder, push the extractor rod very firmly to eject the empty cases, then insert new cartridges. This can take several seconds if you're using loose rounds. Even with a speedloader or a moon clip, devices which hold the rounds in the same shape of the cylinder so that they can all go in at once, the individual rounds must be lined up with the holes in the cylinder. Once the cylinder's loaded, you push the it back in and the gun is ready to fire again. A very practiced person can do this quickly and smoothly, but it requires quite a bit of movement and fine motor skill.

To reload a semi-auto, on the other hand, you merely press the magazine release button to eject the old magazine, insert a new one, then release the slide if it's locked back. Some experts recommend always racking the slide when you reload, to simplify the process mentally; when operating under stress, you want to make as few decisions as possible. Others say that you should only rack the slide if necessary, as every round counts, and you don't want to be ejecting perfectly good ammunition onto the ground if you can help it. Which method you go with should probably depend on your handgun's magazine capacity.

If you use a semi-auto, you must also know how to clear a jam, but this is nowhere near as complex as some people would have you believe. The standard jam clearing drill, “tap-rack-bang,” is merely the latter half of the motions used to reload. You tap the bottom of the magazine to ensure it's fully seated, rack the slide to eject the dud or jammed round, then attempt to fire again. There are some rare jams (doublefeeds) which would not be cleared by tap-rack-bang, but even for them, a slightly modified reloading procedure, in which the slide is racked several times after the old magazine is removed, will clear them.

Operating a semi-auto requires a certain amount of hand and arm strength, however. High-capacity semi-autos require strong thumbs to load the magazines, and it can be tricky to rack a slide the first few times. Even so, almost anyone can operate one after some practice. Revolvers also need some hand strength, however. The main problem is that the trigger pull weight can only be reduced to about 8 pounds without affecting reliability. Any lighter than that, and you may have rounds failing to fire occasionally.

Semi-autos can, and often do, have much lower trigger pull weights, and racking the slide is much less dependent on the strength of any individual finger, if the proper technique is used. Loading the magazine can still be a problem for those with low hand strength, but this can be done at home instead of while shooting, and there are mag-loading contraptions available which make it much easier. If your hands are in really bad shape, you can have a friend load your magazines, but it's much less practical to have them pull the trigger for you.

So in general, revolvers are more dependent on trigger finger strength, semi-autos on arm and thumb strength.

In terms of mechanical complexity, revolvers are definitely more complex than most modern semi-autos. Here are the main components of the SP-101 that are responsible for firing the gun.

And here's the Glock.

Neither one is particularly complex, but both are the simplest of their respective breed. The edge definitely goes to the semi-auto in this case.

Standard wisdom also says that revolvers are less prone to jams and other failures than semi-autos, but this is again not entirely true. In reality, revolvers are somewhat more tolerant of inept handling, but are no more mechanically robust than a semi-auto under normal operating conditions, in the hands of a practiced operator.

With both the G23 and Ruger SP-101, I've never had a stoppage that wasn't my own fault, and I've actually had a roughly equivalent number of problems. The Glock, I had a couple failures to feed due to limp-wristing, when I first got it, most likely caused by my tendonitis at the time. With the Ruger, the trigger failed to return once, after I installed a lighter trigger return spring, and the cylinder bound up once when I decided to fire some homemade black powder cartridges.

Under less than ideal conditions, either platform can fail. The main difference is that with the Glock, both jams were easily cleared by whacking the bottom of the magazine. That was enough to make the slide close the rest of the way, without racking the slide. With the SP-101's trigger, I had to disassemble the gun at home and polish off a small burr that was only a problem with the lighter return spring (though it may have eventually been a problem even with the original spring, as it was less due to the 2 pound difference, but the particular way the parts lined up when I put it back together). With the black powder ammo, I didn't have any cleaning supplies at the range with me, so I ended up throwing the gun in a mud puddle, then wiping the front of the cylinder with my fingers. It worked fine for another 5 rounds, but it had to go back in the puddle every 5 rounds, to keep it from binding again.

A semi-auto can be prevented from firing if the slide is pushed back far enough, but a revolver also will not fire if something keeps the cylinder from turning. In either case, it doesn't take much force at all to disable the gun.

The main advantage of a revolver in terms of reliability is, once again, its slightly greater tolerance of operator error. You can't make it jam by not holding on tightly enough. It won't jam if it's over- or under-lubricated. But most modern semi-autos do fine under poor conditions as well. Many designs, like the 1911, are quite tolerant of limp wrists, and Glocks are notorious for being utterly oblivious to lubrication (or the lack of it) and dirt. And it's possible to mess up the trigger pull on a revolver, especially if you're not practiced. If you don't allow the trigger to return all the way forward before pulling again, it won't fire. Some revolvers, such as some Colts, can actually be damaged by doing this. That can be a real problem when you're just starting out.

Revolvers are also able to use a slightly wider variety of ammunition. Modern semi-auto designs are very tolerant of different bullet shapes, weights, and velocities, but there are still limits, and you often need to change recoil spring weights to use vastly different power ammo. A magnum caliber revolver, on the other hand, can fire anything from very wimpy, light ammo, to extremely heavy, wrist-breaking loads, without changing any parts. Revolvers will operate with any bullet shape, as long as it will fit in the cylinder, while autos require bullets that are streamlined enough to feed reliably. This isn't as big an issue as some people make it out to be, however. Autopistol caliber ammunition is specifically designed to feed reliably, and the more exotic bullet shapes are often very poor choices for personal defense compared to modern jacketed hollowpoints.

It would also be theoretically possible to practice with .38 SPL ammunition and carry the gun loaded with .357s, but the same effect can be had in a semi-autoby switching recoil spring weights. It's also just plain a bad idea. People may claim that you won't feel the recoil if you fired a gun in defense of your life, but that does not at all mean that the recoil won't screw up your aim anyway. Recoil management is one of the fundamentals of hitting your target more than once. It is very important to practice with ammunition that fires the same weight bullet at the same velocity as your carry ammunition, or that at least has the same overall kick. Attempting to fire full power .357 magnum rounds as though they were .38s would almost certainly result in missing the target completely after the first shot.

Finally, there's the question of size, compared to power and recoil management. Both platforms can excel, but under different conditions.

Comparing an MK40 to the SP-101 hardly seems fair at all. The MK40 is .40 S&W caliber and only slightly less powerful than the Glock due to its shorter barrel. It holds 5+1 shots in the gun, and 6 shots per extra (extended length) magazine. It's much, much smaller, yet still holds an extra shot compared to the SP-101, and is only slightly lower power. Mine has been 100% reliable since day one, even when I've tried to induce limp-wrist jams, and I find that the recoil is about the same as the Glock 23, as both guns are the same weight empty.

Then there's the potential ammo difference. A .357 magnum snubnose can potentially use ammunition that's much more powerful than a similar-sized auto, but it has to be a certain size to begin with, and recoil quickly becomes an issue. The S&W J-frame is the practical lower limit for all DA revolvers, while autos can be made much smaller, even in major calibers like .40 S&W and 9mm.

In general, semi-autos have a monopoly over the extreme low of the size scale, while revolvers have the extreme high end. You can get very, very tiny semi-autos that are still adequate power, like the Seecamp LWS380. No revolver could possibly hope to match that in size. The NAA Mini revolvers come close, but they're .22 caliber and single action.

But then there's the infamous .500 S&W Mag. I don't think there'll ever be any semi-autos chambered in something that powerful!

In between those extremes, there's a lot of overlap, but in general, semi-autos will always hold more shots for a given size and power level, which may be an issue. Many people claim that magazine capacity is irrelevant, as the average self defense incident involves less than 3 shots fired, at less than 3 feet, in less than 3 seconds. However, that is definitely the wrong way to look at it. The vast majority of self defense incidents involve zero shots fired (at zero feet, in zero seconds), but that doesn't mean that a fake gun is sufficient. Likewise, the vast majority of automobile collisions are just fender benders, but that doesn't mean you don't need air bags or seat belts. You should plan around a realistic worst-case scenario, rather than an average or most likely one.

So, to sum up the pros of each platform.

Semi-auto pistols

• Many more shots for a given size
• Can be much smaller
• Faster and easier to reload if you have loaded magazines
• Can require less trigger finger strength

Revolvers

• More ergonomic with the right grips
• Wider variety of ammo can be used
• Potentially more powerful for the size, above a certain minimum
• Faster and easier to load with loose ammo
• Less arm strength required

Which ones apply to a particular gun will depend on that gun, but for just narrowing it down to one platform or the other, those are the points to keep in mind.

In general, your first priority should be practical accuracy. If you can't shoot a gun for beans, everything else is moot. You want a gun that's comfortable in your hand, that points naturally, and that you can shoot quickly, accurately, and consistently. Second is reliability. You want to be able to shoot multiple times, in case it takes more than one shot to stop an aggressor, and in case there are more than one. Third is stopping power. You want to make each shot count, and should carry the most powerful caliber you're comfortable with. Fourth would be the ammunition capacity. You never know how many shots it will take to resolve a situation, so more is always better.

In my case, I'm keeping my Glock 23 and MK40, and selling the SP-101. It's a fine gun, but a close friend of mine wants it more than me.

I like having more shots. I like being able to reload quickly, and always keep my magazines loaded. I like how tiny the MK40 is for its power. The Glock 23 fits my hand like it was made for it, so ergonomics isn't an issue. I prefer to use only one power ammunition (180 gr at 1000 fps). I've got enough hand and arm strength (for now) that loading the gun isn't an issue. And I have no need of an incredibly powerful pistol; if .40 S&W isn't enough, I'd rather reach for a rifle than a bigger pistol. So semi-autos are definitely the platform for me, and the G23 is perfect.

Which one you choose should be based on your own preferences and needs.

Except where otherwise noted, all articles and images on this web site © 2006-2008 by Kathy Jackson. For permission to quote, please contact author.

Article on this page © 2007 Ryan McAndrews. For permission to quote, contact webmaster.

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