American Rifleman by Rick Hacker 6/22/2024
Back in the 1980s, when Cowboy Action Shooting was just getting started, I attended one of the first matches held at Norco, Calif., in a dual role of gunwriter and competitor; when I wasn’t shooting with a pair of Single Action Armys, I was shooting with a Canon camera. During the competition, one of the shooter’s wives—seeing a double buscadero rig around my waist and a long lens camera around my neck and obviously under the mistaken impression that I must know something—approached me with a question.
“My husband,” she said, pointing to one of the shootists blazing away with a brace of Ruger Vaqueros, “has spent a fortune on his competition guns, but we don’t have a pistol for our home defense. What would you recommend we should get?”
“He’s using them right now,” I replied, referencing the two Vaqueros.
It took a moment for my comment to register, but then she got it. “Oh,” she said, matter-of-factly.
Many of today’s otherwise-experienced shooters and their families do not take the single-action revolver seriously as a home-defense gun, even those who use them regularly for plinking or competition. Yet for more than 100 years—until the early 20th century, when double actions and semi-automatics began making inroads as sidearm considerations—the single-action revolver was the obvious choice for a multiple-shot, close-range, home-defense arm. Shotguns and rifles often penetrated more than their intended targets, traveling through walls, neighboring dwellings and other objects that weren’t meant to be hit.
You can be sure that when those legendary lawmen of yesteryear, such as Wyatt Earp, Pat Garrett and Bill Tilghman, weren’t wearing their sixguns in pursuit of—or defense from—outlaws, they may have unbuckled their gunbelts at home, but still kept their single-actions close at hand, on tabletops, in desk drawers or by their bedstands at night. That habit served them well, as Earp and Bat Masterson, for example, died of natural causes, as did “Texas” John Slaughter and other frontier gunmen who made the single-action revolver a welcomed houseguest.
That same mindset is just as viable today, even with the proliferation of semi-automatics and double-action revolvers geared for EDC and home defense. Why shouldn’t the single-action also be a feasible consideration? In some ways, it could even be better choice. If a person is comfortable, competent and skilled in using a single-action, that makes it an obvious option. For another thing, the single-action revolver is among the safest of all handgun platforms: unless someone manually cocks the hammer and pulls it all the way back to full cock (assuming it is resting over an empty chamber if it doesn’t have a transfer bar system) and then physically pulls the trigger, there is absolutely no way the gun can fire. With the hammer down, it is simply an inert piece of steel.
In addition, unlike many semi-automatics, the single-action revolver is not ammunition-sensitive, nor are there any worries about “magazine spring fatigue.” Plus, with a single-action revolver, there can be no failures to feed or “stovepiped” rounds. Another factor to consider—especially for those with weak hands—is that many double-actions are extremely difficult to fire in their double-action mode (often requiring an 8- to 10-lb. trigger pull), but a single-action generally has a 3½ to 5-lb. trigger. The only drawback is that, with a stiff mainspring, a weak-handed person may require two hands to cock a single-action hammer, but a competent gunsmith can easily lighten this up, and the task can often be done at home by the simple addition of a Wolff mainspring.
More:
https://www.americanrifleman.org/content/single-actions-for-home-defense/?utm_source=newsletter
