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All About Guns

THE SIXGUNS OF JOHN GALLAGHER WRITTEN BY JOHN TAFFIN

A pair of Perfect Packin’ Pistols— .44 Specials by John Gallagher.

Sometimes things really work out the way they are supposed to! One of my greatest pleasures in the 40 years I have been writing for this
magazine has been to be able to shine the spotlight on deserving craftsmen, those skilled artisans who work with steel to create truly custom sixguns and semiautos.

We’ve never operated on a me first policy here of trying to be the first to write about every new firearm that comes along — we rarely
do. There is a very good reason for this as it takes time to test a new product. We try very hard to use actual experience not manufacturer’s hype in reporting new handguns. Sometimes this means we are six months to a year behind other publications however, readers can know we don’t bring something to print until it has been thoroughly tested.

We may not be first to introduce new products but we have been, and continue to be at the forefront when it comes to introducing talented custom sixgun smiths to shooters. I can count several custom sixgunsmiths who were relatively unknown to the rest of the country until their work appeared in these pages. We have been able to turn them from part-time to full-time and then some in custom gun building. Some of these ‘smiths have been backlogged ever since we introduced them to sixgunners 10, 15 or even more years ago.

All this leads to another extremely competent and imaginative sixgunsmith who built guns until his death — John Gallagher passed away on April 14th 2020.

** The following first appeared in the November/December 2008 issue of American Handgunner **

 

Since this John Gallagher custom .44 Special is built on the 50th Anniversary
New Model action it is safe to carry with six rounds.

Big Little Sixgun

 

The first sixgun John ever built for me was several years ago and it’s my Big Little Sixgun — actually a big sixgun shooting a small cartridge. The .32-20 dates all way back to the last quarter of the 19th century and was first chambered in the Model 1873 Winchester
and shortly thereafter in the Colt Single Action.

Over the past century plus it has been chambered in the 1892 Winchester, the Colt Bisley Model, the Smith & Wesson M&P, and in recent years, the Marlin 1894CL and the Freedom Arms Model 97. To build a premier custom .32-20 Gallagher started with a Ruger New Model Blackhawk which is built on the same frame as the Super Blackhawk. For this conversion John basically used only the frame and grip frame.

The cylinder is a custom built, eight shot .32-20, which is made oversize to completely fill the frame window. It matches up with a slightly tapered 61⁄2″ barrel with a deeply crowned muzzle. The front sight is a serrated ramp style which is mated up with a Hamilton Bowen rear sight.

Instead of the conventional hammer, this custom Blackhawk has a Super Blackhawk hammer and a creep free trigger pull set at 31⁄2 pounds. The mainframe is color case hardened and the balance of the gun is beautifully blued. I have added a pair of stag grips with a black eagle Ruger medallion and the combination is quite attractive.

For the handloader the .32-20 is a most versatile cartridge. It must not be loaded above the level of the firearm for which it is being used. The Winchester 1892, the Marlin 1894CL, and the Freedom Arms Model 97 are very strong guns capable of handling heavy loads but the Smith & Wesson M&P isn’t. This Gallagher/Ruger can handle some pretty potent loads. Hornady’s 100 XTP-JHP over 11.0 grains of #2400 clocks out at 1,405 fps, Speer’s 100 JHP over the same load has a muzzle velocity of 1,372 fps, and this same Speer bullet over 13.0 grains of H110 hits 1,300 fps. All three place eight shots in less than 1″ at 25 yards.

 

Properly head-stamped .41 Magnum brass is available from Quality
Cartridge for use in the John Gallagher Little Big Gun.

A Special .41

 

At the opposite end of the spectrum is Gallagher’s Little Big Sixgun shooting a relatively big cartridge from a small frame. I don’t know who first came up with the idea of the .41 Special however, when I met with Hamilton Bowen at the Shootists Holiday in 1987, and he had one built on a Ruger GP-100 — shortly thereafter I had him do one for me on a Colt Single Action. The .41 Special is nothing more than the .41 Magnum trimmed to .44 Special length. This mild wildcat has become popular enough that properly head stamped brass, though expensive, is available through Quality Cartridge. The whole idea of the .41 Special is just what it says, a .41 much milder than the excellent .41 Magnum.

In my larger .41 Special sixguns I normally load a 215 grain bullet at muzzle velocities in the 900 to 1,100 fps range, or about where I load 250 grain bullets in .44 Special. Gallagher came up with the idea of making a really little gun to shoot the .41 Special by starting with a Ruger Three-Screw Single-Six. A New Model will not work as the enlarging of the loading port area to accept larger cartridges cuts into the transfer bar safety.

For this mildcat conversion Gallagher reset the rimfire firing pin to centerfire, built a custom five-shot cylinder which fills out the frame window and matched it up with a 4″ .41 barrel. The top of the frame has been “melted” or rounded off on both sides as well as the front, the rear sight in a dovetail is maintained and matched up with slightly sloping and serrated front sight.

The steel grip frame is from a Ruger Old Army, the trigger pull is set at 21⁄2 pounds, and the base pin is one of Belt Mountain’s knurled head pins with a locking set screw. This entire little sixgun has been finished in high polished blue, except the top of the frame which is matte blue to reduce glare. Gallagher not only works in steel he also does an excellent job with wood and this .41 Special wears perfectly shaped and fitted exotic wood grips. With the Oregon Trail 215 grain SWC over 5.0 to 6.0 grains of Unique muzzle velocity is from 680 to 800 fps with mild recoil and excellent accuracy.

 

Typical groups fired with the John Gallagher 50th Anniversary Flat-Top .44 Special.

Perfect Packin’ Pistols

 

Two things most readers will connect me with is great affection for the .44 Special and an unending quest for what has come to be known as a Perfect Packin’ Pistol. The quest must never end as the joy is in the searching not the finding as we just get closer and closer without ever really getting there.

Basically, a Perfect Packin’ Pistol is an easy to carry single action or double action sixgun, or even a semi-automatic, in a caliber which can be counted upon to handle any situation likely to be encountered. The parameters are quite broad and totally subjective. For me most, but certainly not all, PPPs are chambered in .44 Special.

John Gallagher has entered not onebut two Perfect Packin’ Pistols in this sixgunner’s contest and both come out right at the top. In some ways these two sixguns are quite similar. They are both chambered in .44 Special and they both have 4″ barrels, and needless to say since they come from John Gallagher they’re both excellent little sixguns however, they are definitely not twins. For the basic platform John starts with a Ruger Blackhawk, however he does not use the same platform for both .44s.

The first Gallagher custom .44 Special started life as an Old Model .357 Blackhawk. The Three-Screw Ruger .357 Magnum Blackhawks, the Flat-Top from 1955-1962, and the Old Model from 1963 to 1972, were built using the same sized frame and cylinder as a Colt Single Action which makes them about perfect for building a custom .44 Special. With most of these conversions the original cylinder is rechambered
to .44 Special. Gallagher took a different route using a custom over-sized cylinder to completely fill out the frame window and also allow for a recessed case heads — a very nice special custom touch.

The barrel is 4″ in length, the rear sight is a custom Bowen with an extra touch as the top of the frame is serrated on both sides of the sight assembly. The front sight is a ramp style with a serrated blade and the ramp is nicely contoured and blended into the barrel. The hammer is from a Super Blackhawk and both the ejector rod housing and grip frame are steel making this an all steel .44.

 

Boy does this custom .45 Colt by John Gallagher shoot!

Details

 

Other custom touches include scalloping out of the reloading gate and the corresponding recoil shield on the left side as well as removing of metal, or stepping down the frame on both sides in front of the trigger guard. Because of the short barrel, and correspondingly shorter ejector rod housing, the head of the cylinder pin is abbreviated to allow the fullest possible stroke of the ejector rod to positively extract empty cartridge cases.

The entire sixgun is nicely polished blue and John also made the custom fancy walnut stocks. The trigger pull is set at 21⁄4 pounds and with my standard .44 Special load of a 260 grain Keith Bullet over 7.5 grains of Unique the muzzle velocity is right at 900 fps with
a group of 11⁄4″ for five shots at 20 yards. You might think it couldn’t get any better as far as a custom .44 Special sixgun is concerned, and maybe it can’t, however the next Gallagher .44 makes it a real contest.

This second entry into the Perfect Packin’ Pistol category started life as a Ruger 50th Anniversary .357 Flat-Top. When Ruger switched over to the New Model Blackhawks, the .357 was no longer built on the smaller frame but rather on the Super Blackhawk-sized frame, but when Ruger celebrated the 50th Anniversary of the .357 Blackhawk in 2005 by building a Flap-Top on the New Model action they reverted back to the original size and thankfully they didn’t stop there.

The grip frame on the 50th Anniversary .357 is the same size and shape as the original which had been changed in 1962. For whatever the reason, the original grip frame feels better and handles recoil much easier for me than the Old Model grip frame. I even noticed quite a difference in these two sixguns when shooting my standard .44 Special loads. It is my understanding that Ruger is switching over to the 50th Anniversary grip frame on all of their Blackhawks. For this I say a hearty Thank You!

For this .44 Special, Gallagher rechambered the original cylinder, fitted a Bisley Model hammer and melted the corners of the rear sight as well as the top strap and except for the maintaining of the original width of the frame in front of the trigger guard, the rest of this .44 Special has the same touches as the Old Model version. And like its brother it is also an excellent shooter. Using the CPBC 275 grain LBT WFN bullet over 17.5 grains of IMR4227, muzzle velocity is just under 1,000 fps and five shots group into 1″ at 20 yards.

 

John Gallagher’s Big Little Gun is an eight-shot .32-20.

Rear sight and Super Blackhawk hammer found on Gallagher’s
Old Model .44 Special.

The Someday Gun

 

Several years ago my friend Paco Kelly gave me a 61⁄2″ S&W 1950 Target barrel which was originally made for a .45 ACP revolver. I tucked
this barrel way with the idea of someday, and you surely know how difficult it is for “somedays” to arrive, building a .45 Colt on a Smith & Wesson Highway Patrolman. There are two problems inherent in such a conversion. Some of the .357 Magnum cylinders have bolt notches to deep to safely allow conversion to .45 Colt, and secondly the 1950 Target barrels were rifled to handle jacketed bullets not necessarily cast bullets.

Well someday really did arrive and a Highway Patrolman and the 1950 barrel were sent off to John Gallagher to build a 5″ Perfect Packin’ Pistol in .45 Colt fully realizing even if the cylinder worked the barrel may never shoot very well. John re-chambered the cylinder, cut the barrel to 5″, re-set the front sight while doing a beautiful job of tapering the rib on top of the barrel to match up with the narrower ramp of the front sight, totally tuned the action, set the trigger pull at a beautiful creep free 3 lbs pounds, and refinished the barrel to match the matte blue finish of the original Highway Patrolman. I added an old pair of Skeeter Skelton Bearhug stocks to complete the package.

Would it really shoot? Because of the specifications of the original barrel I would’ve been happy with an average shooting sixgun. A good shooting sixgun would fill me with a sixgunner’s joy. I don’t understand why it performs so well but I’m ecstatic over the way this gun shoots!

Using hard cast bullets or even soft swaged lead bullets makes no difference to this .45, it simply puts them all in one hole. Not only do my carefully tailored homebrewed loads do this, Buffalo Bore’s factory load with a 255 grain commercial cast SWC Keith-style bullet cuts one ragged hole with a muzzle velocity right at 1,000 fps; another great shooting sixgun from Gallagher.

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All About Guns

A J. Rigby & Co. bolt action rifle chambered in .243 Winchester on a Sako action built in 1986, then a Rigby in a .275 Rigby caliber, completed around 1998 and built on a Mauser action

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You have to be kidding, right!?!

Don’t these Folks ever get tired of this shit!?!

In the Middle East, the Alarm Bells are Ringing

by  

In the Middle East, the alarm bells are ringing. In this post I shall make an effort to explain, first, why this is so; and second, what a war might look like.

 

In the Middle East, the alarms bells are ringing. There are several reasons for this, all of them important and all well-able to combine with each other and give birth to the largest conflagration the region has witnessed in decades. The first is the imminent demise of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, alias Abu Maazen. Now 88 years old, his rule started in 2005 when he took over from Yasser Arafat.

Unlike Arafat, who began his career as the leader of a terrorist organization, Abu Mazen was and remains primarily a politician and a diplomat. In this capacity he helped negotiate the 1995 Oslo Agreements between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Movement. Partly for that reason, partly because he opposed his people’s armed uprising (the so-called Second Intifada of 2000-2003) some Israelis saw him as a more pliant partner than his predecessor had been.

It did not work that way. Whether through his own fault, or that of Israel, or both, during all his eighteen years in office Abu Mazen has failed to move a single step closer to a peace settlement. Israel on its part has never stopped building new settlements and is doing so again right now. As a result, Palestinian terrorism and Israeli retaliatory measures in the West Bank in particular are once again picking up, claiming dead and injured almost every day.

Nor is the West Bank the only region where Israelis and Palestinians keep clashing. Just a few weeks have passed since the death, in an Israeli jail and as a result of a hunger strike, of a prominent Palestinian terrorist. His demise made the Islamic Jihad terrorist organization in Gaza launch no fewer than a thousand rockets at Israel, leading to Israeli air strikes, leading to more rockets, and so on in the kind of cycle that, over the last twenty years or so, has become all too familiar.

Fortunately Hezbollah, another Islamic terrorist organization whose base is Lebanon, did not intervene. It is, however, not at all certain that, should hostilities in and around Gaza resume, it won’t follow up on its leader’s threats to do just that. Certainly it has the capability and the plans; all that is needed is a decision.

Israel armed forces are among the most powerful in the world. In particular, its anti-aircraft, anti-missile, and anti-aircraft defenses are unmatched anywhere else. It may take time and here will be casualties. Still, unless something goes very, very wrong, Israel should be able to silence not just the Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah but another terrorist organization operating out of Gaza, i.e Hamas, too. If not completely and forever, then at any rate partially and for some time to come.

However, two factors threaten to upset this nice calculation. The first is the possibility that, as hostilities escalate, the Kingdom of Jordan will be drawn into the fray just as it was both during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and then during its 1967 successor.

With Palestinians now comprising a very large—just how large no one, perhaps not even the Jordanians themselves, knows—percentage of the kingdom’s population, there is a good chance that the ruling Hashemite House will not be able to remain on the sidelines. Either it joins the fight, or it risks being overthrown.

Nobody knows this better than the Hashemites themselves. From the king down, not for nothing have some of them been buying property, including both real estate and stock, abroad. Currently Jordan is an oasis of stability and not at war with any of its neighbors. Should the regime fall and leave a behind failed state, though, it is likely that terrorists from all over the Middle East will flock to establish themselves there, setting off the powder keg.

The other possibility is more ominous still. Over the years Iran has been assisting various Middle Eastern terrorist organizations, providing them with money, weapons, logistics, training and more. In response Israel has been using its anti-aircraft defenses to bring down Iranian drones and its air force, to hit Iranian targets in Syria. As of today Iran lacks some of the elements that make up a modern air force, specifically including the all-important early warning systems.

On the other hand, it does have the ballistic missiles and the drones it needs to reach and hit any Israeli target. Now Iran is a large country with 0.63 million square miles of land and a population of almost 87 million. Defeating it, if only to the extent of making it cease hostilities for the time being, will take more than just a few Israeli air strikes, however well planned, however precise, and however well executed.

*

To recapitulate, in the Middle East quiet, or as much of it as there is, is hanging by a thread. Israel, the occupied West Bank, the unoccupied Gaza Strip, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Iran are all at imminent risk of war. Not just with each other but, in at least some cases, war combined with struggles against all kinds of terrorist organizations. As history shows, wars of the second kind are particularly likely to last for years and end, to the extent they ever do, in chaos. All this, before we even consider the role nuclear weapons, both those Iran may develop and deploy and those Israel already has, may play.

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This great Nation & Its People Well I thought it was funny!

And I was supposely surprised by this!

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You have to be kidding, right!?!

Poor Old Gaul!

https://twitter.com/i/status/1674951285513043968

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All About Guns

FOOT LONG FUN WRITTEN BY JOHN TAFFIN

Loads of enjoyment here! A Sonic foot-long hot dog, a Subway foot-long Sub Club and a 12″ Ruger Old Army.

 

I was not born with a sixgun in my hand as some might imagine, but rather, my early shooting days were confined to single barrel shotguns, .22 rifles and .22 pistols on my uncle’s farm in Ohio during the late 1940s.

In those days, in the mid- and late 1950s, firearms were easily accessible, and in Ohio, one only needed to be 16 to purchase on one’s own, and there were no federal forms. Colt Single Actions from what we now refer to as the First-Generation Run were readily available in both original and customized persuasions. My third firearm was a .38-40 Colt Single Action Army.

 

The Taurus 12″ .22 with targets shot at 25 yards.

The .45 Colt (top) and the .44 Special Great Western (bottom) both wear
Colt Buntline Special barrels and are compared to the 10″ Uberti Buntline offered by Cimarron.

Enter Buntline

 

Edward Zane Carroll Judson was an author of dime novels in the last quarter of the 19th century whose pen name was Ned Buntline. He specialized more in fiction than fact and created long-standing myths about Western heroes. To this day, we do not know if it is legend or fact. However, he claimed to have presented five “Buntline Specials” to five lawmen in Dodge City in the late 1870s. Those men were Charlie Bassett, Neal Brown, Bat Masterson, Bill Tilghman and Wyatt Earp.

Researchers have found long-barreled Colt Single Actions, which the factory did not refer to as Buntline Specials, in a serial number range from 1876 to 1884. To date, they have uncovered less than two dozen chambered in .45 Colt, two in .44-40 and one in .44 Colt. Usually, these long-barreled sixguns were fitted with a wire stock and a long-range rear sight, which lifted out of its mortise on the top strap.

 

The Pietta Bison Remingtons are only for use with black
powder or black powder substitutes.

2nd & 3rd Gen. Explosion

 

While very few 1st Generation authentic Buntline Specials have been found, this is not quite the case in the 2nd Generation run of Colts from 1955 to 1975. Nearly 4,000 long-barreled .45 Colt sixguns marked Buntline Specials were produced. During the 3rd Generation run, Colt expanded the line of Buntline Specials producing them in not only .45 Colt but .44-40 and .44 Special as well as some New Frontier Buntline Specials. At the same time, Great Western also offered Buntline Specials with 12 ½” barrels. However, they are much harder to find, so I’ve made my own. Arizona single action sixgunsmith Jim Martin gave me a Colt .44 Special Buntline barrel which he re-threaded to the 2nd Generation pattern, and it is now installed on a Great Western. Shoots great!

 

A quartet of really enjoyable shooting consists of a pair of 12″ Pietta Remingtons and a pair of Ruger Old Armies.

Reality Or Myth?

 

Were these claimed five original Buntline Specials presented to five peace officers reality or myth? There are no factory records to confirm the shipping of five long-barreled revolvers to Judson. However, factory records are only sometimes complete. And while they cannot be confirmed, it can also not be proved they never existed. Most of us know of the Buntline Special from the 1950s–1960s TV series The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, starring Hugh O’Brian in the title role. This TV Wyatt carried a Buntline Special, first in a homemade holster and later in a custom Arvo Ojala Hollywood Holster. The real Wyatt Earp told his biographer, Stuart Lake, in the early 1930s he really did have a Buntline Special, and it didn’t slow down his draw in the least. I’ll let the reader decide if this is real or imagined! Now the TV Wyatt Earp had a metal-lined holster with a long drop loop, making it much easier to draw a 12″ sixgun than from the high-riding Mexican Loop holster Wyatt Earp would have been using in the 1880s.

 

Targets fired at 20 yards with the .45 Colt Buntline Special.

Targets fired at 20 yards with the Pietta Remington New Model Army Bisons.

John’s Buntline History

 

When I was a teenager back in the 1950s, I had a built-up Buntline Special, which was a 1st Generation Colt put together with a .38 Special cylinder and a 12″ barrel. I spent a lot of time doing fast draw with that gun and found I could do fairly well by dropping my left knee significantly as I drew to be able to clear leather. After practicing with this gun, it seemed like my 7 ½” .45 literally jumped out of the holster. That .38 really had no practical value then, but I certainly wish I still had it today. I would enjoy shooting low recoil .38 Specials using this relatively heavy sixgun, and it would also make a superb Single Action .38/44 Heavy Duty. Alas, the emphasis is on “teenager,” and my brains were still somewhat mushy, so I let it get away.

In the first half of the 1960s, I worked six nights a week in a tire factory and attended college five days a week. We had our three kids during this same time and the oldest one will always be linked to the Buntline Special. On a Tuesday night, I received a message at work to “Come home, take a shower, sit down and watch Wyatt Earp and I will be ready to go to the hospital.” Wyatt had just drawn his Buntline Special when Diamond Dot said, “It is time to go to the hospital.” So, my oldest daughter was born right after the Buntline Special appeared on our 10″ TV screen.

 

Heritage Manufacturing offers their .22 in several different barrel lengths.

Ruger Old Army with custom 12″ barrels by Milt Morrison in
stainless steel and blue finishes.

Percussion “Buntlines”

 

My experience with percussion sixguns goes back to my teenage years when I had an original Colt 1860 Army .44, a British Deane & Adams Double-Action .44 and a very early replica of the Remington New Model Army. Over the decades, I have continued to add replicas of virtually all the Colt and Remington conversions.

Over the years, I mostly stuck with traditional percussion sixguns; I ignored things like the Pietta Remington New Model Army Bison with a 12″ barrel. Since the cap and ball revolvers were so hard to find during the COVID situation, I put my name on several lists to get individual models when they did become available.

Pietta has cataloged their Bison .44 in three versions: blued steel, brass-framed, and stainless steel. It only took a couple of months to get the first two; however, the stainless-steel version still evades me. If any reader knows of a new or like new Stainless Steel Adjustable Sighted 12″ Pietta Remington .44, I would like to be informed. These long-barreled Remingtons are equipped with excellent adjustable sights with a square notch rear mated up with a square post front.

After acquiring my Remington “Buntlines,” I took a good look at my collection of Ruger Old Army percussion sixguns. The Ruger is not a replica but a modern cap and ball revolver using the Ruger Three-Screw action and also fitted with excellent adjustable sights. When Ruger stopped production in the first decade of this century, excellent examples could be found in the $350–$400 range. Those are long gone, and today an excellent example will run close to $1,000.

Since I enjoyed my long-barreled Remington so much, I thought to myself as I looked at the Ruger Old Army, “Why not?” I contacted my friend Arizona custom gunsmith Gary Reeder, who supplied me with a stainless steel barrel blank. I turned over both the Ruger and the barrel blank to Milt Morrison. He turned the blank down to the proper diameter and trimmed it to 12″ and I now had a Ruger old Army Buntline. I also asked Milt to see if he could find a blued barrel blank (he did) and the second Ruger (this time a blued version) soon had a 12″ barrel. We kept the adjustable Ruger rear sights as is and mated them up with Fermin Garza post front sights, giving me the same sight picture as found on the Remingtons. This quartet of percussion Buntlines are excellent shooters that are easy to shoot and exceptionally accurate.

 

The late Dick Casull with his personal and favorite Freedom Arms
.454, which has a 12″ barrel.

Heavy barreled 10″ Dan Wesson .22 (top) compared to Taurus 12″
stainless steel sixguns in .22 LR and .22 Magnum.

Other Variants

 

When it comes to DA Buntline Specials, the field is limited. I know of no company that catalogs such long-barreled double-action sixguns. At one time, Dan Wesson offered 12″ sixguns; however, my Dan Wesson is only close as it is chambered in .22 LR with a heavy under-lugged 10″ barrel. Also, it is not exactly a DA, as it was set up at the factory for SA use for long-range competition and target shooting. At one time, Taurus offered 12″ sixguns set up with a standard weight barrel and offered in two versions, .22 LR and .22 Rimfire Magnum. I was fortunate enough to acquire one of each way back then, and they are excellent, especially for small game and varmint hunting.

A relatively new player is Heritage Manufacturing, with a varied list of SA .22s offered with barrel lengths from 3″ to 16″. There is nothing fancy about these; however, they are working guns that can sometimes be found on special sale for less than $100. They also can be had with an auxiliary cylinder in .22 Magnum for about $30 more. As with all .22 sixguns, these sixguns should be tested with more than one type of .22 ammunition. I did get misfires with one brand that apparently had a rim at the thin end of the specs and probably matched up with a cylinder cut at the large end of the spec chart. I have found Aquila .22 LR ammunition to work exceptionally well in these .22 Buntlines.

My favorite sandwich shop is Subway for several reasons. They are close by, reasonably priced and offer a menu for healthy eating. There was a time when a foot-long Subway sandwich was served as a meal. Now at this time in my life, it provides two meals. I’m also quite partial to Sonic foot-long hotdogs smothered in relish and mustard; they still slide down easily, providing one meal. The sandwiches give me much foot-long eating enjoyment; however, they are second to the pleasure I receive from foot-long sixguns.

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All About Guns

WHO NEEDS AN AUTO ANYWAY? WRITTEN BY MIKE “DUKE” VENTURINO

Thad Rybka, Bill Black and Ray Coffman might argue with you about the need for an auto.

 

I can already hear some readers saying, “Roy, did you bring this yokel aboard so he can feed us that same old revolver versus autoloader crap?” Well — yes and no. I’m not here to repeat the same old arguments, but since I’ve attended classes at Thunder Ranch dedicated to all three types of handguns, I’d like to share a bit of insight I gained from the experiences.

My opinion is this: A single action revolver gives up exactly nothing to an autoloading pistol for the first five rounds. And that’s both when the sights are used, or the thing is just stuck out in front of you and the trigger pulled. Are you thinking “rubbish” — or some less printable word?

Let me tell you this. At one class Clint asked me to use a Colt SAA .45 for a while so the rest of the group would be exposed to something different. A little into the course he asked me, and a class member using a 1911, to step forward. With the targets only feet away and with our handguns pointed out in front in both hands, he asked us to fire two shots as fast as possible on his command. He also told the rest of the class to judge who fired fastest.

 

Top, those are .45 Colt bullets. Who needs more?

Deadly Duke

 

I thought, “Great, Clint put me on the hot seat!” I’d never done such a thing before and had no idea how it would go. To the surprise of the entire class — including me — they couldn’t tell which of us fired fastest. Clint had us do it again, and with the same results.

Last summer two young Marine friends just back from combat in Iraq stopped to visit me after seeing the movie Open Range. Inspired, they asked to shoot some SA revolvers and lever action rifles. We did the “Clint Drill” several times, and those young fellows were just as surprised that “old cowboy guns” could be fired as fast as “modern” combat handguns.

What about double action revolvers? I attended a Thunder Ranch class dedicated to them sometime after. And here’s what I think. The double action revolver, when fired only DA, is the hardest of all handguns to shoot well. I could never keep the bullet holes on the targets as close with the guns I brought (N-frame S&W .38s and .44s) as I can do with either single actions or 1911s. In fact, my target often looked like someone had hit it with OO buck from a ways back.

Here’s one important proviso. The autoloader and the DA revolver can easily be fired one-handed, as when the other hand is occupied — say in holding up your pants or some equally important task. To equal their speed of shooting, the single action must be manipulated with two hands. One to hold the revolver, aim it and press the trigger, and the other to cock the hammer. Be sure, I’m not talking about movie high jinks like fanning, but about aimed fire.

 

Shootin’ Yer Foot Off

 

In the beginning, the phrase “first five rounds” was used. Aren’t we talking about “sixguns” here? Absolutely, but if I thought that extra round was needed it most certainly would be in there. But for packing a traditionally styled single action about the only safe way is with the hammer down on the empty sixth chamber. Don’t doubt it. I personally have known two people who died because they doubted it.

The kicker is the reload. Autoloaders are a breeze, as long as the spare magazines are there. So are DA revolvers, as long as the speed loaders are there. Single action revolvers require numerous small movements to bring them back up to speed. Here in Montana, I have a CCW and when exercising my right to carry usually have either a Les Baer Thunder Ranch Special or a Kimber Pro Carry .40 S&W.

However, when going about my everyday life, I almost always have a single action revolver within reach. If accosted would I run off screaming into the night because that’s all the gun I possessed? I certainly hope not. Autoloaders are easy. Single actions are almost as easy for the first five shots. Double action revolvers? Now, that’s a handgun for the experts. And that’s my opinion on the matter.

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Grumpy's hall of Shame War

Mark 14: The Torpedo That Couldn’t

The Navy lost a couple of chances to sink several of Japan’s Aircraft Carriers. Needless to say that when Adm Ernie King heard about this. A lot of brown sauce hit the fan. Grumpy

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All About Guns

GWACS vs KE Arms, Russell Phagan, Brownells et al. What’s the deal?

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All About Guns

Armed in 1975