Category: Fieldcraft

Gun cleaning is an important aspect of gun ownership – don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Beginning, intermediate, and advanced shooters are all responsible for keeping their guns in peak condition. Clean the gun your life depends on like your life depends on it — anything less is rank laziness and does not befit a firearms enthusiast.

Reason #1 – Cleaning a Gun Prevents Malfunctions

What exactly happens when you fail to clean your weapons? If you are running a Kalashnikov or a Glock, not much, but it still matters to ensure they’re always in proper working order. I have a Glock 22 converted to 9mm I have owned for a decade. I have brutalized that poor pistol, most typically with a sound suppressor hanging from its snout. Sound suppressors look cool and cut down on noise pollution, but they will render your guns invariably filthy. Increasing back pressure forces some of the carbon fouling that might otherwise vent into the atmosphere back into the action. The result is copious gunk and that gunk can lead to firearm malfunctions.

Reason #2 – Your Life Depends on a Clean Personal Carry Gun

I do actually try to pay attention to my carry guns, but we all suck at this at times. If my RPK chokes while turning ammo into noise, it might elicit some good-natured grumbling. The same thing cannot occur with my Glock 42 while I am standing between some deranged meth addict and my family. Digging into the guts of a well-used pocket gun can be enlightening.

There isn’t a great deal of mechanical energy we are dealing with here, anyway. Let all the lube evaporate out of your favorite slim .380 defensive pistol then pack it to the gunwales with pocket lint and don’t be surprised if it chokes in the clutch. Holstered guns typically fare fairly well over time, but should you be in the practice of carrying a sidearm in your pocket that thing will get gross quick. I have been on occasion gobsmacked by the sheer volume of sundry grunge that will accumulate in a pocket gun over even a short month or two of regular carry.

Reason #3 – You Want the Magazine to Work Properly

The box magazine on a pocket gun sucks up filth like crazy. Slide the floorplate off and tidy up the inside of the magazine whenever you strip the gun.

Shoot your carry guns from time to time, and not just with cheap blasting ammo. It can be illuminating to go to the range and run your ready magazine dry in a high-mileage carry piece. I have had several unexpected stoppages during this exercise. There is one gun I no longer rely upon because of some dismal no-notice range performance. Defensive ammo is expensive, but it is worth the trouble to freshen up your primary magazine every year or two.

Strip it down and tidy it up on the first of each month. It won’t take you five minutes. You would willingly devote more attention to some medical machine if it were keeping you alive. If you are serious about packing a gun for protection, you need to keep it properly maintained.

Reason #4 – Clean Guns Will Function from the Range to a Combat Zone

I ran my first M16A1 professionally in 1984. I’ve had every type of stoppage imaginable with this weapon, including blown cases and a failed front sight base. The gun will run and run well, but it needs a little love. The rub is that the direct gas impingement system pumps all of the gun’s sundry funk right back into its entrails.

M16A1 rifles at the Ranger School at Fort Benning back in the 80s had been ridden hard, but meticulously maintained. However, I used one during a competition there that would not run more than three rounds at a sitting despite being spotlessly clean and lightly lubed. Stoner acolytes please forgive me, but this is, especially in its earliest iterations, a remarkably finicky combat weapon.

Let an AR get properly dirty and the results will show. Failures to extract, failures to eject, and bolt over failures pepper the fail-scape. The solution is obviously regular cleaning.

Scrub off the bolt, bolt carrier, bolt carrier key, and sundry small parts. Personally, I use a pocketknife to scrape the carbon fouling off of the tail of the bolt. Whichever way you choose to complete this task, make sure you’re doing so regularly.

Reason #5 – You Don’t Want to Have to Drop Hard-Earned Money on Repairs

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, an adage that is especially true in the realm of gun cleaning and maintenance. By cleaning a gun after shooting, you can offset the need for costly repairs later on – along with a few sideways glances from an unimpressed gunsmith. You’ve spent enough money on the firearm itself, so why pay extra to repair it due to negligence? Also, while your gun is off getting fixed it’s not in your possession when you may need it the most.

There’s still a lot of life left in the wheelgun.

When I retired from the Army and began my career as a firearm trainer, I quickly identified some knowledge gaps. One of those gaps was my knowledge of revolvers, which I didn’t deal with in my military career, which was primarily spent in Special Forces.

When teaching classes and private lessons, I had to decide if I wanted to just dismissively tell somebody, “Get a new gun,” or did I want to be able to help them improve in handling and shooting the gun they already had? Opting for the latter, I set out to learn all I could about revolvers, their strengths and weaknesses, and how to use them effectively for self-defense. Did I learn that revolvers are obsolete relics of the previous century?

That’s what I expected, but instead I learned that revolvers are still more than sufficient for self-defense and can even be the optimal tool in certain contexts. Let’s examine the strengths of revolvers for armed citizens and self-defense.

Legal Reasons To Own A Revolver

Revolvers are legal to own in all 50 states. Unfortunately, some states have magazine restrictions on the allowable capacity for magazines in semi-automatic pistols, as well as other restrictions on state-compliant semi-autos.

When traveling, I carefully examine the handgun laws in states to or through which I am traveling. In states hostile to the Second Amendment, laws and regulations can be written in such labyrinthine verbiage that it can be tough to understand how to do the right thing. In such cases, I find that traveling with a revolver is the safest way to avoid the trouble of inadvertently bringing restricted items into a particular state.

Simplicity Of Operation

Revolvers are simple in operation. The common double-action revolver has two controls on the entire exterior of the gun: The trigger and the cylinder release. After opening the cylinder, there is also the ejector rod. That’s it. By comparison, modern semi-autos have a trigger, magazine release, slide latch and, in many cases, an external safety.

The exercise to determine the status (loaded or unloaded) on a revolver is also much more straightforward than that for a semi-auto. For someone who regularly trains and practices, these additional controls and manipulations are not insurmountable by any stretch.

That said, there are many people who simply aren’t going to train and practice the way we would like. For many people, the relative simplicity of loading, shooting and unloading revolvers compared to semi-autos make it a sensible choice.

My communal home defense gun, for example, is a Ruger GP100 Wiley Clapp Model with a 3-inch barrel and excellent Novak sights, loaded with .38 Spl. 148-grain wadcutters. The revolver sits in a quick access safe, and every member of my family—including college-aged kids—has enough training to retrieve the revolver out of the safe and use it effectively in an emergency.

The reality is that there are vanishingly few realistic home invasion situations that cannot be resolved with seven effectively placed rounds of .38 Spl., and it was easier and faster to get all adult members of my household proficient with the simplicity of the revolver.

Reliability Is A Thing

Neglect of lubrication and maintenance can make an unfired semi-automatic handgun malfunction, whereas revolvers tend to suffer neglect quite well. Conversely, modern semi-automatics tend to suffer abuse well, and revolvers require strict maintenance if you’re shooting a high round count in a short time. So, if you’re the type of person to abuse guns by constant dry-practice and live-fire, a semi-automatic will be an excellent option. If you’re one of the vast majority of citizens who place their defensive handgun in a drawer, safe or holster and forget about it for embarrassingly long periods of time, a revolver has much to recommend.

One specific area where reliability becomes a factor is in real-world use. This is relevant to an examination of snub-nose revolvers versus so-called “micro-nines,” or tiny semi-automatic pistols chambered in 9mm or sometimes .380 ACP. Micro-compact semi-automatics tend to be very reliable on the range while standing in a traditional shooting stance with an optimal two-handed grip. The problem can appear in real-world incidents, where one might have a suboptimal two-handed or one-handed grip, be off-balance and as a result, “limp-wrist” the gun, become entangled and grapple with an attacker or otherwise deviating from the optimal shooting technique we use on a practice range. Micro-compact semi-automatics tend to be much less forgiving than even full-size semi-automatics. Thanks to revolvers not requiring inertia of a reciprocating slide to function, they tend to shine in situations where a shooter cannot maintain an optimal stance and grip during the fight. If that is a concern, then a revolver is worth considering.

Concealment Advantages

Most modern semi-autos are full of straight lines and right angles, but our bodies are not. For carry guns, concealment is one of the most important factors in choosing what sidearm will become our constant companion as we go about our daily lives. In my experience, given a revolver and a semi-automatic of similar size, the rounded edges and curved lines of the revolver make it a more concealable handgun. It is true that between a mid-sized semi-automatic and a K-frame sized revolver, one is sacrificing ammunition capacity, but how much that matters is going to depend on different factors that vary by individual. If capacity is extremely important to you, and you live and work in an environment where concealment is a lesser concern, then a semi-automatic may be the right choice. However, if you need optimal concealment and your marksmanship skill is such that you think you can score quality hits in the typical distance of an violent encounter without errant rounds, then revolvers make an excellent option. Additionally, I find anecdotally that revolvers are more comfortable to conceal within the same size category, for the same reason: Curves tend to poke and pinch less than corners.

Modularity

Semi-automatic grips in the last 20 years or so have become more modular and adaptable, thanks to interchangeable panels that allow one to adjust the width and thickness of the grips. The limiting factor, however, is that the guns magazine still must fit inside the grip. Revolvers, on the other hand, have a degree of modularity within the grip that semi-automatics simply cannot match.

The range of adjustment available to revolver shooters by swapping out stocks means that any shooter can find the perfect size and features to give them the perfect grip on their revolver. Virtually every model of revolver has grips available as slim and unobtrusive as possible for maximum concealment, large and heavily knurled for optimal shooting, with several options in between that balance the two.

If you’ve got unique hands or are particular about your handgun grip, revolvers present the opportunity to find the truly perfect fit. Given that handgun grip, at least in my opinion, is the most important factor in shooting a handgun well, this is a decided revolver advantage.

Conclusion

There’s never been a time with more great options in semi-automatic handguns. However, that doesn’t mean that revolvers are useless and impractical relics of the 20^th century. Revolvers bring many advantages to the armed citizen, including simplicity of maintenance and operation, reliability even in suboptimal shooting conditions, high degrees of comfort and concealability given their size, and high degrees of modularity in grip and caliber. Presuming the user possesses a modicum of skill, the venerable revolver is every bit as effective as a self-defense tool in this century as it was in the previous one.