Carrying a single-action revolver for self-defense isn’t a choice to make without considering all the drawbacks
of this venerable — but certainly outdated — pistol. Photo: Clayton Walker
[Editor’s Note: Countless stories and articles have debated the practicality of carrying a single-action revolver in the modern world. This fictional piece aims to personalize the decision and spark thoughtful discussion.]
Eli Turner didn’t intend to be an anachronism. He just liked his tools made from steel and soul, things considered time-worn traditions and things that looked good tucked inside sweat-stained leather.
That’s why the gun on his belt was a Colt Single Action Army, .45 Colt, four-and-three-quarter-inch barrel, black factory grips and the faint silver holster gloss that only comes from years of quiet devotion.
People noticed. A few of them admired him, but most scoffed behind his back.
Eli didn’t care. When he pressed the hammer back with his thumb and heard the four distinct clicks — C-O-L-T — it felt like he was hearing history. For a man who’d spent most of his life secretly believing he had arrived 150 years too late, it meant something.
Still, he knew history had its limits, but did it really matter? He’d soon find out.
The Legendary Texas Ranger and man who ran Bonnie and Clyde to ground, Frank Hamer.
He carried his Single Action Army revolver “Old Lucky” clear into the 1920s, though he was carrying a 1911 pistol when he took part in ambushing the famous outlaws.
Real or Romance?
Eli told himself there were advantages to his choice.
The big-bore single-action is simple in a way modern guns forgot how to be. No safeties to manage, no decocking lever, and no magazine to secretly unseat and turn the gun into a “none-shooter.” The Peacemaker either worked or it didn’t.
His Colt was dead-on reliable, digesting blunt-nose .45 Colt loads like a farm mule: slow, steady, unstoppable.
Eli knew that if he drew the gun, cocked the hammer and aligned the fixed front blade, the next thing to happen was going to be loud and very persuasive. To him, there was something undeniably grounding and even a bit thrilling about carrying such a piece of history. For these reasons and more, he intentionally chose to be a relic.
School of Hard Knocks
However, late one Tuesday night outside a gas station, romance met reality.
Eli wasn’t looking for trouble but trouble came looking for him. He had stopped for gas while visiting Capital City when a man jumped from behind the dumpster in the parking lot. He had a cheap but large knife in hand and was shouting something about Eli’s wallet. Eli was momentarily stunned and shocked at the sudden appearance of real danger, but practiced instinct took over.
He reached for the Colt.
In the place where theory intersects practical application, he began to see the problems that come from relying on nostalgia.
His presentation was fumbly as he tried to get the big gun out of its shuck hidden under his jacket. He soon discovered thumb-cocking a single-action revolver while your heart is hammering harder than a boilermaker is anything but graceful.
His thumb actually missed the hammer on the first attempt—slicked by adrenaline, not sweat — and by the second attempt, the knifeman had closed the gap.
Time turned to cold molasses. The robber had seen the big Colt, but his meth-soaked brain hadn’t yet registered the danger.
When the attacker was only four steps away, the Colt barked with a familiar boom — though it seemed weirdly quiet, almost like a squib to Eli — and the mugger stumbled back, suddenly remembering urgent business elsewhere. He made it about 50 feet before wobbling unsteadily for a moment and then collapsing near the street.
Turns out he was fortunate the gas station happened to be less than a mile from a big city Level 1 trauma center.
The 285-grain Keith-style slug driven by 18.5 grains of IMR #4227 — just as specified by John Taffin in American Handgunner Magazine — had done awful things to the chest cavity with the slightly right-of-center hit and missed both the heart and spine.
Mr. Meth Man would survive, partly by luck of the draw and some very skilled doctoring, but he’d need to seriously reconsider his life choices after leaving the ICU a week later.
The vaunted Colt SAA was carried for many years by all varieties of lawmen, gunslingers, outlaws, armed guards and private citizens.
It was effective — when it was the cutting edge of handgun technology in 1873 — but there are better options today. Photo: John Taffin
Problems
After all the resulting hullabaloo and a six-hour interrogation at the police station, Eli was released as his statement, the witnesses and the gas station video cameras all agree he was defending his life when he fired the one shot.
However, on the drive home, he had over an hour to think about how the confrontation had gone down. The slow presentation and missing the hammer on the first attempt really bothered him. He also wondered if he actually meant to only fire one shot.
He wondered if maybe the old-timers had steadier hands.
“Maybe they also died more often,” the other side of his brain responded.
Over breakfast the next morning, Eli pondered the Colt (still in police custody as evidence), but this time without the sepia nostalgia filter in place.
He kicked around:
• Considerable weight, length and bulk to carry and bring to bear.
• Six rounds — five, actually, if you’re doing it safely with non-transfer-bar models.
• Slow reloads under the best conditions and virtually impossible under fire.
• The sights, which were questionable at best when compared to virtually any modern design.
• One-handed cocking required practiced dexterity.
• A long hammer travel increased lock time and could increase the effects of shooter flinch.
He thought about the guys he knew who carried Ruger Vaqueros and Blackhawks on camping trips — big men with big hands who loved the guns — but he knew they generally carried another, more modern pistol for the daily “just in case” stuff.
The truth was unavoidable.
A single-action revolver worked beautifully … unless you needed to run it at the speed of survival. It then became a complex test of nimbleness rather than an optimized tool for defense.
He knew, and had experienced firsthand, that in a real fight you don’t want a test — you want a cheat code, full stop. A black polymer gun didn’t feel anywhere as “honest” to Eli, but it became clear why the “plastic fantastic” had become the modern standard for CCW.
Artificial Intelligence isn’t. Brent asked AI to produce a photo illustration of a single-action revolver in a concealable belt holster and this was the result. On the other hand, it shows that even the world’s most sophisticated computers had trouble finding a good example of a concealed SAA holster!
Reflections
Eli knew why he loved the SAA in the first place: a single-action forces discipline. It rewards deliberate action and demands respect. And, there is the whole history and nostalgia thing.
He now realized carrying one isn’t stupid — but it is specialized. If you train with it, understand its limits and accept that you’re using a tool built for a time 150 years ago, it can still serve. Plenty of folks in the backcountry trust single-actions for protection against dangerous critters, and they have saved many lives.
But for everyday self-defense?
Eli finally admitted the hard truth to himself: He liked the Colt because it felt like a handshake with the past, not because it gave him the best odds in the present. Now, he knew in the hard, cold light of life and death, survival is the only result that actually counts, and his odds were better with a more modern choice of handgun.
The Decision
The next day, before heading out, Eli went to his safe and took out a modern 9mm polymer magazine-fed pistol with a red-dot optic — lightweight, high-capacity, fast to reload, quick to sight and embarrassingly practical.
Are they dull? Yes, but sensible? Eminently.
After it was given back to him six months later, Eli didn’t retire his Colt out of shame. He kept it because it had earned and deserved respect, even if it didn’t now ride his belt every day.
Eli still shot his trusty six-shooter on weekends, feeling the weight of each deliberate shot. Every time, he smiled. The romance wasn’t gone, but it wasn’t going to be the first choice for social emergencies anymore.
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