Advantages of revolvers over semi autos

I think for many people, a revolver is the perfect home defense gun. Why? Because they dont practice enough to have a semi.

I trust revolvers more than any semi but as of right now I have kids and cannot keep a loaded gun in the house. But I can keep magazines loaded. So my current home defense guns are my semis and my revolvers are collecting dust in my safe.

As far as carry, I am currently carrying a ruger LCP. I would carry a small .38 revolver but the semis are much smaller. If they were the same size I would definitely go revolver.
 
One reason Revolvers are better.
They just look that way.:D

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but as of right now I have kids and cannot keep a loaded gun in the house.
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Its your choice, and I respect that. But it is your choice, and "I do not" is a better statement than "I cannot".
 
but as of right now I have kids and cannot keep a loaded gun in the house.
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This can be a touchy issue for some folks, especially when one spouse is not in agreement with the other. As a fellow gun-owning parent, here is what I know:

1. Provide reasonable barriers to access for children that simultaneously do not greatly impede your own emergency access.

2. Understand that no such barrier is 100% after a certain age. That age will vary by individual but at some point, even a locked safe is not totally impregnable to a resident kid with enough intelligence, determination, and time. For kids of a certain temperament, just knowing that there is a locked safe can add to the determination. There is also always a chance of encountering guns in other places where you have little or no control over the environment.

3. If you fully appreciate 2, then you understand that the real work is with the child. The answer is the exact opposite of what many parents think or have been told. If there are guns in your home, there are guns in your lives and they need to be a normalized and well-respected part of your kids' lives.

Fight novelty and secrecy. Give your kids familiarity with guns and push respect for them as potentially dangerous tools. (Depending on age, it might not be entirely different than a woodworking dad having power tools and a small workshop in the home.) You might not want your kids in a sealed room with open solvents but let them see you maintaining your guns. If possible, have them help you. Include your kids naturally in responsibly held recreational shooting activities. It might mean having them watch you at first (with proper protection), and then helping them to use a pellet gun or youth rifle when able. A child who understands and respects the power and seriousness of guns will be the safest child around guns, whether they are your guns, another kid's parent's guns, or some lost gun they find in a field. Like anything else in parenting, it takes vigilance.

That might be a lot to take in and this might not be the place for a parenting debate. Tying back into the thread, how much child safety is really gained by keeping an unloaded semi with separate loaded magazines? It's probably about as much as you'd get by keeping an unloaded revolver with separate loaded speed loaders or moon clips. So neither really has a big advantage over the other and neither should be your primary child safety mechanism.
 
I trust revolvers more than any semi but as of right now I have kids and cannot keep a loaded gun in the house. But I can keep magazines loaded. So my current home defense guns are my semis and my revolvers are collecting dust in my safe.
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I bet speedloaders can be as fast on a first load as a mag in a semi if you practice...
 
I am totally agreeing with Cosmo again. My kids are both familiar with handling and shooting firearms. The 11 year old girl likes to go shooting with Dad and Grandpa sometimes; the 18 year old boy has decided it's not his cup of tea. They both know that there are firearms (locked up, as far as they know) in the house, and they both know they can look at them or handle them with supervision anytime they feel like it, just by asking permission - though not when there are visitors around, obviously.

Neither one will touch a firearm that they happen to see lying around someone's house. I know this for a fact - Grandpa is not always as careful as Dad. If someone hands one of them a firearm, they will always check to see if it is loaded, even if it was already checked right in front of them, and they will always treat it as if it were loaded anyway.


And back to the actual topic...

Semiautos are not as cool as this. Not even close.

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There are very, very few semiautos that can throw out a super big, super fast chunk of lead like this one can... and they sure wouldn't look right in a Western movie!


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For a Defensive handgun the ONLY benefit to the Revolver is simplicity of use.

A much less complicated manual of arms. Easier to load/unload and easier to check the status of.

All of that is overcome by training and practice.

In todays market, the revolver has no statistical reliability advantage over the Semi, and when you factor in the ease/speed in which most semi-auto malfunctions can be cleared, there is no difference from a practical standpoint.

The people that say a revolver is a simpler mechanism, have never torn apart a S&W revolver. Lots of little parts and springs just waiting to goof up. Most times ive seen a revolver go down, its gone down HARD and the resulting time to get it back into the fight are just not realistic in a defensive encounter. A loose ejector rod comes to mind

JMHO...
 
It still comes back to the fact that the only thing an auto can do better than the revolver is hold more ammo. It encourages the Ney York Spray n Pray method of shooting.
Sorry guys.:)
 
pete2,

Stop reading gun magazines. Spray and pray is an amateur term indicative of gun magazine readers.

If you think that a semi auto's holding more rounds is insignificant and its only advantage over revolvers, you need a lot of work.
 
For a Defensive handgun the ONLY benefit to the Revolver is simplicity of use.

A much less complicated manual of arms. Easier to load/unload and easier to check the status of.

All of that is overcome by training and practice.
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The above is why I started with revolvers when I became interested in firearms. Many years later, I find revolvers work exceptionally well for my needs. I never had any interest whatsoever in a semi-auto. I guess if someday I develop an interest I'll check it out, otherwise I'm good.
 
Some of us, in fact, quite a number of us were reading gun magazines decades before there was an Internet!

Spray and pray has been a slang term for rapid unaimed or poorly aimed fire for longer than there has been an Internet, as well.

Take a look at the acknowledged experts before Utube. All of them were gun magazine readers, many of them were gun magazine writers. I guess they were just amateurs, too...:rolleyes:

If you think that a semi auto's holding more rounds is insignificant and its only advantage over revolvers, you need a lot of work.
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I probably need a lot of work. Besides holding more rounds what are the advantages?? Rapid reload? yes, if you start from pre-loaded magazines. If you start with loose rounds, not so much.

So what else are the advantages?? And I'm not saying holding more rounds isn't and advantage, sometimes, but what else is there? And remember, there IS more in the handgunning world than just self defense.
 
Deleted an overly serious response. Let's keep it light. Ford and Chevy people are never going to convince each other anyway.
 
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SanSouci, Prior to the Beretta and Glock Hi cap pistols most lawmen carried revolvers. The 1911 was and oddity. No one has named an advantage over the revolver other than it holds more ammo. For law enforcement and military this could be an advantage, for civilians not so much. The auto is better for the games we play, because it holds more ammo, no other reason. :D
 
pete2 you're committed to your point of view! Are you saying that 5 or 6 rounds is all that a civilian ever needs, if he or she shoots well? Or that an LCP is not easier to conceal than an LCR? Or that there isn't a real advantage in reload speed for a pistol, dismissing the silly argument about loose rounds instead of loaded magazines or speed loaders in the context of self-defense? Or that some of us choose semiautomatics for reasons that have nothing to do with how much ammo they hold or marginal differences in size and weight? I, and many others shoot autoloaders better than revolvers. That is all the advantage that we need to claim with authority that pistols are the best choice for us.:p
 
I'm old and remember when "real" men preferred manual transmissions over "sissy" automatics. Look how that has changed over the years. Revolvers are the manual transmissions of guns and semi-automatics are the automatic transmissons of guns. Like manual transmissions, revolvers are dropping in popularity like manual transmissions because semi-automatics (like automatic transmissions) have proven to be as reliable or more reliable than revolvers. There will always be a market for both manual transmissions and revolvers but it is limited to a small number of owners who either trust them more or just like them and their function.
 
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