FOREWORD
“The west wasn’t won with a jammed-up gun.”
When Grant Cunningham speaks of revolvers, one should listen. On the whimsical side, he’s the founder of the Revolver Liberation Alliance, whose mottoes are “The west wasn’t won with a jammed-up gun” and “The world isn’t flat, why should your gun be?”
On the serious side, Grant is an experienced instructor and one of the finest revolversmiths in the country. He can craft you a royal Ruger or a dandy Dan Wesson. My friend Herman Gunter, III regularly wins Enhanced Service Revolver matches with a Model 625 S&W .45 revolver that Grant tuned for him, one of several Cunningham guns in the Gunter family. And Grant is perhaps the only full-time pistolsmith today specializing in turning the Colt Python revolver into the exquisite, super-light-pull-with-totally-reliable-ignition treasure that was made famous in the latter 20th Century by Reeves Jungkind, Jerry Moran, and the late, great Fred Sadowsky.
He doesn’t just fix ‘em, he can race ‘em right into the winner’s circle. I’ve seen Grant shoot perfect 300 out of 300 qualification scores on demand with his tuned six-shooters. Whether it’s a Colt or a Dan Wesson doesn’t matter; his skills transfer between them, as yours will if you take his advice to heart.
This book belongs on a sadly short shelf of double action revolver volumes written by people who actually know how to shoot them. It joins the work of Ed Lovette and Michael DeBethancourt in contemporary times, and Bill Jordan, Bob Nichols, Charlie Askins, Elmer Keith, J. H. Fitzgerald, and Ed McGivern before them as Rosetta Stones that unlock the secrets of operating double action revolvers swiftly and accurately.
Not every shooter is mirror-image to one another in techniques or beliefs; if we were, marksmanship would be a giant mutual admiration society with no need for good books like this one to convey new ideas and test old ideas for verification. Grant and I speedload revolvers a little differently, for instance. But looking at his chapter on revolver advantages, and his tutorial on how to run a double action trigger, or his explanation of the rationale of the double action only revolver, all I can say is, “You can take Grant’s advice to the bank.”
Enjoy the book. Like a Star Wars light saber, the revolver is seen by some as an elegant weapon more suited for another time. They’re wrong. It’s a very functional one, very serviceable in the here and now, and that’s why so many folks still use them. Grant Cunningham has done an excellent job of explaining why.
Massad Ayoob
March 2011
Massad Ayoob has served for over 30 years as both handgun editor of Guns magazine and law enforcement editor of American Handgunner. His books include Gun Digest Book of Concealed Carry, In the Gravest Extreme, The Truth About Self-Protection, and Gun Digest Book of Combat Handgunnery. Director of Lethal Force Institute for 29 years, he now teaches through Massad Ayoob Group LLC, and has won several state and regional handgun championships with double action revolvers.
INTRODUCTION
The book you’re holding in your hands is the result of an obsession.
When I was growing up most of the kids in our rural town were playing cowboys and Indians with toy guns obtained from the local dime store. The junior armaments of choice were the Peacemaker and the Winchester rifle, and every kid wanted one of each.
Not me! I remember being fascinated by guns like the M1 Carbine and the Colt .45 Automatic, because those were the kinds of guns I saw in magazines and war movies. My father, a veteran of the Army Air Force during WWII, was issued a Model 1911A1 and carried a Garand in basic training. These influences convinced me that revolvers and lever actions were old-fashioned, and I wanted nothing to do with them.
The first gun I purchased as an adult was a Smith & Wesson Model 59, an early entry into the category that would become known as ‘wondernine.’ I added many guns to that first one, and for the longest time all of them were automatic pistols. I bought some uncommon autos and passed up some even more esoteric examples, sure that the shooting world held nothing more interesting for me.
It was a fellow working in a gun store (who would go on to become a very well-known person in the firearms industry) who started my fascination with the revolver. One spring day he handed me a pristine six-inch Smith & Wesson Model 66, a gun which had been traded in for an autoloader. This shop catered to the emerging competition and concealed carry markets and didn’t do well with revolvers. He made me a deal which I couldn’t pass up. That gun went home with me, accompanied by a box or two of .357 Magnum ammunition.
I took the gun to the range and had enormous fun with the recoil and muzzle blast of the Magnum ammo. In single action it was accurate enough – or more precisely I was accurate enough – but double action was a problem. I practiced until I could hit the target, but that was about the extent of my double action abilities. I decided that perhaps a ‘better’ revolver would improve my shooting, and in another gun store I found a pristine Colt Python. I didn’t know a lot about revolvers, but I’d been led to believe that the Python was the greatest revolver made. I bought it convinced it was going to transform my shooting.
At the time I was shooting quite a bit of NRA Action Pistol (aka ‘Bianchi Cup’) matches at our gun club. I was doing well with a customized CZ75, which was my competition gun of choice at the time, but decided I wanted to try it with my Python. Shooting double action against tuned single action autoloaders is a tough job, but I wasn’t doing too badly. That is, until the dreaded Falling Plate stage.
The first string of fire left me with five of the six plates standing. Double action obviously wasn’t working for me, so on the next buzzer I drew my Colt, cocked the hammer, and took down each plate with the crisp, easy-to-shoot single action.
After I’d holstered, a taunting voice from behind me exclaimed, “Hey, Grant, I’ve got a gun that cocks the hammer for me!” I managed that kind of clenched-teeth chuckle meant to indicate that it was all in good fun, but I’d already resolved to master the double action revolver no matter how hard it would be.
I was determined to find the very best ways of using the revolver, only to discover that very few people had approached the revolver with the same analytical attitude that was common in the autoloader world. What few books had been written were three-quarters of a century old, and almost no one had really questioned the stuff ‘everyone knows.’
That’s when a long decade of study, training and experimentation began. This interest quickly became the obsession of which I spoke; I tried the good, the bad, and the ugly, all with the singleminded goal of finding the most efficient methods of running the old wheelgun. This intense interest quickly motivated everyone to refer to me as ‘the revolver guy’ or, much to my consternation, ‘wheelie boy’!
As my knowledge and abilities progressed, I evolved to carrying a revolver almost exclusively for self defense while also competing with them. Those matches pitted me against good (though still taunting) shooters using customized autopistols. It wasn’t long until I started beating them at their own game and winning my share of matches. That tended to put a damper on their haughty attitudes!
In all cases I used the techniques I’d discovered, sometimes modifying them to better suit the realities of modern guns, ammunition and life. In some instances what I learned mirrored what past masters had already known; in others, the modern revolver fraternity had indeed found a better way. It is this synthesis of old and new, always with an eye to determining the most efficient way to use the revolver, that is reflected in what you’re going to read. Best practices are what this book is about.
This is a generalized