Fastest to Fire?

[carpediem]

Mechanical firing speed question:

Assuming that a DA revolver and a Semi-Auto pistol have similar recoil, trigger pull/travel, and are fired by the same insanely-skilled person, which one would be quicker to get to 6 rounds off?

I guess the question boils down to whether revolvers or pistols are mechanically capable of being fired faster?

Just a hypothetical question that's been bugging me.

 

[SoCalShooter]

Guess

My guess is that a revolver would be faster, slide has to travel farther than a revolver cylindar.

 

[Third_Rail]

Jerry Miculek (spelling?) uses both revolvers and pistols; he's just as fast with both.

 

[Thefabulousfink]

I think that, mechanically, a single action revolver would be the fastest. All that is required is the hammer to be pulled back and dropped, the cylinder rotates as the hammer goes back. On an auto loading pistol, you have to wait for the slide to recoil and return, pushing the next round into battery.

I think that if you hooked a revolver and and auto up to a machine that worked the triggers as fast as posible, the revolver would fire faster.

 

[Lou629]

My Guess...

Would be in favor of the autoloader. I've never actually seen a timed comparison though. Like a lot of guys, i own revolvers and semi-autos, and i can shoot any of them pretty darn fast. It just seems to me as if the autos have the edge. I too would be interested to learn the true skinny from anyone who has actually done or seen a real life demo.

 

[erict]

I would have to lean towards the auto as well. Seeing the full auto Glocks run through 30 rounds like there's no tomorrow is quite impressive. Timing that out by hand with seperate trigger pulls would certainly be a task though.

 

[Larry Ashcraft]

I remember hearing once that Miculek said he would rather shoot a revolver because autos were "too slow".

 

[M67]

Ed McGivern, probably the most "insanely-skilled person" ever regarding revolver shooting, was timed shooting five shots in .45 second using an out of the box S&W. That's a cyclic rate of 660 ish rounds per minute. Increadibly fast for a DA revolver. But nowhere near fast enough to indicate that the mechanism on a self-loader would have trouble keeping up. What is the cyclic rate of for example a Glock 18? 1200 or more?

I doubt it is humanly possible pull the trigger of either a revolver or self-loading pistol fast enough to approach the mechanical limit of the gun.

Watch one of those videos of Jerry Miculek and keep in mind that an auto pistol converted to full auto is mechanically able to go at least twice as fast.

That does not however answer the question; which is theoretically faster, a revolver or an auto pistol? The self-loading mechanism has more visible movement, but with a revolver you also have to set in motion a big lump of mass, the cylinder, and bring it to a complete stop for each shot to be fired. Who knows?

I think both Miculek and McGivern can/could achieve a higher cyclic rate with a SA auto than a DA revolver, but not necessarily with the same accuracy. That's where ergonimics and recoil characteristics come into the picture.

 

[44AMP]

Ed McGivern

Started out with autos, but gave up on them when he got faster than they were. It is possible for a human to get fast enough to "out speed" an autoloader. By this I mean that the (uncommonly rare) skilled individual could be ready for another trigger pull before the autoloader has returned to full battery and reset the trigger mechanism. At least that was what McGivern claimed. He also had to design and build his own timing devices, as there was nothing in the world at the time that would do the job he needed.

And remember that this was 80+ years ago.

A full auto pistol would be faster, because the semi requires releasing the trigger so it can reset. That small movement takes time, time not needed with the full auto pistol.

In the hands of a skilled pistol shooter, the semi auto is the fastest for repeat fire. In the hands of an extremely skilled (and gifted) pistol shooter, the DA revolver is faster.

This is not for draw and fire, this is for repeat shots. Draw and fire is a different game. And for that, I wouldn't be able to guess between an SA or DA revolver, or a cocked and locked 1911.

 

[Car Knocker]

I believe Bob Munden demonstrated, on film, that a revolver will cycle faster than an auto.

 

[roscoe]

44 AMP has a good point about trigger reset.

 

[f4t9r]

I can shoot a Auto faster then a revolver by a little (we have timed them) but I am more accurate with the wheel gun. Far from an expert but thats what Happens for me

 

[Joe Demko]

On a DA revolver there is time lost while the trigger resets over a pretty substantial distance compared to the reset on a SA auto. The reset time and the time it takes the hammer to fall are going to be a factor of the springs and the mass of the parts involved and will not be influenced by how quickly the shooter can pull the trigger.

 

[10-Ring]

Faster than I could be But, I would concur that SA semi auto (ie. 1911 or BHP) would be fastest

 

[115grfmj]

Mechanically.....

the revolver can be driven faster since their is no limit to fast the trigger can be indexed, the auto is limited by how far and how fast the slide travels.
Ie their is a limit to the auto's speed which can not be broken, the same is not true of revolvers. How ever aside from Mr. Miculek, most humans would not be able to match an auto's speed with a revolver.....and I'm a self avowed revolver guy.

 

[Joe Demko]

their is a limit to the auto's speed which can not be broken, the same is not true of revolvers.

That just isn't true. Allow me to repeat:
1. The time it takes for the hammer, in either design, to fall is determined by the mass of the hammer and the strength of the spring and the distance the hammer travels. No matter how fast you pull the trigger, the hammer will fall at the same speed.
2. The trigger is returned to its starting position by a spring in both SA autoloaders and DA revolvers. How long that takes will be determined by the mass of the parts and the strength of the springs as well as how far the trigger must travel to be reset. How fast you pull the trigger will not make it reset faster.
Assuming you have really fast fingers, at some point you will be limited in how quickly you can fire the revolver by the time it takes these parts to act. There is an upper limit.

 

[Steve C]

Comparing the speed of a revolver to a full automatic is apples to oranges comparison. A revolver is faster than a semi-automatic pistol as a pump shotgun is faster than a semi-auto. In both DA revolver and semi auto the shooter must pull the trigger for each round, add the cycle time to of the semi auto to the lock time of the action and you find the reason the revolver is quicker. A SA revolver fanned by a professional is quicker yet. Bod Munden gave a demonstration on American shooter showing this with a .45 SA Colt vrs a 1911 Colt.

 

[jondar]

I have read many times that you can empty a Model 12 Winchester shotgun faster than a semi auto shotgun, by simply holding the trigger back and racking the slide. How this would pertain to the revolver/semi auto question, I don't know.

 

[Old Fuff]

A revolver shooter can start the second or more shots as soon as the first one is fired. A pistol shooter must wait to fire until the slide has cycled both ways. If he pulls the trigger too soon the disconector will tie up the gun until he releases the trigger and then pulls it again. For most of us this doesn't make a difference, but those like McGivern, Jordan and Miculek (not to mention Munden) have proved that a revolver can be fired faster then a pistol. Full-automatic's don't count.

 

[Majic]

Full auto takes trigger reset out of the picture and makes it apple to oranges. Comparing a revolver to a semi-auto (one shot per pull of the trigger) it has been proven by several shooters that the revolver can be faster than the semi-auto. The cylinder has to rotate a much shorter distance than the total distance a slide has to travel. The semi-auto gets off the fastest first shot because the revolver has to cycle first, but the revolver can win with every following shot becuase of the difference in cycling.

 

[rockstar.esq]

Majic has made what I consider the most cogent point thus far.

 

[Seancass]

crazy talk ahead....

i always thought in the matrix movie how they could see bullets moving and thus they would have to wait for their guns to cycle to fire the next shot, where-as if he had a double action revolver he could just zip em off right in a row/pattern and shoot the bad guy. so in my opinion, if someone was superfast, a DA revolver would have to be faster because there is no possibility of having to wait on the gun.

 

[LEVRLOVR]

The revolver is the fastest action to cycle.
It is also the faster action to go through several hundred rds. if you only give the operators one or two magazines and speedloaders apiece.

 

[JohnKSa]

The difference is theoretical.

The revolver can go faster, theoretically, but it's not practically relevant.

I've heard people talk about waiting for the slide to cycle, but the slowest cyclic rate I've ever heard of on a full auto version of a typical autopistol is well over 1000rpm

Let's take that number--realizing that it's low. The math says that 1000rpm works out to between 16 and 17 shots per second, 0.06 seconds between shots.

When I start hearing about people shooting FASTER than 0.06 second splits then I'll concede that there's someone who is fast enough to actually wait on the slide of an autopistol to cycle.

 

[Seancass]

to add to what john said, if someone could indeed shoot that fast, the would empty a revolver in .3-.4 seconds, give or take.

i'm not quite that fast.