Revolvers are having a bit of a renaissance lately, and while I’m not a huge fan of wheelguns for concealed carry, I concede that they’re a good option for some people and certainly better than not carrying at all. The trouble is that revolvers are good for beginners and good for highly experienced shooters, and less than ideal for the majority of us in between the two extremes.
No matter what gun you carry for self defense, you need to be practicing and training with it regularly, and that goes double for revolvers, because they can be difficult to master. When you head to the range with your revolver, make sure you’re not making these two major training mistakes.
1. You Only Shoot Light Loads
The classic example of this is someone who shoots .38 Special loads out of their .357 Magnum (which you can do safely, but not vice versa). On its face, there’s nothing wrong with practicing with .38 loads—they recoil less, which means it’s easier to shoot more accurately with them, especially follow-up shots. That’s why so many people practice with them.
However, this becomes a training mistake if you only shoot .38s in practice, then load up the gun with .357 Magnum rounds for concealed carry. This is a problem because the .357s can have a different point of impact, and they’ll certainly kick harder and feel different. That’s why you don’t like to shoot them at the range, of course (that, and because carry ammo is more expensive than FMJ practice ammo).
If you only ever shoot .38 Specials, can you really expect to shoot .357s accurately in an emergency? The fact is, you don’t know if you can or not, because you haven’t done it. You don’t know how much the additional power will change how everything feels and how much it will throw you off. Suddenly, everything’s different and shooting feels weird and uncomfortable at the time when you can least afford to be thrown off your game.
People who use a .357 Magnum for self-defense tend to choose a snub-nose, lightweight model because it’s easier and more comfortable to carry and conceal. Unfortunately, this only compounds the problem—that light weight makes the hard-hitting .357 loads even harder to control and shoot accurately.
Now, you don’t have to stop shooting .38 Specials in practice. Just be sure to run a cylinder or two of your carry ammo through the gun at each range session so you get used to shooting it. Yes, it’s more expensive and less fun—but you’ll be much more prepared if you ever have to use it in a real-life defensive situation.
2. You Only Shoot in Single-Action Mode
Many revolvers sold for concealed-carry purposes have an exposed hammer and can be shot as a single-action or a double-action. Single-action means you pull the hammer back yourself, which cocks the gun, then in a separate move, you squeeze the trigger to fire. It’s a relatively short, light trigger press at that point. On the other hand, double-action means you squeeze the trigger and it starts pulling the hammer back for you until it cocks, then you continue pulling the trigger until it breaks and the gun fires. This is a much longer, stiffer trigger pull because cocking the hammer takes a fair amount of effort.
Shooting double-action is, frankly, a lot less fun. That trigger pull is tough for many of us, and a long, heavy trigger makes it much more difficult to shoot accurately. I know I struggle toward the middle of a double-action trigger pull to keep the sights on target while my finger is straining to keep pulling, pulling, pulling straight back without pitching the sights to the lower left. (Yes, that’s definitely a me problem, but the double-action makes it harder to do properly.) Again, this problem is only compounded if you’re shooting a super lightweight, snub-nosed gun.
Shooting single-action is easier and more fun. You can cock the hammer at your leisure, then take your time lining up your sights and enjoy a short, light, clean trigger press that makes it easier to hit what you’re aiming at. Making good shots is fun, so no one wants to practice in the much harder double-action mode. It just kinda sucks.
The problem is that in a self-defense situation, you’ll have to shoot in double-action mode. There will almost certainly not be time to manually cock the hammer to enjoy that nice single-action trigger press. You’d better be able to execute an accurate shot with that long, heavy, double-action trigger press—if you can’t, you put yourself in more danger, waste precious ammo, and potentially send bullets where you hadn’t intended them to go.
You have to practice double-action shooting at the range so you’ll be ready to use it in self-defense. It is a totally different skill than single-action shooting, and if you only shoot the easy way, you might start thinking you’re pretty good with a revolver. But if you’re not good in double-action mode, you’re not actually good at all—and you don’t want to find that out the hard way when it counts the most.
