The Modern Pistol and How to Shoot It.
by Walter Winans.
PREFACE
My first book on pistol shooting (_The Art of Revolver Shooting_) was published in 1900. Up to that date there existed no book which contained instruction on pistol shooting, though several books had appeared describing the different makes of pistols.
Since that date several books have appeared--some very good ones, by various revolver experts. Unfortunately (as always happens when something original appears), others who were not revolver shots took to writing books on the same subject, largely made up of unacknowledged extracts from my books. Not understanding their subject, they distorted my teaching, and so any one trying to learn pistol shooting from them gets hopelessly confused.
I therefore give this warning; do not follow the advice of any but an acknowledged expert in pistol shooting, as books by hack writers, made up of extracts from other writers, and ill.u.s.trations from gunmakers"
catalogues, are not to be taken seriously.
Moreover, the revolver is now obsolete, and there is no use learning to shoot it.
My object in writing this book is to give instruction in the modern subst.i.tute for the revolver. That is to say, the automatic pistol, and incidentally, to instruct in the single shot or duelling pistol.
For those who wish to study revolver shooting, I would refer them to my book _The Art of Revolver Shooting_.
The present work might be called volume ii. of _The Art of Revolver Shooting_, as it instructs in the form of pistol shooting which has now taken the place of revolver shooting.
Though the revolver is now obsolete, my _Art of Revolver Shooting_ is of interest, as giving details of out-of-date firearms, and the best-on-record scores made with them.
These records will be of the greatest importance for future generations.
There are now no records extant of scores made with the long bow, the cross-bow, and the various stone-hurling slings and balistae. All concerning them is legendary.
If we depended only on newspaper articles for what was possible in revolver shooting, we should get legends similar to those of obsolete arms.
I was credited with making a World"s Record with a revolver at five hundred yards by a reporter when it should have been fifty yards. He merely added a nought to the figures.
As all records are important for historical purposes, and for comparison with future scores, I give as an appendix in this book those revolver records which cannot now be beaten, the revolvers and cartridges being now no longer made.
It is curious how, even up to the outbreak of the Great War, people did not understand that shooting was more important than playing games, or that shooting had to be learned.
I recently read a "trench anecdote" which relates that a man who had never fired a shot before he was conscripted was shot in the back, and whilst dying, "seized his rifle and dropped an enemy who was running past 200 yards off."
To do this would require a first-cla.s.s trained rifle shot who specialized in shooting at moving objects, and even he, with his back broken, could not swing, which is the essence of successful shooting at moving objects.
Another writer, a lieutenant, wrote during the war to one of the daily papers, advising the purchase of a revolver to be deferred till actually starting for the Front!
I have had several men on leave bring me revolvers and automatic pistols, asking me to test them, as they could not hit anything with them at the Front.
With one of these pistols I made the highest possible score at thirty yards; with another I made ten out of twelve bulls at twenty yards. None of the pistols was wrong. It was the men"s lack of skill.
Just before the war, several rifle ranges in England were closed, because they interfered with golf players.
It is to be hoped that after this war, men will spend their spare time in learning rifle and pistol shooting instead of wasting it in games, and will not close rifle ranges because they interfere with their golf links.
The fallacy that games are the best training for military service is exposed by a very interesting article in the _Field_ newspaper.
I maintain that no man who has not the instinct to shoot ingrained in him, will shoot when under intense excitement and danger. If he is a player of games he will not shoot, but throw things at his adversary, or use his rifle as a pike or club.
Mr. John Lloyd Balderston, writing to the _Field_ newspaper of September 29, 1917, says:
"An officer showed me his charges going through a mimic attack--_firing rifle volleys instead of hurling bombs or going in with the bayonet_; in these attacks reliance was placed too much on the bayonet and bomb--now we have realized that when the enemy runs away and you run after him he is likely to get away. Accordingly we teach the men not to rush wildly along with the sole idea of bayoneting, but to stop and pump some bullets after him."
WALTER WINANS.
January 1, 1919, 17 AVENUE DE TERONEREN, BRUXELLES, BELGIQUE.
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
There is now no use learning revolver shooting. That form of pistol is obsolete except in the few instances where it survives for target shooting, or is carried for self-defence; just as flintlock muskets even now survive in out-of-the-way parts of the world.
If a man tries to defend himself with a revolver against another armed with an automatic pistol he is at a great disadvantage.
The automatic is more accurate than a revolver, as the "blow-back" does not vary as much as does the escape of gas past the cylinder in a revolver.
The bullet in the revolver has to jump into the cylinder, whereas in the automatic it is already fitted up against the rifling, before being fired.
The single-shot pistol is the most accurate of any, there being no escape of gas.
The automatic has not only a much longer range than the revolver (although the popular idea that it can be shot accurately at a thousand yards or more is nonsense) but it c.o.c.ks itself instead of having to be c.o.c.ked by the thumb, or trigger finger.
c.o.c.king by trigger-pull is such a strain on, not only the trigger finger, but the whole hand, that, after a few shots, good shooting cannot be made.
I won all my rapid-firing revolver compet.i.tions using the single action and c.o.c.king with the thumb, as this rested my trigger finger.
With the automatic, c.o.c.king is unnecessary and, with its lighter recoil, good scores in rapid-firing are very much easier to make.
The penetration of the nickel-coated automatic bullet propelled by its big charge of nitro powder is very great.
A man brought me a "pistol-proof" cuira.s.s to test; I put a bullet at twelve yards clean through it and then through two "bullet proof" ones, placed one behind the other. (I used a regulation U. S. .45 Automatic pistol.)
This was before the war. The inventor was disappointed. He had experimented only with revolvers shooting soft leaden bullets and these his cuira.s.s had stopped.
Unfortunately, in its present comparatively imperfect development, the automatic is the most dangerous firearm of all pistols for a novice to handle.
The long barrel of a rifle can be struck aside if a beginner swings it round and points it at the instructor or a nearby spectator, but the short barrel of a pistol is easily pointed at and with difficulty brushed aside by the unfortunate person standing near a "brandishing" and "flourishing"
man who is learning to shoot.