When Nuthin’ Works

In every article you’ve ever read comparing revolvers to autos, a much-touted advantage of the former was its reputation for reliability. In the fine print—hopefully—someone mentioned revolvers can and do fail, and when it happens the malfunction is often tougher to clear than with a semi-automatic pistol.

Four of my fellow shooters got a powerful lesson in this atthe International Revolver Championships in Frostproof, Florida, at Frank Garcia’s fabulous Universal Shooting Academy range. Let me state up front all four are very gun-savvy Master and Expert class shooters who know their hardware and maintain it scrupulously. To spare them any undeserved teasing, I’ll number them instead of naming them.

Shooter NO. 1: 625 Six-Gun Gets Deep-Sixed

“No. 1” is a Five-Gun Master in IDPA and has used his various moon-clipped S&W .45 ACP revolvers to win multiple state and regional championships. In his first of 13 stages he realized he was hitting way high, to the tune of 8 inches or so. Missed plates required time-consuming reloads. After the first or second stage, he screwed the rear sight all the way down, only a turn and a quarter, but the problem persisted. At the third stage he bagged the 5-inch 625 he’d been shooting and went to its replacement, the 4-inch Scott Mulkerin-tuned 625 that had won him so many championship titles. It hit where it looked, but he was already too far behind to have any hope of winning the match. He’s been too busy (and probably too disgusted) to wring out the problem gun since.

Shooter No. 3: Weak Springs Plus Hard Primers Defeat Strong Ruger

“No. 3” is a champion shooter who had put a lightened spring kit into his Ruger GP100. He started getting misfires in the first stage and it got worse through the subsequent three, destroying his score before he swapped ammo with Shooter No. 4. The latter’s .38 Special loads worked fine. No. 3 told me later he’s convinced the combination of relatively hard CCI primers in his own handloads and the lightened mainspring he’d installed in his Ruger were what poisoned the reliability… and his performance.

Shooter No. 4: Dirt Hurts

“No. 4” has won multiple division champion titles in regional IDPA Stock Service Revolver championships with his 4-inch S&W 686. He was the “sole survivor” of the four gun problems that day because, dry-firing just before a stage, he felt the cylinder binding and wisely requested a time out. Over at the Safe Table, he realized while he had brushed out his chambers after every few stages, he had been too rushed to clean under the ejector star: debris had built up there, pushing the star back against the recoil shield of the frame window. A quick brushing fixed it, and he finished unhampered as 1st Place in the Unclassified division.

Lessons Learned

One of “Ayoob’s Laws” is, “Anything made by man can fail, including our parents’ children.” N- and L-Framed Smith & Wesson revolvers are among the most reliable handguns ever made, and if Kalashnikov had ever designed a revolver it probably would have resembled the Ruger GP100. In the latter case, aftermarket parts had altered the synergy of the famously reliable Ruger with negative consequences. In Shooter No. 1’s case, we can argue it’s a sight issue and not a gun issue, but the sights are a part of the gun, and many of us have seen even fixed sights change point of aim/point of impact with time and lots of shooting.

Notice in three of the four cases, changing to a backup gun solved the problem. Few shooting matches allow you to carry a second loaded handgun during a stage in case the primary goes down, but history has taught us that for personal defense, the backup gun has been a life-saver again and again. Perhaps the ultimate lesson is, “Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.”

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