Sorry to be late today, but my cable internet connection has been experiencing spotty outages lately. For the money I pay, you’d think they’d give me better uptime than this!

GRRRRRR! But I digress…

Anyhow, today’s topic once again comes from that fountain of firearms misinformation, the local gun store. A fellow is looking at several guns, and asks to see a Ruger SP101. The clerk tells him that for concealed carry (ostensibly the prospect’s use), a revolver is “just no good. Too hard to hide the cylinder.”

“Odd,” I think to myself – “I’ve been doing it quite successfully for some time now. In fact, I’m doing so right in front of your face!” I did not, of course, say that out loud. I wanted to, but I didn’t. At least, I don’t remember doing so.

That, however, seems to be the common perception. Many people think that a revolver just has to be more difficult to conceal, because the cylinder is so much thicker than an autoloader’s slide. I’m here to tell you that it is just not the case!

The cylinder really isn’t a big problem to hide. Yes, it sticks out from the body a bit more, but it really isn’t all that much a concern. Why? Because it’s a gradual bulge – there are no sharp edges to give away a profile under a garment. What’s at or below the beltline just doesn’t seem to make much of a difference; it’s what sticks up above the belt that makes a gun difficult to hide!

An autoloader, for instance, presents a very angular profile above the belt. The top of the slide, where the rear sight is, comes to a sharp point relative to a revolver. What’s more, that point sits farther above the belt than does the rear sight of a revolver. These two factors combine to make the back corner of the autoloader stick out more prominently than a revolver, and consequently more difficult to hide under a piece of cloth.

Of course, the disparity doesn’t end there! The other end of the gun – in this case, the lower back corner of the magazine well – is (again) a sharp angle relative to the rest of the gun. Even an autoloader with a very rounded grip shape tends to come up higher – and stick out the back more – than a round-butt revolver. Again, this makes the auto more difficult to hide than our blessed companion, the double-action revolver.

Now I’m sure that some will argue with me; some will, in their misguided zeal to promote the self-shucking handgun, insist that I am being “partisan.” To them I say: OF COURSE I AM! What the heck did you expect from someone whose blog is titled “The Revolver Liberation Alliance”??

(Of course, none of that negates the fact that I am right!)

-=[ Grant ]=-