This is a community dedicated to discussion around historical arms, mechanically unique arms, and Ian McCollum's Forgotten Weapons content. Posts requesting an identification of a particular gun (or other arm) are welcome.
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Top picture is silver medalist Thomas Paine from the 1896 Summer games, the first year with a shooting competition. Bottom is gold medalist Vitalina Batsarashkina from the 2020 games.
https://www.ssusa.org/content/athens-1896-olympics-the-first-shots-for-record/
I don't see the difference. One gun, one hand, they are both sighting down the barrel and both have a cap with a visor. Seems exactly the same to me.
That’s a very long thumb.
The grip of the pistol has a nook in it, the handle at the top is much more narrow. It creates the illusion that her thumb is really long, but really most of her palm is behind the pistol grip because it's so much wider at the base it hides it.
lol, I figured it must have been some sort of specialized handle, but thank you for taking the time explain and most importantly showing the other side of the gun.
Maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but I'd say this is a good example of letting materials science go overboard and destroy the spirit of the sport.
This is just a very specific tangent. It is obviously different than the baseline shooting experience. It would be difficult to mistake this kind of target shooting for anything resembling practical shooting. That's alright. It can exist as its own thing.
Today, they use the most precise guns that are available with current tech.
Back then, they did the same.
Could also argue the more precise the machine the better it tests the coordination of the human
You could also argue that reducing the need to dynamically compensate for the variance of a more traditional firearm is a key part of the coordination.
You could indeed. Practical shooting competitions are more interesting.
Damn I was part of this sport but without success, brings certain nostalgia. I will always tear up a lil at the smell of gun cleaning oil.
I really, really sucked at it though haha, found out recently my dominant eye is left one and not the right one 😭
I'm a right handed left eye'd shooter also. Which is weird since I'm near sighted as fuck in my left eye.
Cross-eye dominance is a bitch to deal with when shooting.
I was reminded of this from the last Olympics only to discover it's the same shooter!
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/vitalina-batsarashkina-olympic-shooter-one-hand-stance/
lol the Witcher medallion
Very cool look.
The top picture looks so anachronistic. He looks like he's wearing a hoodie under a pea coat.
Hoodies aren't exactly new technology. Pretty sure hooded upper garments with laces predate pea coats.
Well, yeah its just crazy how modern the outfit looks. If you passed a guy on the street wearing this exact thing you wouldn't even look twice
He's a Peaky Blinder.
Isn't a two handed grip objectively more accurate?
In general yes. However, the popularization of the two handed “weaver” pistol stance is quite modern, rising to prominence in the 60s and 70s. Until then, pistol technique focused almost entirely on using a single handed grip. Military, police etc were all taught to use one hand.
The US government even defines a pistol as “a weapon originally designed, made, and intended to fire a projectile (bullet) from one or more barrels when held in one hand”, which is a relic from an earlier era.
The rules in Olympic pistol shooting limit shooting to one hand because they are like Olympic fencing and many martial arts disciplines. It traces its root to combat arts. However, it’s now a unique sport with esoteric rules and techniques that divorce it from any practical usage.
For most modern semi auto pistols, with modern self defense, hunting or military oriented ammo, almost always yes.
Go back in time and this changes. Older revolvers in particular, with the kind of handle style grip are very much designed for single handed aiming and firing. Also older derringers and snub noses.
Modern revolvers tend to fire more powerful rounds, have larger frames and different grip designs that allow more easily for a second hand to grip, and its very useful as you'll likely need that second hand for the recoil, as well as the strength of both hands to more easily keep steady aim while pulling a double action trigger, which requires much more force to pull and fire than a single action revolver.
But these modern competition pistols have very low recoil rounds, and as the other user pointed out, theres a whole category of these things where being limited to one hand is the point.
On a non Olympic level, these days there are actually (in America) a good number of competitions of old west style revolver shooting, where you have a single action six gun, hold the trigger and fan the hammer, western movie style.
The pros can do this technique and hit six different targets at close range in under a second. Then usually do a gun twirl and holster, haha.
If I recall correctly, it doesn’t actually work by just holding the trigger and fanning the hammer. You actually have to fan the hammer and pull the trigger every time to get the cylinder to revolve to the next shot. I recall an episode of Mythbusters where a guy could do it so fast that it looked like the Hollywood version, but he was still having to pull the trigger for each shot.
There may be competition guns that allow for the Hollywood fan, but I’ve never seen or heard of one in real life.
So, this level of technicality comes down to specific SA revolvers. I have not seen this MythBusters episode, but to the best of my knowledge, both today and 150 years ago, some SA revolvers function as you say where a trigger pull is needed each time, and some basically do not.
As a kind of example, I used to have some kind of 50s era Ruger SA revolver in .22lr.
Now I never actually tried fanning at a range, (can you imagine most places will ban you instantly for this as its generally extremely inaccurate lol?) but with the cylinder unloaded and completely clear... basically, if you pulled the hammer back, pulled the trigger, click, hammer fires, or would have fired.
But then, if you pull the trigger back just a bit more, then I could work the hammer with my other hand. While pulling back the hammer, as the cylinder rotates, the trigger fights back and wants to reset just a bit, but once the cylinder is lined up, the trigger has reset, and i am still pulling on it, and click it 'fires' again.
So... its not really pulling the trigger separately for each shot, its more like pulling it firmly, and while you work the hammer, the trigger pushes back a bit, but if you keep the same grip, it does just fire again.
I am aware from researching online and asking old timers that this level of action manipulation varied amongst SA revolvers of old.
With some SA revolvers the trigger reset is much more pronounced such that as you say, its pretty much a totally new pull of the trigger each time.
Either way, in the real west, fanning, while possible to do with some pistols, was extremely uncommon in basically anything other than showy demonstrations..
However, Ruger now makes a model called the Vaquero, which is specifically designed for the fanning competitions I mentioned earlier.
And given that these competitions have been around for at least a decade before than thing hit the market, I would be willing to bet that other SA revolvers could properly fan, maybe you might have had to get a bit of a custom trigger job or something though.
Edit: Fun possible fact, I am fairly, though not totally sure that the term 'hair trigger' actually comes from these kinds of SA revolvers that either naturally or via tinkering had such a small give and reset that it was said to be the miniscule distance of a literal hair, and thus more easily allowed rapid fanning.
Though as with many gun related aphorisms, that origination of the phrase may be debated/apocryphal.
Thanks for the detailed reply! I learned things today.
Please attend tomorrow's lecture:
Yes, the Mateba sure looks cool, but you will likely never own one.
Lol, long story short, Togusa's famous Mateba Unica 6 auto revolver was basically an experimental design, few were/are made, they're absurdly expensive, and because it is such an uncommon design (a semi auto revolver, meaning that the recoil actually sets up the next round to be fired instead of the long Double Action trigger pull of most modern revolvers), that anyone who owns one will prefer to never sell it.
However, we do now have the Chiappa Rhino, which are fairly easily obtainable and were designed by the designer of the Unica 6, and share the Unica 6's firing from the bottom of the cylinder. While they have a very fancy hammer mechanism compared to most other revolvers, unfortunately they are not semi automatic =(
They are relegated to a single hand grip.
And match grade ammo out of ludicrously well balanced, specialized pistols.
Which is really weird, because that grip looks hugely, uncomfortably oversized. Of course, form follows function, and a single specific function means that requirements like "being able to hold on while moving around" falls along the wayside compared to supreme accuracy.
It is kind of hard to tell from the lighting and relatively low quality of that image, but here are some other pics of a similar match grade competition style grip pistols:
(I think the first image may actually be the weapon, or quite a similar model, as the female pistoleer in OPs image)
As you can hopefully see (i am on shit tier 4g, the images may have borked mid upload), you're looking at basically a block of... some kind of more exotic wood, where if you just buy a pistol like this off the shelf it will already feature extremely accentuated grip molding to an average hand, and i have personally seen people at ranges with their own custom carved grips to fit exactly their hand and grip style.
I am unsure if at say the Olympic level you are allowed a totally custom grip like that, but for regional and state level stuff, I've seen it a good deal.
The second image is very similar to a weapon I was allowed to handle and fire at a range at one point, I believe it was either the range master or owner of the range's old competition pistol. He was impressed by my accuracy with a piece of shit .22lr carbine during a familiarization course, and let me try out his old thing for a few shots.
It looks like a damn wooden brick for a grip, but you pick it up and it just makes so much sense, balances so easily for the one handed style. And yeah, though the compensator looks like it belongs on a damn sniper rifle, it really is just a massive overkill compensator for .22lr for maximum stability while firing.
You get the chunk at the base of the grip, or sometimes in other parts of the grip, left purely to balance the weight of the weapon.
These things are just single shot, there is no magazine well inside the grip.
These weapons are utterly impractical for self defense, theyre one shot, cant fit into any sane holster and usually fire .22 or .17 or sometimes are not even proper firearms and are actually air guns.
But you can be ludicrously accurate with them.
These are not intended for two handed grips. The recoil is tiny, and you dont need to get multiple shots off rapidly, so you dont have room for or a need for a second hand to control the pistol.
When you are just using one hand, you want all the surface area you can get.
no
edit: i was wrong, it’s in the rules
Yes, but you're only allowed one hand, it's in the rules.
thanks for the correction. is there some other sport i was thinking of where one hand is better or did i just gaslight myself?
Well that was a fun read through history. Thanks for sharing!