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The story
On 5channel’s News VIP board, a post claiming “revolvers have no real advantages” sparked a detailed debate about handgun mechanics. Posters rattled off the usual perks — you can play Russian roulette, they rarely jam, and they don’t eject spent casings — only to be met each time with pushback like “semi-autos can do that too” and “antiques actually cost more.” The thread ranged from the classic Wild West two-gun reload trick to whether the silencer City Hunter’s hero uses on his revolver would actually work, before spiraling into a full-blown argument over how easy each type is to disassemble and maintain.
What people said
I feel that "breath of life" more from a mag change, honestly
You can see the case rims poking out the back, though
You could do that with a semi-auto too, though
It's true that jamming is structurally impossible, but revolvers can absolutely fail to fire out of nowhere too — plenty of times
With a revolver you just pull the trigger again, but you can't do that with a semi-auto, right?
You can tune the powder charge per round
Safer, since it won't fire unless the hammer's cocked
Prices run the gamut regardless of type, but a lot of revolvers are just fancy showpieces with zero tactical advantage, so if anything their average price is probably higher.
Also, antique revolvers are stupidly expensive too, so you probably shouldn't be calling revolvers cheap.
Why exactly is it a problem if casings fly out? Go ahead and list them one by one — I'll shoot each one down.
When you're dual-wielding, a hot casing can hit your other hand — ouch
That's only a thing in movies, anime, and games…
It originally comes from a reloading technique for percussion revolvers back in the Old West
Back then, switching the gun from your left hand to your right basically was the reload
Lol, that's a cuter downside than I expected
Obviously the gun in your left hand for dual-wielding is its own dedicated left-hand model, right?
Gatling guns are the "aimed-shot" type, so once you commit to firing you can't dodge afterward (Medarot game terminology)
Well, Metabee doesn't have piercing power in either arm anyway… (a robot character from the game/anime Medarot)
Which one has the advantage depends on the type of malfunction, you know
For the misfire case you're talking about — if it turns out to be a hangfire that goes off a split second late, it'll blow up in your hand
So which is better:
not being able to fire at all,
or being able to fire, where a hangfire blows up in your hand but a true dud does nothing?
I couldn't tell what "that" was referring to
Do you mean dual-wielding?
The move where you fire from both hands at once
It looks cool in Westerns, so it got used as a stock bit of showmanship a lot
Needing a dedicated left-hand gun is a downside though, isn't it
Each one having its own name, with a dedicated gun for the left hand too — that's way cooler. What are you, an amateur?
A revolver that can fire just by dropping the hammer doesn't even need detailed disassembly in the first place, right?
If you're going to demand that level of teardown from a revolver, a semi-auto should have to be broken into every last part too, lol
Disassembly is about maintainability, you know?
So come on, go maintain it then
Alright: clean the barrel, pop off the grip, give it a puff of breath—
Huh? It still fires, lol
What about the semi-auto, then? How far do you have to maintain it to call it "perfect"? lol
Even Nintendo told you not to blow on metal parts… (a nod to the old myth that blowing into Famicom cartridges makes them work)
Aren't you contradicting the thread title now?
Right?
That's pretty lame, honestly
I've said all along that on the specific point you're replying to, semi-autos win on reliability
Cheap antiques can be had for as little as 30,000 yen
For reference, a 1911 runs about 30,000 yen and a G17 about 150,000 yen
You can shoot both .38 Special and .357, and capacity-wise an N-frame holds eight rounds
Loaded with .22LR, some models hold ten
The pricey ones are pricey, but something like an M10 will never hit 30,000 yen
Disassembly methods vary by revolver model, so you need real knowledge to maintain one
But a semi-auto is so easy to service that even if you just picked one up off the ground, you could field-strip it with "drop the magazine, release the slide lock, run the slide forward"
Semi-autos win on maintainability
Sure, that's true if someone hands you a gun you've never seen before, but normally you'd be using your own, right?
Also, is "maintenance complete!" after just popping the slide off supposed to be a joke?
Don't keep shifting the premise to suit yourself
You were just talking about a pair of one-off custom guns a second ago
With a special revolver like the Nagant, it actually does work
But the casings, or whatever those are, are just sitting there exposed
So I'm wondering how it's supposed to suppress the sound
At the moment of firing, the cylinder slides forward and seals tight against the barrel
Suppressor-compatible revolvers really did exist historically. With the Nagant, the cylinder (nicknamed "renkon"/lotus root for its holed shape) moves forward when fired and presses flush against the back of the barrel, sealing off gas leakage to muffle the sound
It also uses dedicated ammunition with a specially designed casing
A Colt Python, on the other hand, would be pointless with one
Background and Key Points of This Debate
The relative merits of revolvers versus semi-automatics are a perennial topic among military enthusiasts. The point raised in the thread — that with a misfire you can simply pull the trigger again to fire the next round — is one of the real historical reasons revolvers have been prized for reliability. On the other hand, the claim that a hot casing burns your other hand during dual-wielding is closer to a myth popularized by Western movie choreography; posters in the thread themselves corrected it as “a holdover from hand-switching techniques used before cartridge-loading revolvers existed.” The late-thread back-and-forth over maintainability never really got resolved, since posters kept talking past each other over whether they meant “a gun you just picked up” or “a gun tuned for your own use.” Since which gun is “better” really depends on use case and situation, it’s best to read the thread’s claims not as gospel, but as one slice of enthusiast opinion.
*This article is compiled and summarized from the 5ch (News VIP) thread “[Sad News] Revolvers’ Advantages: They Don’t Exist…“
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