I'm trying to write a story about a dude who shoots vampires with guns, otherwise I'd try some myself. What's comfy for my baby hands won't be the same for the dude. (And ah I remember a few people telling me that too - Brandon Lee always comes to mind
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This is useful information and I'll keep it on me for the future (never know when your job asks you to move to a shit area or walk through one, always good to have something on hand for that). It's not what I'm looking for, but it never hurts to know more, I apologize for not specifying as much. Thank you, dude
I didn't consider asking a local arms dealer though - we have plenty of those in Florida, and even if I feel a little silly asking about it there for writing purposes, it would be a good idea.
Your basic self-loading handgun consists of a few components; a frame, trigger, magazine release, mainspring or trigger return spring, hammer and firing pin or striker, extractor, disconnector, recoil spring, safety, slide, slide release, sights, barrel, and usually a tilting link of some kind. The most common mechanism found in most semi-auto handguns is the Browning-style short recoil mechanism, although it’s far from the only one. Desert Eagles are gas-operated, meaning some of the combustion gases are tapped to push the slide to the rear with a small piston. The Mars pistol was long recoil operated. The H&K P7 was gas-delayed blowback. The Hi-Point is just a plain blowback design.
In a recoil-operated pistol, like a 1911 or Glock, when you pull the trigger, the sear releases either the hammer or the striker. Most handguns that lack an obvious external hammer have an internal striker driven by a coil spring, and pulling the trigger releases it. With an external hammer, the hammer itself strikes the rear of the firing pin. In either case, this pin moves forward, crushes the primer, and initiates the gunpowder charge. Expanding gases seal the brass against the chamber walls and drive the bullet down the barrel. This imparts a rearward force on the barrel itself, pushing it back.
In a short recoil operated pistol, the barrel travels a short distance before tilting and unlocking from the slide (there are locking lugs machined into the barrel that fit into recesses in the slide). The slide continues to travel rearward. As the slide travels, it operates a disconnector that keeps the hammer or striker from being dropped on the subsequent round until the trigger is reset. It also resets the hammer or cocks the striker. The slide extracts the cartridge from the chamber and flings it out the ejection port. Then, the slide moves forward, stripping a round out of the magazine (the magazine presents the next round because it has a follower pressing on the entire stack of cartridges from underneath from the force of a compressed spring). The nose of the fresh round moves up the feed ramp and into the chamber. The slide completes its forward travel with a fresh round chambered and the hammer or striker cocked. All that needs to be done to fire is to release and reset the trigger and then pull it again.
The reason why the slides of modern pistols enclose the barrel and all of the components typically housed in the upper receiver of a rifle is because this allows some mass to be distributed to the primary moving component, the “bolt”, as it were. The bolt in a semi-auto rifle is homologous to the slide of a pistol and has a firing pin and extractor claw, but it is enclosed in the upper receiver instead of being an external component. Also, in a gas-operated rifle, like an AR-15 or AK-47, the barrel is fixed and does not move. Instead, the locking lugs are on the bolt itself.
Self-loading weapons are tricky to design because there must be a brief period where the cartridge is allowed to dwell in the chamber and contract slightly as the pressures drop before it can be safely extracted. That’s what the locking lugs are for; to keep the chamber and bolt face locked together until the round is ready to extract. The FAMAS is infamous, for instance, for requiring steel-cased rounds; the action actually operates too quickly, extracting the cartridge while it is still at a very high pressure and stuck to the chamber walls. Many delayed-blowback rifles have this problem. The G3/CETME/HK91 has a fluted chamber to aid with extraction, for instance.
Bolt-action rifles do not have this problem at all. Even the fastest manual operation of a bolt-action rifle is much too slow to extract a round at an unsafe pressure. By the time your hand has moved to the bolt handle, it’s already safe to extract. We’re talking about time scales on the order of the tens of milliseconds. Manually-operated firearms are intrinsically easier to design than semi-auto or full-auto weapons. There is no need to think of spring rates or balancing the mass of the moving parts, only the general fitment of the parts.
Most pistols have an external manual safety that blocks the trigger or sear. All this does is keep the hammer or striker from being released when it’s on. Some, like the 1911, have grip safeties that must be depressed by the web of the palm as well. Others have trigger safeties, like the Glock, with a small lever built into the face of the trigger that must be depressed in the process of pulling the trigger in order to take the weapon off safe and fire. Most Glocks have no manual safety, only a trigger safety. Safeties are mainly there to keep a gun from firing if dropped or mishandled.
To operate a pistol correctly, one must load a magazine with cartridges. This is done by depressing the follower and pushing the cartridges backwards into the magazine, sliding them under the feed lips so that they are held in place. Then, with the finger kept off the trigger and the weapon is on safe, the magazine is inserted into the magazine well, and the slide is pulled backwards and then released, allowed to move forward under spring tension, strip, and chamber a round. All that is needed to fire is to take the weapon off safe, grip it firmly, aim at the intended target, and then pull the trigger until it passes the break point and releases the hammer or striker. This process is repeated until the pistol is empty, at which point the slide locks back. To keep firing, first put the weapon on safe (if you’re really anal about safety, otherwise, just keep your finger indexed along the frame), hit the magazine release, insert another loaded magazine, and then hit the slide release to allow the slide to move forward under spring tension. Then, you can keep firing just as before. It really is that simple.
Jeff Cooper popularized a system of readiness conditions for pistols that goes a little something like this:
- Condition 4: Chamber empty, empty magazine, hammer down.
- Condition 3: Chamber empty, full magazine in place, hammer down.
- Condition 2: A round chambered, full magazine in place, hammer down.
- Condition 1: A round chambered, full magazine in place, hammer cocked, safety on.
- Condition 0: A round chambered, full magazine in place, hammer cocked, safety off.
If the character you’re writing carries their weapon in Condition 3, for instance, they would have to do what’s called an Israeli Draw, where the slide is racked while drawing (because there is a loaded magazine, but no round chambered and the hammer is down or striker is decocked). Condition 3 is a very safe way to carry a pistol because there’s pretty much no chance of an accidental discharge. Back in the old days, it was typical to carry a revolver with one chamber unloaded under the hammer so it wouldn’t fire if dropped. Modern revolvers and autopistols are less likely to accidentally discharge if dropped because they have intrinsic safety features. Namely, a firing pin block.
Some older pistols have single-stack magazines, while modern ones often have a fatter grip to accommodate a double-stack magazine, which is where the rounds are staggered for about double the capacity with the same length of magazine. A 1911 may carry 7+1 rounds of .45 ACP, but a CZ 75 carries 16+1. The +1 means with an additional round chambered, which happens if you chamber a round and then load a fully-loaded magazine (in some pistols, this condition may cause malfunctions because the spring tension can make it hard to strip that first round).
A revolver has a set of rotating chambers instead of a magazine. This distinction is very important. In a pistol, like the 1911, the chamber is an integral part of the barrel and does not move. Every time you cock the hammer, which rotates the cylinder of a revolver, it must be timed correctly so that one of the loaded chambers pairs up with the barrel, and there’s a forcing cone at the mouth of the barrel to ensure that the bullet is centered in the barrel when fired. There’s a tiny gap between the front of the cylinder and the barrel and this gap does, in fact, shoot out hot powder gases when it’s fired. You don’t want your fingers anywhere near it. A few unusual revolvers, like the M1895 Nagant, have a gas seal system that moves the whole cylinder forward to close up this gap. These are unique in that they can be suppressed very well if modified with a threaded barrel.
Some revolvers and pistols are double-action, which means that pulling the trigger also cocks the hammer or striker, but at the expense of a harder trigger pull. Single-action only means that the weapon must be manually cocked before it can be fired. 1911s and Colt SAAs are single-action only. Pulling the trigger with the hammer down does nothing. Many modern pistols, like Sigs and CZs, are DA/SA, which means they can be fired either in double-action or single-action mode, with a much lighter and trigger pull in single action. Glocks use a hybrid ”Safe Action Trigger” system that is neither of these. The striker is cocked halfway by pulling the slide, and the rest of the way by pulling the trigger.
Now, most of these details aren’t necessary to bombard your reader with, but they’re useful if you want to avoid making a firearms-related gaffe. People’s eyes glaze over if you show ‘em a firearm manual right in the middle of a story. If your guy’s a vampire hunter, he needs some bling. Readers are more interested in a gun being cool rather than a gun being super-technically-correct.
Think of the abilities of your vampires. Are they fast? Are they hard to put down? Would a rifle be a more stable shooting platform to deal with them than a pistol? Would it be easier to take them out with booby traps rather than gunplay? If your dude is a professional vampire hunter, he needs to have more tricks up his sleeve than just whipping out a couple of revolvers and capping everything in sight. Think about how he can McGyver the problem. A tripwire here, an improvised plumbing pipe shotgun there, and so on. What is his background? Is he wealthy or does he have limited resources?
Not all firearms are even of the particularly shooty variety. Think of shark fishing powerheads/bang sticks, and powder-actuated tools like a Ramset, for instance. Powerheads are nasty. Basically a small blank-firing gun on the end of a spear with a very short barrel. It’s actuated by driving it into the target, sending hot powder gases right into the target with a contact shot. What if your dude had a powder-actuated nailer with steel-reinforced wooden stakes and he like, jammed it into their chest and used a blank cartridge to drive that shit like, all the way into their chest? Think of all the possibilities. Use your imagination.
