AMMUNITION
Every make of pistol has ammunition which suits it best. In fact, to shoot
what was made for it. In the case of automatic pistols, they will not work
properly unless their own ammunition is used.
It is very dangerous to shoot the wrong ammunition out of a pistol. It may
burst it. I nearly had such an accident with a revolver when winning a
prize given for the best score with a certain make of powder.
I found the pistol working very stiff in the revolution of the cylinder,
toward my last shots, and when I had finished I looked and saw that the
cylinders had become egg shape, caused by the pressure of the explosion,
which was greater than the powder-charge the pistol was made to withstand.
It was only the excellence of the material which caused the cylinder
chambers to expand toward their weakest point (the circumference of the
cylinder), instead of bursting.
It was this expansion that had caused the friction in turning the
cylinder.
As my book is not a gunmaker’s catalogue there is no use in giving
illustrations of ammunition.
Such illustrations are neither artistic nor of any interest. Many makes of
cartridges are long since obsolete and only linger in catalogues because
the old blocks happen to still exist and can be used to fill up a
catalogue and make it “fully illustrated.”
Any one conversant with pistols does not even glance at them. When he buys
the pistol, he also buys the cartridge made for it. He does not buy a
pistol and then try which make of cartridge will fit into the chamber.
A cartridge should fulfil the following conditions:
First of all, it should be safe against accidental explosion, such as
dropping or when feeding through the magazine of an automatic pistol.
Next, the case should not split or swell when fired, so as to make it
difficult to extract.
Next (this is a matter also of the construction of the pistol), it should
not blow back fire into the eyes of the shooter. This has several times
happened to me with cheap makes of rifles and pistols and one is very apt
to have such an accident when shooting at bottles at a fair with cheap
worn rifles.
I asked a woman attending at one of the shooting booths at a fair, if it
was not very dangerous when drunken men came to shoot.
She answered: “Oh no, when a man looks dangerous I load only blank
ammunition for him.”
The chief requisite is accuracy; and without accuracy a cartridge is
useless.