Talk:Semi-automatic pistol

message: Someone who knows about this stuff please check if my recent edits (in totality; one of them was clearly wrong, but I've fixed it) are correct... it's my understanding that "single action" only requires manual cocking of the hammer for the first shot, so I've tried to make that explicit. Evercat 00:31, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Checking some edits 

message: I know the 1911 does, and maybe an edit could be useful here.
:Sometimes.  But not usually or always. It depends on the handgun. The grip on the M1911A1 would also usually have to be depressed at the same time, through hitting something, for it to discharge. (Hence the reason for this being a non-approved carry mode.)  Unless you are left-handed, and find yourself in combat, I wouldn't recommend it :-)  Yaf 04:16, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Any original M1911 or M1911A1 can fire if dropped on the muzzle.  This occurs with the manual safety engaged or not and the grip safety does not affect this.  The modified M1911 models with positive firing pin blocks will not fire. Digitallymade (talk) 00:57, 19 April 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Question: if you drop an SA half-cocked pistol on the hammer, will it still discharge? 

message: We have way too many pictures of the actual pistols and no technical ones. Not many people are going to read through the entire overview this way. {Slash-|-Talk} 23:33, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pictures 

message: I've notice a difference in nomenclatue in 9mm ammo. I've seen rounds stamped as "9mm para" to designate parabellum ammo and others marked as "9mm Luger".
::There are probably about two DOZEN 9mm calibers.  There are three for the 9 x 19mm Parabellum.  This is often called 9mm Luger and is also called 9mm Nato.  There is another 9 x 19mm Glisenti cartridge which will chamber and fire in the 9mm Par guns.  Chances are it will not eject.  You can also take a 9mm Nato round and chamber it and fire it in a 9mm Glienti, in which case the gun may blow up and blow some of your hand off too. The 9 x 19mm Parabellum has become the world's most popular military cartridge.  But it is loaded to a variety of pressure levels.  Some makers tend to use low pressures, which produces cartridges with less power.  Some writer's will call 9mm NATO a plus p load.  That means higher pressures are found.  Digitallymade (talk) 03:53, 19 April 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Almost all the modern 9 x 19mm Parabellum handguns made today can easily handle 9mm Luger, 9mm Nato, and 9mm Parabellum and do so without risk.  Some makers don't recommend using the standard 9mm Nato and call it Plus P.  American makers STILL tend to make lower powered ammunition and will in some cases void your warranty if you use Plus P ammo.  Plus P, is actually 9mm loaded the way it was from it's beginnings in 1902.  The Russian Republic loads 9mm to even higher pressures called Plus P plus which should be used only in guns known to handle the pressure with the understanding that it can seriously shorten the life of the firearm.  I use Plus P rated ammunition exclusively for my full sized handguns, but lesser pressures for my pocket pistols and when practicing. Never use any 9mm ammunition unless you know exactly what it is. Digitallymade (talk) 03:53, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

text: The two terms are synonymous; 9 mm Parabellum is the same as 9 mm Luger. You may fire them in your Taurus Beretta clone interchangeably. Twalls 01:48, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  9mm Luger vs Paraballum...is there a difference? 

message: So what's a "wonder nine"?  The term redirects here.  Thanks. Maikel (talk) 06:27, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Wonder Nine?

message: A great many number of articles on Wikipedia cite the rate of fire for weapons as "semi-automatic." Almost all pistol articles use this rubric. How fast is semi-automatic, exactly? The articles need numbers in terms of rounds per minute. I mean, if you wanted to know the power output of a microwave, an answer of "defrost" would be very unsatisfactory.
Naturally, the answer to this is "however fast you can pull the trigger." But as a spec for the firearm, the number needs to represent its manufactured capabilities. If God were pulling the trigger at a million times a second, how fast could the gun cycle? Understandably, recoil will reduce this number in practice, but standardization is necessary. ZomB-man17 (talk) 03:21, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: You are absolutely correct that the rate of fire of most self loading firearms is not discussed.   In firearms terminology this is referred to as the cyclic rate.  The cyclic rate is most often discussed with regard to fully-automatic weapons.  For example: the cyclic rate of the first AR-15 ordered by the United States Air Force was 750 rounds per minute.  Changes were made to the ammunition which caused that rate to rise to 950 RPM in the M-16. Even with machine guns, there's no real use for this rating.  With machineguns the cyclic rate is unimportant because the guns overheat and melt quickly.  More important than the cyclic rate is the effective rate of fire.  That means how fast you can AIM and fire and hit the target.  Except for machineguns, the effective rate is a combination of factors which include the cyclic rate, the shooters trigger pull rate, the time to reacquire the target and if sustained firing, the time it takes to reload.  If you watch competitive shooting and see what the shot times are, you can easily calculate the effective rate of fire.  As far as the cyclic rate, I do not know of any sources for that.  The rate of fire of the fully automatic Mac9 Submachine was 1200 RPM. Since almost all semi-automatic guns have disconnectors for safety this rate will be much slower. Digitallymade (talk) 04:14, 19 April 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rate of Fire 

message: The article currently says, "For example, the term "automatic pistol" technically refers to a machine pistol which is capable of firing multiple round bursts for a single pull of the trigger, although in popular US usage it is also used as a synonym for a semi-automatic pistol. In the case of pistols, an 'automatic pistol', a 'semi-automatic pistol', or a 'self-loading pistol', all usually imply a handgun that is semi-automatic, self-loading, and magazine-fed with a magazine that is removable, producing one shot fired for each trigger pull." 
I respectfully recommend adding words, as indicated in all-caps, below, and dropping the last sentence from the quote used above:
For example, the term "automatic pistol" technically refers to a machine pistol which is capable of firing multiple round bursts for a single pull of the trigger, although in popular US usage it is also INCORRECTLY used as a synonym for a semi-automatic pistol. THE TERMS "SEMI-AUTOMATIC" AND "AUTOMATIC" ARE NOT CORRECTLY USED INTERCHANGEABLY, AND ADD TO THE CONFUSION AND MISINFORMATINO REGARDING THE DIFFERENCES IN THE TWO TYPES OF PISTOLS.
: (the above word change recommendation was shown unsigned).
I also suggest a word change in the introduction: "After a round is fired, the pistol will cycle, ejecting the spent casing and chambering a new round from the magazine, allowing another shot to take place immediately."  The word "immediately" implies that this is a fully automatic weapon.   I recommend changing the statement to say: "After a round is fired, the pistol will cycle, ejecting the spent casing and chambering a new round from the magazine, allowing another shot to take place after the trigger is released." --96.244.248.77 (talk) 23:57, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text:  Good suggestion. I thought it sounded slightly clearer by saying "...allowing another shot to take place as soon as the trigger is again pulled." I changed it in the article. — ¾-10 17:24, 5 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Recommended Wording Change 

message: "…based in large part upon Maxim's toggle-lock principle."
I'm not finding any occurrence of "toggle" in Maxim gun, nor of "maxim" in Blowback (arms) (where is the only approximation of the "toggle-lock" term, in its Toggle delayed section). So i suspect that there's a problem here. --Jerome Potts (talk) 15:06, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: The Toggle Lock is a mechanism not a principle. Digitallymade (talk) 13:07, 19 April 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: You shouldn't 'find Toggle Lock in Blowback because it is a locked breech mechanism.  Look at the Luger pistol which should be highly documented.  Stoeger Arms made a luger lookalike that might have been a blowback design, but if it was the extreme expense of that construction would make no sense. George Luger worked for Hugo Borchardt on the original toggle lock handgun which he later miniaturized to become his Luger handgun.  
Digitallymade (talk) 13:07, 19 April 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  "toggle-lock" principle 

message: You wrote: the term "automatic" refers to automatically loading a new round when the trigger is pulled". Wrong! Better would be: "when a shot is fired" -- hmaag (talk) 07:53, 3 October 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Revision 1. Oct. 2014 

message: Related to the "See also" discussion above, in which I argue - and it's no fringe theory - that some semi-automatic pistols are considered "assault pistols" and/or "assault weapons": It may be time to create an Assault pistol article. (It currently just redirects.) Here are SOME sources:
;Books
*
* - Hawaii
* - Maryland
* - Enfield MP-45
* - F.I.E. KG-99, Spectre Assault Pistol
*
;Journals
*
*
;News
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
;Other
*
* - not for use in an article
*
--Lightbreather (talk) 21:00, 28 February 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree and have thought about this as well. So as not to be a content fork to be merged later, I suggest adding the material to Machine pistol as they are the precursor to what is now referred to as an Assault pistol. --Scalhotrod (Talk) ☮ღ☺ 22:37, 28 February 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: No, it's a ridiculous idea.  Almost from the beginning of self loaders the handgun has been made to be fully automatic. The result has always been disastrous.  One of the early ones, the Mauser Schnellfeuer was found to be totally uncontrollable.  Recent attempts such as the Beretta 93R and Ingram Mac series have not improved on the peformance, which has been miserable.  The Sturmgewehr 44 was originally called a machinepistol (MP44) and due to it's size and low powered cartridge it created the category of Assault Rifle. The Submachinegun is what an "assault pistol" would be except that it actually works. Digitallymade (talk) 11:52, 3 March 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Maybe time to create [[Assault pistol]] 

message: I happen to know a bit about guns and in the article it says "double action" Walther when in fact the modernization didn't happen before the 1980s with Terje Lea of Norway. Don't do lying in the article, God d*mmit! 92.221.236.224 (talk) 22:33, 14 April 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually what you wrote indicates that you don't.  Digitallymade (talk) 10:57, 19 April 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Terje Lea, the modernizer of all semi-automatic and automatic guns 

message: Preserving here by providing this link. My rationale was: "Unsourced WP:MANUAL". Please let me know if there are any concerns. --K.e.coffman (talk) 22:48, 14 April 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: This should be restored, although it's going to need work. The various carrying conditions, their different terminology from different authors, and especially their relative safety and how this varies so much for some weapons, is important and belongs in the overall article for semi-autos. This can be covered without falling foul of WP:NOTHOWTO or WP:NOTMANUAL. Andy Dingley (talk) 00:09, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Restored - as usual, K.e.coffman uses a bludgeon when a scalpel is required. Parsecboy (talk) 00:32, 19 April 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Recent edit 

message: There is nothing here of value.  The concepts discussed here, belong elsewhere.  Digitallymade (talk) 04:39, 19 April 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Sources, not opinions. And I'm reminded that you're the person who wanted to merge away all firearm articles into one. Andy Dingley (talk) 10:43, 19 April 2018 (UTC)
replies: text:  A single properly written article would be of value.  The current varying inaccurate articles have no value.  Digitallymade (talk) 11:04, 19 April 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Remove this page.. it deserves a quick burial 

message: The Article currently says:
"In 1995 Kel-Tec introduced their first compact 9 mm pistol, the Kel-Tec P11, designed for concealed carry.
In 1999 Kel-Tec introduced their .32 ACP P-32 for concealed carry."
Now in what way exactly is that a noteworthy milestone for the historical development of the semi-automatic pistol?
--BjKa (talk) 17:09, 1 September 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Kel-Tec 

message: They are a feature of semi automatic pistols, and are different in most cases than those used on revolvers. Not only are there slide safety catches, but the grip safety is a major part of the Colt 1911 - one of the iconic types of the pistol. LessHeard vanU (talk) 17:27, 18 March 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Should there not be a sub section on the matter of 'Safety Catches'? 

message: A sentence in the intro reads: " The term automatic pistol is sometimes also used, though it typically refers to a fully automatic pistol. " This isn't usually the case in my experience. It's generally understood that fully-automatic handguns are very uncommon and not legal for most people to own, so "automatic handgun" is almost always used in reference to a semi-automatic handgun rather than fully-automatic. It's not cited anyway, so I'll probably change it. If anyone objects, let me know why. AP295 (talk) 13:53, 21 December 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Colloquial use of "automatic handgun"