CHAPTER VI.
SIGHTS FOR REVOLVERS AND PISTOLS.
Nearly all revolvers and pistols have sights affixed to the barrels, which are very properly supposed by purchasers to aid them in hitting the object at which they shoot. In many cases the sights which the manufacturers place on their pistols and revolvers are very little, if any, aid to the shooter. Persons unfamiliar with these fire-arms, when they test a new pistol or revolver, generally commence by aiming at the object desired to hit, and if their holding is good they are likely to find the shots grouped quite a distance above the object aimed at. The heavier the charge and lighter the arm the greater the flip or kick-up. The shooter, when he observes this result, generally corrects the fault by holding under the object, and some wonderfully good shooting has been done by aiming eighteen or twenty inches under the object. It is, however, apparent that in most cases, where good as well as regular results have been obtained by this mode of sighting, it has been at a regular distance and where some object is found at the proper distance below the object desired to hit to enable the marksman to sight at each time.
When Chevalier Ira Paine gave his first exhibition of revolver-shooting at 50 yards at the range of the Massachusetts Rifle Association, on firing a few sighting-shots before commencing his one hundred shots, he found that his elegant .44-calibre Russian model, Smith & Wesson, revolver, which was perfectly sighted for about twelve yards when using the light loads and round-ball shot in his exhibitions, with the heavy or full charge, shot eighteen inches over the bull’s-eye. He immediately asked permission to place a spot at this distance below the bull’s-eye, which was given; but as he had only a few sighting-shots to judge the difference in the elevation between the two cartridges, he did not make what he proved he was capable of doing at a second exhibition, when he had the same revolver he used at the first trial, but with a different sight, which permitted him to aim directly at the bull’s-eye.
It is generally believed that the manufacturers of revolvers never supposed the fine work which is being done with their arms at the present time was in the weapon, and the arms were intended for quick and deadly work at short range, and for this reason but little attention has been paid to perfecting sights.
Having witnessed considerable revolver-shooting, and not a little in a section of this country where the arm was carried for protection, and after many practice shoots to almost invariably hear the shooters remark, “Any one of these shots would have hit a man,” the writer formed the impression that the majority of persons who carried revolvers were content with an arm which, when fired, would hit the size of a man. On the supposition that this is the case, it is not strange that so little has been done to improve the accuracy of the revolver by correctly sighting it. The sights which come on the most popular revolvers of to-day are arranged, so far as the height is concerned which affects the elevation, in such a manner that they shoot over from six to thirty inches when fired from twenty to sixty yards. If the charge is reduced considerably, the sights which come on the revolver can be used in aiming directly at the object desired to hit; but with a full, heavy charge the over-shooting mentioned is experienced.
Fig. 1.