I suggested to him he had better first see if it was loaded.
He smiled at me in a pitying superior way, but opened the breech and took out a loaded cartridge.
“Why it is loaded,” he casually remarked, re-inserting the cartridge and beginning again to fumble with the lock, whilst he held the muzzle against his body.
I said, “Don’t you know you can kill yourself if it goes off,”—“that is the great beauty of my invention,” he informed me radiant with delight, “I have made this thing,” pushing the trigger with his left thumb, “so that it only moves at a pressure of fourteen pounds so it is quite safe.”
These know-alls work up through all the steps man has gone through in perfecting firearms, instead of taking up the work from the highest it has come to.
Most likely the first inventor of firearms found he shot people accidentally when “pulling at this thing” (as my friend the inventor called the trigger), then discovered by experience that, however heavy the trigger-pull is made, it is sure to kill somebody accidentally if pulled hard enough, and finally came to the conclusion that it is safer to have a light trigger-pull if the muzzle is not pointed in a dangerous direction, than to have a half-ton trigger-pull and keep the muzzle pointed against one’s body.
PLATE 19. WINANS’ REVOLVER FRONT SIGHTS
In the matter of sights an optician, even if ignorant of firearms, may be able to give a valuable hint to an inventor, but this usually applies to sights for accurate aiming at distant stationary objects; for a pistol it is more often expert shooting knowledge which is useful in designing sights.
It was my combination of sculptor and shooter which gave me the idea of my front sight, any one not a sculptor would not be apt to stumble on the idea of undercutting the sight so as to give a deep shadow below and so make the top stand out light against a dark lower portion. (See Plate [19].)