But with an automatic pistol, if the hands are wet, cold, greasy, or weak (as a soldier with blood on his hands and weak from a wound), it is impossible to get the first cartridge into the barrel, or get the pistol ready to shoot.
The operation in automatic pistols begins by taking the pistol in both hands. (Compare with cocking the revolver with one hand.)
Then you hold the stock firmly with one hand, and grip the slippery barrel of the pistol with the other hand, and use considerable force to draw the barrel back against the strong compression spring.
Your only assistance to get a grip is a slight corrugation on the barrel, only wide enough for your thumb and forefinger to hold.
Imagine trying to pull hard with only your forefinger and thumb gripping a smooth and possibly slippery surface, with a cold, wet, or greasy hand.
Let any one grease the automatic pistol and his hand and see if he can perform this operation. Sandow, no doubt, could do it, but not the average man.
The magazine rifle is purposely made with a bolt like a door bolt, so that it can be operated easily under all conditions, but the automatic pistol, evidently to give it a neat external appearance, has no projection to take hold of to drive back the slide, which, besides, takes more strength than is required to operate the bolt of a magazine rifle.
The remedy is simple: have two small projections, one on each side of the corrugated grip on the barrel, so that the shooter can get two fingers one over each side of this grip and, holding the stock in one hand, draw back the slide with his other hand, with a perfect grip under all conditions, like bending a crossbow.
As to the shape and angle of the stock, inventors and shooters are at constant war.
The inventor is thinking of his mechanism; he makes his stock at the best angle, shape, and size to suit what he puts inside it. It is much easier to construct apparatus to feed cartridges into the barrel at right angles than at an acute angle.