Before purchasing an automatic pistol it would be well to try shooting several makes. Inventors have not yet arrived at anything like a standard shape. The grip, angle of stock, distance of trigger, etc., all vary, and you can decide what suits you best only by actual trial.
Handling the unloaded pistol is not enough. I was once trying an automatic military rifle and found it balanced and handled very nicely.
In order to test it in rapid fire I tried it against a magazine rifle to which I was accustomed.
For merely “loosed off” it beat the magazine rifle, but I wished to try it for accuracy and speed combined.
The test was to shoot at the “Running Deer” Bisley, to empty the magazine at one run of the deer.
The deer runs at a speed of fifteen miles an hour during five and a half seconds at a distance of 110 yards from the firing point, across the line of fire.
With my magazine rifle I got off five shots, making four hits, wasting much time with the loading.
With the automatic rifle there was not an instant wasted in the loading; the difficulty was in getting the shots to go anywhere near the deer—in fact, I could not hit the deer, except with the first shot.
At each shot the rifle tried to jump out of my hands, twisted itself round to the right and then suddenly twisted the other way. The tighter I gripped the more it wriggled about.
Instead of the sights coming down back to alignment, after the recoil, I found they jumped clean off the deer and I had to go hunting about to get my aim again.