They used to call the old colt revolvers 6 beans in a can, but some says that it was really “5 beans in a can” . . .
Real 1800’s gunslingers
It’s been said that old west gunslingers frequently stuffed a folded $20 bill in the empty 6th chamber of the cylinder of their revolvers, to pay their funeral expenses when the inevitable finally happened.
But is it an urban myth that cowboys kept $20 bill in 6th revolver chamber for burial expenses?
Jim Keenan notes that this is a myth:
“But in fact, the old timers didn’t do that, or put a $20 bill in one chamber for “buryin’ money”.
(Most never saw $20 all in one place; it would have been the equivalent of $800+ today, and cowboys made $.50 per day.)”
I was watching the movie “The American” with George Clooney, and it had a scene where George made a 7.63 NATO sniper rifle with a silencer!
Hog wash!
There is no such thing as a silencer for a supersconic 7.62 NATO rifle
The problem is that the “crack” of a high powered rifle has two sounds, the sound of the exploding powder plus the sound wave as the bullet exits the muzzle at 2,630 feet per second, mach 2, twice the speed of sound! (for .308 cal. and 7.62 mm bullets)
As we know from the SST airliners being forced to go Mach 1 supersonic over the ocean, the sound barrier cannot be silenced!
A rifle bullet goes supersonic while still in the barrel and the “crack” of the bullet exceeding the sound barrier can be heard in the form of a 70 degree cone emanating from the end of the muzzle.
Note that this is the reason why you cannot use a silencer with a high powered rifle.
The silencer cannot control the sound waves that are created inside the barrel when the bullet goes supersonic.
Phony revolver silencer
It’s all Hollywood, like putting a silencer on a revolver, not knowing that the space between the cylinder and the barrel emits a huge sound!
Janet can hit a grape at 200 yards with her telescopic sights
A Marine told me that the current world’s record for a sniper kill was not a single shot, but a series of three shots, fired in rapid succession.
The victim fell dead before they heard the first bullet.
Sniper attacks are brutal.
This lucky American soldier survived a terrorist sniper after losing one third of his brain.
You never hear the bullet that kills you
They used to say that a sniper only had the first shot, since the prey would quickly skedaddle at the sound of the first gun shot.
The speed of sound is 1,100 feet per second and the world record sniper hit is at 8,000 feet, about 1.3 miles.
By my calculations, you have seven seconds between squeezing off the first round and the sound of the report reaching the target.
I love shooting supersonic bullets; you can actually see the shock wave as it travels across the pasture.
My AR with a 17x rifle scope for long kills
Today’s 50 caliber bullets have a muzzle velocity of over 2,500 feet per second, so the old saying “you never hear the bullet that kills you” is quite true.
The first bullet will reach an 8,000 foot target in three seconds, a full four seconds before the sound of the bulet is heard!
Here is the video of the world record one mile kill shots:
The world’s most accurate handgun is the Thompson Centerfire with a 60 caliber barrel.
The world’s most powerful pistol
History of the world’s most powerful handguns
The Thompson is not only the world’s most powerful pistol, it is also among the most versatile and accurate pistols in the world, changeable from centerfire to rimfire and allowing interchangeable barrels, with a different caliber for every day of the week. Everything up to a superpowered 60 caliber elephant load.
But man oh man, does a powerful pistol pack a monster whallop!! The muzzle flash of a high-powered pistol is awesome, and my hands ached after shooting only 10 rounds in this monster.
The Thompson centerfire in high caliber has the greatest recoil of any gun in the world! Watch this fellow shoot a 60 caliber Thompson Contender, the most powerful handgun in the world. The handgun is so powerful that it flies from his hands:
Uncle Remus used to talk about “old man hunter from Huntsville”, and a real sportsman will that a powergul handgun is just as deadly as a rifle.
Big game hunting with a pistol is not a new idea. Here is my 150 year cap lock rifle that some redneck chopped down and converted into a 50 caliber pistol!
A high-powered rifle cut down into a pistol From the collection of Donald K. Burleson
Rednecks are very ingenious, always having creative solutions when they needed a powerful handgun. Note how they bent the frame to make the high-powered rifle into a pistol.
Today, I use my Thompson Center Contender (TC) Armor Alloy Pistol in 3030 caliber, a super powerful handgun that uses rifle bullets.
Pistol power is not always about the length of the barrel. Packing a pistol makes sense of you are tracking a mountain lion over hill and dale for 15 miles, with a pistol that has far less weight and just as deadly.
I did a ballistic test with my trusty Marlin 30/30 lever action game rifle with the high powered Thompson Contender (TC) pistol.
But recoil aside, you cannot deny that the Thompson centerfire is among the most powerful and accurate pistols in the whole world.
Check out this Thompson center power pistol hitting balloon at 300 yards:
