Gun Action Guide

Look at the descriptions of various guns. Besides the obvious “pistol or revolver” and caliber, I’m sure you’ll see or hear about the gun’s “action”.  It’ll usually be called “Single Action Only”, “Double Action”, “Double Action/Single” or “Striker”.

Well what the heck is that and why should you care? I’m glad you asked. In the grand scheme of things, all guns work the same. Some way or another, a firing pin (which is just a metal rod) strikes the back of the bullet and sets off the primer. The primer ignites the gun powder and the bullet is propelled forward at a hight rate of speed. The difference between the actions, however, is how that firing pin is propelled forward.

Before we get started, however, there’s a term I need to go over first: trigger break. When you pull a trigger on a gun, there’s a certain point where it will actually fire the gun. It’s not always when the trigger is flat against the grip. Each gun has it’s own distinct break point and feel when it breaks.

There’s a good chance that, at some point in your life, you have seen a western movie. If you haven’t then turn off your computer and go watch one. There’s plenty on Netflix and Redbox (and there’s lots on cable on the weekends). I’ll wait. Seriously, go do it.

Back? Good. Did you notice something about the way they shot their revolvers? The more observant of you will notice that they tended to slap the hammer of their gun whenever they wanted to fire. Other times, they’d just pull it back with their thumb. That wasn’t for show, that is a Single Action Only gun.

In a single action only (sao) gun, the only thing the trigger does is release the hammer. If the hammer isn’t cocked, you can pull the trigger all day and nothing will happen. To actually shoot, you have to manually pull the hammer back all the way and then pull the trigger to fire.

The advantage is that a single action trigger pull is usually a very easy pull. There is little resistance and the point where the trigger breaks is small and predictable. The end result is that there is less chance to mess up your shot with the act of pulling the trigger.

Believe it or not, a sao gun is really fun to shoot, especially when you are at one of the meetings of the thousands of Single Action Shooting Clubs around the country. Go check one out sometime. They’re just as much fun to watch as they are to participate in.

Also, revolvers aren’t the only single action guns out there. There are quite a few semi-automatic pistols with single actions as well. The most famous and widely used is the legendary 1911 pistol. Part of what makes a 1911 shoot so sweetly is that single action trigger pull. In single action semis, the motion of the slide backwards is what cocks the hammer for the next shot.

Somewhere, someone looked at a single action gun and said “you know what, this whole manual hammer cocking thing is a pain in the ass”. With a great deal of engineering and A LOT of trial and error (seriously. it took a long time to figure this thing out) they finally worked out a way to make the trigger both pull the hammer back and then release it.

Hence the term “double action”: the trigger performs two actions.

Pretty much all revolvers and a good portion of pistols use a double action set up. A lot of pistols, however, incorporate a hybrid of single and double action. Let’s explore that next before we move to strikers.

The advantage of double action is mainly one of safety. It is very hard to accidentally fire a double action gun. Most of your pocket pistols use a double action with a really strong pull as their only safety measure, and it’s a very effective one.

One of the best examples of a hybrid Double/Single action is the Beretta 92 Pistol. I’ll admit, this is a little tough to explain. It’s one of those things where if I try to talk you through it you’ll probably give me a weird look but if you hold the gun and rack the slide it instantly makes sense. I’ll do my best though.

The gun is normally a double action gun. If you have loaded it, racked the slide and then dropped the hammer (which is different that releasing the hammer), pulling the trigger will pull the hammer back and then release it. Here’s where it gets interesting though. When the gun fires at this point, the slide goes back, ejects the spent casing and also pushes the hammer back in the process. The slide then moves forward again, strips a bullet from the magazine and is ready to fire again. The hammer is left fully cocked and now the trigger behaves in a single action manner.

This has the advantage of a much easier trigger pull which inherently makes it easier to pull off accurate shots. Racking the slide will also put the gun into a single action configuration.

Most single/double guns have a way of safely lowering the hammer from a cocked position, returning it to a double action configuration. This makes the gun safer to transport and store.

In the previous sections, the double and single action guns all used a hammer to strike the firing pin. In a striker fired gun, the firing pin is propelled forward via a spring and nothing more. If you’ve ever shot a Glock or a Springfield XD/XDm, you’ve fired a striker pistol.

The striker configuration has its advantages and disadvantages. A striker fired pistol has all the components inside the slide which means that it’s probably not going to get gummed up with lint and dirt (as long as you clean it on a regular basis). A hammer fired pistol can, however, get lint and junk between the hammer and the pin which could potentially cause it to not work. At the same time, the hammer can get snagged on clothing. The striker fired guns don’t have that problem.

One of the biggest disadvantages of a striker fired gun, however, is that the firing pin is freely floating. When the gun is dropped there is a higher chance of accidental discharge. Most striker guns solve that problem with lots of internal safeties (for example, you can hammer a nail into a wall with a Glock, although I wouldn’t recommend it). Another problem with striker fired guns is that they lack something called “second strike capability”. This is one of those things that is a deal breaker with some and a pointless internet argument for others (another one of those great forum troll discussions, by the way).

When you’re talking about second strike (ssc) the only guns that truly offer it are double action pistols/revolvers. What is it? Well, depending on a whole bunch of factors, there is a minuscule chance that the firing pin might not hit the primer hard enough to fire the bullet. Second strike means you can pull the trigger again with the hope that the firing pin will hit hard enough to fire the bullet the second time. Since striker fired pistols are essentially single action, the majority of them lack SSC. There are a few exceptions, however. The first that comes to mind is the Taurus 24/7 line of pistols. While proponents of second strike say it’s a needed bit of “just in case”, others feel that standard clearing procedures negate the need for it.