Ah siggy, you are too kind.
Me help...because everybody knows that Muttly is polite...but that's about it!
diverteach:
Sorry to hear about your 1911. It was a great choice, and obvious that you're really aware of what works. I guess you got your "Six for Sure" lesson right away, without tours through the lands of suspended belief. Even this thread has a grim report of magazine lips disabling an automatic. The .45ACP is big, round, and bulky, so minimizes some of the touchyness, as does the 1911 simple s.a. mechanism, but as a long time daily user of semiautomatics, I can tell you that the old cowboy six-shooter motto really holds true, especially at O-Dark-Thirty, when you fill your mitts and wonder if you have the coherence to grapple with a jam. Not nice. At such times the 1911 or Browning Hi-Power will do, as long as you don't forget the "click" part of "click-boom." Training.
So here's my other, other 2 cents for a used revolver, which I do not recommend, and think you should buy a NEW Ruger instead:
Put hammer DOWN (no, not that hammer...the one attached to the gun). Then move the cylinder around: left-right-forward-back. You will know. This is the position when it fires. Some wobble is normal, but too much will get your attention. Compare it to a new one, to be sure. Lead and whatnot can be shaved off the bullet by a badly aligned cylinder, and if you think Muttly looks cute when his ears blow back from cylinder blast, you should hear him cuss when that wind is filled with flaming lead and copper!
Also see if the cylinder gap looks wide. Sometimes barrels get replaced, and one never knows. It could also be eroded, but unlikely.
Sig226, your advice is excellent. It is refreshing to hear it from an ex-retail salesman. Really good.
"Six for sure", my posterior.
Revolvers can fail to fire just as much as an automatic. They can have timing issues, mainspring issues, wear issues (i.e., not indexing the cylinder properly), and my personal favorite, failure to be able to reload because your ejector rod unscrewed while you were shooting and you can't get the cylinder open.
Who said ex? I still sell them, although he's nowhere near me. I get to play with the MP-5 on the range with the feee ammo, too.
The really fun part is when you go into another gun shop and tell them that you work for a dealer. They let you play with everything. :)