This single action Colt can’t fire itself. (John Schneider)

YouTube ^ | Dec. 5, 2021 | John Schneider

[Vermont Lt]

I have a double action SW R8. It has about a 12 pound double action pull. When the hammer is cocked, it takes very little pull to drop the hammer.

I am not excusing Baldwin, or buying his story. Who the hell is handed a half cocked weapon without resetting the hammer? His story is a fantasy that he hopes will keep him out of jail.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

***In the un-cocked position, the firing pin is fully forward. If the revolver is dropped and if there is a cartridge beneath the firing pin, and if the revolver lands on the hammer, then the revolver could fire.***

This stirred something deep in my memory from the early 1970s.
I believe it was a RUGER Super Blackhawk, old style that some man was loading. He then lowered the hammer on six rounds, and accidentally dropped the revolver. It landed on the hammer going off, killing the man.

Ruger was sued, and lost, so they had their engineers redraw up the internal plans for their revolvers.
When done, they had designed a new loading system, in which you open the gate to free the cylinder, and a transfer bar so the revolver will absolutely not fire unless the trigger is pulled.

What type of Pietta copy of the Colt did Baldwin use? The old style or the transfer bar style as Pietta makes both.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

Here is a schematic of the two versions of the Colt that Pietta makes. One has a transfer bar and one does not.
https://www.vtigunparts.com/store/images/1873%20Pietta%20SA.png

[IamConservative]

(Baldwin) who had his finger on the trigger while drawing back the hammer?

This, or being a novice, he let the hammer slip free just before it cocked and the pistol fired.

Lot of those old single action guns have been modified for competition shooting. Wonder if this gun was modified? Worn excessively?

[DennisR]

Au contraire, mon ami:

https://debatepolitics.com/threads/emotional-alec-baldwin-says-i-didnt-pull-the-trigger-on-rust-set.466889/page-2#:~:text=Yes.%20Given%20the%20revolver%20in%20question%2C%20it%20is,incumbent%20on%20the%20user%20to%20understand%20such%20things

[Poser]

Now we need to know if the revolver in question was the coil hand spring version or the transfer bar version. The hand spring version looks like a pull of the hammer to just short of half cock and quick release might push the firing pin hard enough to strike the primer in the cylinder that is currently indexed.

Am I misreading the schematic?

[daniel1212]

Schneider is a actor himself, who has been in many Christian movies, going at least way back to Come the Morning, a good Billy Graham movie from 19193/

[TigersEye]

Quite a backstory on the invention of the transfer bar safety. A sad one. Poor guy, that bullet could have gone in so many other directions instead of him.

I’ve never owned or fired a Ruger revolver so the loading gate safety feature is something I hadn’t even heard of.

I don’t know which design of Pietta revolver Baldwin had at the time but I think he’s screwed either way. If it was old style then only some extreme wear or breakage, of more than one cocking notch, could make his statement true that he wasn’t pulling the trigger. Odds are astronomically against him on that one.

If he was using a transfer bar style pistol then his statement simply cannot be true. AFAIK no wear or breakage malfunction in that type of gun could account for it firing without pulling the trigger. But, as I said, I don’t have first hand experience with that type.

I saw a comment on the youtube thread that said the authorities had confirmed that the pistol was in good working order. I did a lot of searching to try to find a news article that addressed that information but couldn’t find one. No mention of its type though.

[Cobra64]

If fanning the hammer, the finger still needs to be pressed.

[Tired of Taxes]

Thanks for the link. Watching the movie now...

[daniel1212]

"Thanks for the link. Watching the movie now..."

I have a list of what I had then found to be about the best of a bunch of Christian films buried in TubiTV to watch, versus its filth, usually only if I am too tired to do much else. Thank God for what is good, and with Time Changers being the best.

[Tired of Taxes]

Thanks for the list. As for John Schneider, I only remember seeing him in a couple of other movies, and they were Christian films, such as “October Baby.”