Yes. So when do you begin to see people “correcting” this use of the word pistol and why do they think it matters? Any ideas you have will be interesting.
Was I too long? Sorry I know I am so pedantic. I don’t mean to be. Just send me away when I do that. I don’t want to beat a dead horse, although the horse never seems to mind...
Revolvers, semiautomatics, or a mussel loading percussion cap or flint-wheel- match-lock pistols are all, I believe, subsets of Sidearms.
At one time I was very adamant about the correct usage and not confusing revolvers and pistols. This was mostly due to pop culture and the populace in general degenerating into gross ignorance about what John Ross called “The Gun Culture”. This was about the time when the Fifth Column Media first began to demonize semiautos and the clip vs magazine distinction became important. I gradually relaxed when I found there historically wasn’t a distinction between pistols and revolvers. I still cringe sometimes if I see a fiction writer switching between the two terms for no good reason. I have to mention one of my top worst things in print or on the screen, the suppressed revolver! They make a S&W 629 sound like a lady passing gas. Haha!
Sorry, now I’m the one running on when I should be running along. It’s been good chatting with you though.