Revolver Internal Functioning Practice Text

Good morning. My name is Jonathan Sanders, and I’m a Forensic Lab Technician at the FBI laboratory here in Seattle, Washington. I have been detailed to the FBI’s firearms identification divisionfor close to 3 years now, and I have over 1000 hours of formal training in diverse areas related to firearms and firearms identification, including ballistics, crime scene processing and internalmechanical functioning. I also hold a master’s degree in Forensic Science from California State University in Fresno. I was asked to be here today to explain how revolvers actually work, and I’d like tobegin by providing a general description of the processes that occur when the trigger of a revolver is pulled.
Just to clarify, when I say revolver, I’m referring to a type of repeating firearmthat has a cylinder containing multiple chambers and at least one barrel for firing. If you’ve ever seen one of the old Western movies where the cowboys use what are called “six guns”, you probably knowwhat I’m talking about. As far as firearms go, the internal functioning of the revolver is fairly simple.
As the user cocks the hammer, the cylinder “revolves” to align the next chamber andround with the hammer and barrel, and it’s actually this “revolving” motion that gives the revolver its name. The hammer can be cocked either manually, that is by the shooter physically pulling it back,or mechanically; for example, during the first portion of the trigger pull in double-action revolvers. I’ll talk about the difference between single and double action in just a moment.
A revolverbasically works by having several firing chambers arranged in a circle in a cylindrical block that are all brought into alignment with the firing mechanism and barrel one at a time. In contrast, otherrepeating firearms, such as lever-action, pump-action, and semi-automatic, have a single firing chamber and a mechanism to load and extract cartridges.
Now earlier you heard me mention the terms...