As we continue what has accidentally turned into Revolver Week (like Shark Week but better) on Gun Nuts, I wanted to talk about one of the emails I’d gotten, specifically about whether or not shooting Minor in Revolver division would give you an advantage or disadvantage.
In Single Stack, shooting minor gives you a +2 capacity advantage over shooting Major power factor. When that difference is 8+1 vs. 10+1 there are ways that shooting minor could be exploited as an advantage, especially at a “Production friendly” match. In Limited, the capacity difference between major and minor isn’t sufficient enough to be worth giving up the points by going to minor. Open is kind of an open question, but if you look at the top pros, none of them shooting minor in Open. So that brings us around to revolver, where on the surface it would appear that there’s no advantage to shooting minor.
In Revolver division, unlike any other division, you get six rounds no matter what your power factor is. So if you’re shoot a S&W 625, the dominant gun in Revolver division you’re going to be getting 4 points for every Charlie hit compared to a minor PF 3. Because you can get .45 ACP loaded to a very comfortable 170 PF, shooting minor doesn’t make much sense in revolver division.
That doesn’t mean you can’t shoot calibers other than .45 ACP; because like Open Division revolver allows you to make major with a bullet of .355 inches in diameter. So, say for example you had a six shot S&W 686 sitting around and wanted to shoot Revolver division. How would you be competitive? Two simple steps: get the cylinder cut for moonclips and rechambered in .38 Super, which you can do for about $250-350 bucks depending on where you go. Once you’ve done that, you’re into handloading territory to find a bullet that works well with your gun, but there is plenty of load data available on driving .38 Super to Major PF. And even better, if you had a 4 inch gun you could take it to IDPA matches and shoot it in ESR as well.
It’s also worth noting that shooting a .38 Super wheelgun makes you The King of Ballers. Seriously, shooting something that weird would be super cool, and very functional in the context of the game you’re playing. I kind of want to grab a couple Smith’s excellent 686SSR (the best 686 on the market) and have this done to them. But to get back to the question: no, it doesn’t make any sense to shoot minor in Revolver division unless you’re practicing for IDPA SSR or ICORE Classic. But you can shoot other calibers than .40 or .45…
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