Top picture is silver medalist Thomas Paine from the 1896 Summer games, the first year with a shooting competition. Bottom is gold medalist Vitalina Batsarashkina from the 2020 games.
https://www.ssusa.org/content/athens-1896-olympics-the-first-shots-for-record/
For most modern semi auto pistols, with modern self defense, hunting or military oriented ammo, almost always yes.
Go back in time and this changes. Older revolvers in particular, with the kind of handle style grip are very much designed for single handed aiming and firing. Also older derringers and snub noses.
Modern revolvers tend to fire more powerful rounds, have larger frames and different grip designs that allow more easily for a second hand to grip, and its very useful as you’ll likely need that second hand for the recoil, as well as the strength of both hands to more easily keep steady aim while pulling a double action trigger, which requires much more force to pull and fire than a single action revolver.
But these modern competition pistols have very low recoil rounds, and as the other user pointed out, theres a whole category of these things where being limited to one hand is the point.
On a non Olympic level, these days there are actually (in America) a good number of competitions of old west style revolver shooting, where you have a single action six gun, hold the trigger and fan the hammer, western movie style.
The pros can do this technique and hit six different targets at close range in under a second. Then usually do a gun twirl and holster, haha.
If I recall correctly, it doesn’t actually work by just holding the trigger and fanning the hammer. You actually have to fan the hammer and pull the trigger every time to get the cylinder to revolve to the next shot. I recall an episode of Mythbusters where a guy could do it so fast that it looked like the Hollywood version, but he was still having to pull the trigger for each shot.
There may be competition guns that allow for the Hollywood fan, but I’ve never seen or heard of one in real life.
So, this level of technicality comes down to specific SA revolvers. I have not seen this MythBusters episode, but to the best of my knowledge, both today and 150 years ago, some SA revolvers function as you say where a trigger pull is needed each time, and some basically do not.
As a kind of example, I used to have some kind of 50s era Ruger SA revolver in .22lr.
Now I never actually tried fanning at a range, (can you imagine most places will ban you instantly for this as its generally extremely inaccurate lol?) but with the cylinder unloaded and completely clear… basically, if you pulled the hammer back, pulled the trigger, click, hammer fires, or would have fired.
But then, if you pull the trigger back just a bit more, then I could work the hammer with my other hand. While pulling back the hammer, as the cylinder rotates, the trigger fights back and wants to reset just a bit, but once the cylinder is lined up, the trigger has reset, and i am still pulling on it, and click it ‘fires’ again.
So… its not really pulling the trigger separately for each shot, its more like pulling it firmly, and while you work the hammer, the trigger pushes back a bit, but if you keep the same grip, it does just fire again.
I am aware from researching online and asking old timers that this level of action manipulation varied amongst SA revolvers of old.
With some SA revolvers the trigger reset is much more pronounced such that as you say, its pretty much a totally new pull of the trigger each time.
Either way, in the real west, fanning, while possible to do with some pistols, was extremely uncommon in basically anything other than showy demonstrations…
However, Ruger now makes a model called the Vaquero, which is specifically designed for the fanning competitions I mentioned earlier.
And given that these competitions have been around for at least a decade before than thing hit the market, I would be willing to bet that other SA revolvers could properly fan, maybe you might have had to get a bit of a custom trigger job or something though.
Edit: Fun possible fact, I am fairly, though not totally sure that the term ‘hair trigger’ actually comes from these kinds of SA revolvers that either naturally or via tinkering had such a small give and reset that it was said to be the miniscule distance of a literal hair, and thus more easily allowed rapid fanning.
Though as with many gun related aphorisms, that origination of the phrase may be debated/apocryphal.
Thanks for the detailed reply! I learned things today.
Please attend tomorrow’s lecture:
Yes, the Mateba sure looks cool, but you will likely never own one.
Lol, long story short, Togusa’s famous Mateba Unica 6 auto revolver was basically an experimental design, few were/are made, they’re absurdly expensive, and because it is such an uncommon design (a semi auto revolver, meaning that the recoil actually sets up the next round to be fired instead of the long Double Action trigger pull of most modern revolvers), that anyone who owns one will prefer to never sell it.
However, we do now have the Chiappa Rhino, which are fairly easily obtainable and were designed by the designer of the Unica 6, and share the Unica 6’s firing from the bottom of the cylinder. While they have a very fancy hammer mechanism compared to most other revolvers, unfortunately they are not semi automatic =(