A revolver can be a pistol, but a pistol can't be a revolver just like bourbon can be whiskey, but whiskey can't be bourbon.

Why is the .44 only fired single action? It is(obviously, being a modern firearm) double action yet whenever I use one its only fired by pulling the hammer back each time which equates to a very slow rate of fire. Am I missing a perk or something here?

..... Wut? What is a duty expert sniper NPC???

Stalker, the best shooter ever made. The Duty faction is a, somewhat Nazi, strong control faction and the fighters are among the best in the game.

In real life it is somewhat ambiguous.

The term pistol has been around for a very long time, and was generally understood to mean a gun that could be held and fired by one hand.

When what we commonly refer to as the revolver was invented, it was called the Revolving Pistol by Samuel Colt.

Is a revolver a pistol or not is the kind of thing that can be argued, but neither side of the argument has a more firm position than the other.

I say all handguns are pistols. Someone else may not.

For me, pistols come in many varieties. Some are revolvers, some are semi-automatic handguns, some are semi-automatic rifles without a stock.

I've been carrying a handgun concealed (legally) for more than 20 years. I've been to a lot of ranges, gun-shops, shows etc. This is what I've gleaned:

Pistol simply means 'hand-gun". Period.

However there are trends....most older folks call handguns "pistols"....any type of handgun. Younger gun people tend to mean semi-auto when they say "pistol" and tend to call revolvers -revolvers. But technically pistol just means handgun.

I'm with you on all points - including the 20 years.

Also, doesn't the lore for the game's .44 specifically say it's a single-action? I know it's obviously a S&W 629 judging by the cylinder release, trigger and hammer shape, but maybe it's broken?

No, handguns cannot be clip fed. Clips can only be used to load magazines.

I think it just says .44. I'll have to check

Well....stripper clips can feed directly through the top of some guns. But the game doesn't show any stripper clips from what I have seen

Still a magazine though, just internal. Don't intend to be nit-picky, but the magazine vs clip thing was beat into my 90s gangsta rap loving head by my Veteran family members when I was growing up.

edit: Figuratively beat, not physically

I get it. I HATE when people say clip too.

What I hate even more is the way almost ALL TV and Movies have cops and FBI agents walking around with an empty chamber. So STUPID. Every single time most of then get ready to fire their weapon they chamber a round. ( so that means the last 20 minutes of house clearing happened with an EMPTY chamber)

OVER AND OVER AND OVER again.

W-T-F?

I think we've long since established that no one involved in creating this game has any familiarity with firearms, nor did they consult anyone who did.

And the thing is it would be SOOOOO EASY to get some FREE expert consultation! Fans like us would do it for a free game and the credit!

I remember watching a old film once where the assassin before entering his targets house, screwed a silencer onto a revolver, I was like "OK yeah, that'll totally work" lol.

The guys at Counterstrike care about this kind of thing. Bethesda, not at all.

This is not the game to look too deep under the ballistic weapon hood. Too many strange and eye-rolling things to count.

Oh yeah I know realism tends to take a back seat in these sort of games but it is bloody slow. Shame as well I love revolvers ?

Well Sam Colt was only capable, with the technology available in the 1830's, of creating a revolving gun, but that one would "win the West" eventually. It was considered a handgun, pistol, revolver, piece, big iron, you name it.

Then along came a few geniuses that decided to apply Hiram Maxim's recoil-operation principles to handguns; Those folks included: Schonberger, Laumann, Hugo Borchardt followed by three super geniuses named Mauser, Browning, and Luger. Their designs were so effective and efficient (especially the M1911 and Browning Hi-Power imo) that proliferation of that high minded technology was inevitable. Hence, almost all police forces and militaries worldwide employ handguns derived from those designs almost exclusively from Glocks, to HKs, to Sigs, to Colts, to Barettas, and have long traded in their revolvers.

The delineation is fairly recent as many have said, sort of an evolved terminology, to clearly separate the 175 year old 5-7 shot revolving gun from the modern designed high capacity mag fed semis...New Vegas decided to make the distinction, with the exception of the police pistol. FO 4 didn't. If I'm not mistaken, Fallout 3 just called it the .44 magnum. I don't think Bethesda either cares enough, or is saavy enough, about ballistic weapons to even bother with the distinction.

Yeah, it's not that much a secret that the combat shotgun...and...well, now apparently everything else, is modeled on the PPSh. Why, being that FO takes place in America, is beyond me. I didn't like it FO3, but really don't like it in FO4, now that everything looks like it.

And it is one of the few weapons that fails in the sound department. Everything else improved significantly sound-wise, but not the .44. Sounds like a popcorn fart.

With you 100%. And pump action shotties get the same deal - either they were running around with an empty gun or that big dramatic pump just puts a perfectly fine shell on the floor...


OT, flintlocks were pistols, so I'm thinking the term applies to any handgun these days.


Considering the relative simplicity of constuction for barrel-loaded powder weapons, plus the fact that FO4 is in Boston, I'm surprised there aren't any 'pipe muskets' floating around.

O my god... This crap has spread to these forums as well. Look a revolver is a forum of a pistol. You want to know a real misuse of words? GUN. As a gun is something strapped to the side of a ship or fired from miles away ( Canon/artillery ) Revolver just specifies that the pistol has a wheel on it.

Want to find out more, go look up revolving pistol.

I am not going to post more on this, as I see it as nothing more then a troll topic usually done by people who have never owned a firearm in real life let alone know one thing about older firearms.

This is when people usually mention the https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otjYBn5auPo. It's relatively rare though.

Now that you mention it, FO4's Combat Shotgun and Combat Rifle's rear do look like PPSh.

Pretty funny, when Gun is a name derived from a Ballista with the latin name Domina Gunilda...Generally speaking, a gun, is any weapon with a barrel, that moves it projectile with gas or air pressure. Look up the definition.