Robert,

On Sat, 12 Jun 2004 12:13:54 -0400, Robert B. wrote:

> The Automag and Dirty Harry's revolver fire the same cartridge, no?

Not quite - the same bullet, but different cases.  The AutoMag uses a cut-down Winchester .308 rifle casing.

> A revolver uses none of the cartridge energy for loading the next one, while
> the AutoMag most certainly uses a small fraction of the energy to load a new
> cartridge.

Well revolvers leak between the front of the cylinder and the back of the barrel (which is why a silencer on a
revolver is a waste of time, despite being seen in lots of films!).  The AutoMag uses recoil energy for
cycling the action, so very little energy is lost (other automatic actions use the gas from the charge, so
some gas pressure is inevitably lost because you can't set it up to use just the right amount - you have to
overdo it a bit and the excess is lost).

> How, then, is the AutoMag more powerful?  A longer barrel?
> Secret energy storage? Just curious, things don't seem to add up from over here.

Combination of the above, I think, but the result is that a "standard" AutoMag load throws a 240grain
projectile at about 1500pfs, the S&W model 29 (Dirty Harry's gun) achieves about 1400fps with the same weight.

That and you can fire the AutoMag more rapidly, so throwing more firepower downrange in a given time.

There are actually more powerful handguns still, but they are pretty specialised and not mass-produced (not
that the AutoMag was exactly that either - but it was in series production for a while).

Cheers,

Howard Winter
St.Albans, England

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