Posted August 8, 2019 9:00 am by Comments

By Judson Miers

When I teach folks about firearms, whether it’s understanding a pistol they want to buy or teaching at the range, the biggest concern center on their handgun’s “operating system.” Like Android or Apple on a smartphone, a pistol’s OS refers to the way in which a handgun operates. In the case of firearms, this equates to the amount and types of actions the trigger performs when pulled.
SAO
The Colt 1991 1911 handgun is an example of a SAO handgun.
When society transitioned from canons — fired by fuse or lanyard pull — to hand-held long guns, gun owners needed some sort of mechanism to fire the weapon without having to use a fuse. Originally, gun owners were relegated to flintlocks or black powder weapons which required the hammers cocked and the trigger actuated to release the sear and, subsequently, the hammer to fire the weapon. To begin each firing sequence, the hammer had to be cocked because in these firearms the trigger only does a single action only – in this case, releasing the hammer to fire.
One of the early issues of this single action only, or SAO, was the hammer proved capable of actually bouncing hard enough, either while riding horseback

Source: Guns.com

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