Bangity, Peace Officers, and Fiction

I shot a PPC match today with two weapons, a HK USP Compact .45 and a S&W Model 19. Frankly, I suck with automatics (other than my 22/45). I barely made it into the sharpshooter category with the HK, while with the Smith, I just missed the master category.* And no, it's not the sight radius or that, for I shoot a police-stock Model 10 almost as well as the M-19. The last time I shot both a M-10 and M-19, I shot the same numerical score, albeit with two more X's on the -19.

And then there is the going hither and yon to find the brass on an automatic.** With a revolver, even on a fast reload, the brass is right at my feet. Frigging automatics litter. Revolvers are more civilized.

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I'm sure, by know, everyone has heard about how the cops in Georgia tossed a flash-bang grenade into a baby's crib and pretty near burned the kid's face off. The cops, of course, see nothing wrong with tossing grenades into a room and burning people.

Matt G, an active-duty cop, has had enough of that shit. He's right, good guys don't heedlessly throw freaking grenades into rooms. Soldiers do that, but combat's a wholly different world.

Peace officers don't do shit like that. But we seem to have precious few peace officers on duty anymore.
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I'm catching up with some of the later books written by Robert Parker. I was an early fan of his stuff, but when the early-mid `80s came around, his stuff began to suck. Sometime later, it got better.

But Parker knew fuck-all about guns. In Chance, Spencer is carrying a short-barreled Smith & Wesson revolver (other books mentioned that he had a Chief's Special). Spencer carries the gun with an empty chamber under the hammer. That's just madness. Smith & Wesson hand-ejector revolvers have rebounding hammers since they were introduced in the 19th Century; they gradually added a hammer block to their guns by the 1920s and redesigned it in the 1940s. Colt's "Police Positive" have had a hammer block since around 1905.

OK, so if you have a Colt Peacemaker or one of the German/Italian clones, you'd be safer keeping the chamber under the hammer unloaded. But for all modern double-action revolvers, keeping the chamber under the hammer empty means you are giving up a round that you might need.
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* One of the other shooters said: "That HK doesn't seem to run very well. I'll give you $300 for it." I couldn't turn down that offer fast enough.
** Yes, I know that the correct term is "autoloader". Sue me.