Colt's early revolvers were single-action, in which the cylinder revolved as the hammer was cocked manually, and they used percussion caps.
Practical double-action revolvers, in which the hammer is cocked and the cylinder revolves as the trigger is pulled, were developed in Great Britain in the mid-1800s.
But it is only when Aomame notices that the policemen have swapped their holstered revolvers for bulky semi-automatic weapons that she realises she has entered a parallel universe.This gripping beginning ensures the reader falls for Aomame, forcing Mr Murakami to work extra hard on her counterpart, Tengo, who appears in alternate chapters in the book.
In addition to the Springfield carbines and Colt revolvers fired by the soldiers, there were 43 weapons used by the Indians.
Many revolvers have a design flaw known about since the 19th century: they can fire inadvertently if the hammer rests against a loaded chamber.
During the war, the Ordnance Department of the Union government bought or made 3.5m carbines, rifles, revolvers, pistols and muskets, as well as over 1 billion cartridges and 1 billion percussion caps.
So far, the peace process has increased the FARC's trust in the government, says Camilo Gomez, Mr Pastrana's chief peace negotiator (though the guerrilla leaders at Los Pozos clutch their AK-47s and wear uniforms, revolvers and machetes even as they talk).
Kshiti Goswami, the state irrigation minister, says the cadres of his Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) were armed only with "hand bombs", whereas the men of CPI(M) had "light machineguns, muskets, revolvers and explosives".In addition, the CPI(M), which has brought land reform and other boons to poor Bengalis, is quite popular.
"Bodies would be thrown out of passing cars, and there were kids with revolvers".
Presidents and prime ministers, however, do not nowadays sit reading the newspaper on the terraces of hotels where out-of-work Italian printers wander round with revolvers in their pockets, as Cánovas did, or walk the streets of Madrid unprotected while looking into bookshop windows, as Canalejas did.
Iowa is pondering a law that would let children younger than 14 use pistols and revolvers (with adult supervision, legislators hasten to add).
