Talk:Ed McGivern

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[edit] Record holder

Was his record not broken by Jerry Miculek in '03? Or is the standing record a different one? Thernlund 02:04, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Miculek broke a number of McGivern's records, but the 5 shots in 2/5ths of a second record (listed in the Miculek article as .45 seconds, due to the 1/20th second precision of the mechanical stopwatches McGivern was using) still stands, to the best of my knowledge. Miculek did break the 10 revolver/60 shots record by a fair amount, but his best time for 5 shots was .57 seconds, so he's got a ways to go there. The .57 second time actually gives him a split time of .1425 seconds, which is just a tiny bit faster than the .1429 second split time of 8 shots in 1 second (not .125, because you divide 1 second by 7 intervals (see fencepost problem). If there'd been an 8 shot DA revolver around in McGivern's day, he'd probably hold that record, too. The man was awe inspiring, especially considering that he was a short, overweight, balding guy of 58 with the beginnings of arthritis when he set that record in '32. He had to give up exhibition shooting soon after due to the arthritis. scot 14:19, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Ah. Ok then. I didn't know enough about it to go editing that in. Possibly you should? Sounds like it would make a good addition to the article. Thernlund 18:16, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Fleshing out the article on McGivern is on my to-do list; unforunately my only source of info is a reprint of his book "Fast and Fancy Revolver Shooting", so it's got a lot on his research and techniques but not much biographical info. Along with the speed shooting, he was one of the first to put a scope on a pistol and try long range, high precision pistol shooting. He was shooting at 200 yards with .22 LR pistols, and out to 600 yards with the then brand-new .357 Magnum. And let me tell you, a 6" barrelled revolver with one of those long, skinny scopes they used back then is a rather humorous combination--the scope was half again as long as the whole revolver. I need to do a scan and trace of some of the pictures and stick some in here. scot 14:08, 2 October 2006 (UTC)