[Jeff Higgins]

Revolvers are easier to use under duress and in the dark. Semi-autos are "cool" right now and very popular. Reliability of either platform is about a wash today with quality examples of either, ditto for accuracy and ammo availability.

Ease of use in a stressfull situation is often overlooked. Especially for a casual owner, that is not into it as a hobby in and of itself, this is very important. I can think of few things worse than being confronted by a bad guy, looking at my sidearm, and wondering "now which one is the safety?".

Most casual owners will also want to store an auto in condition three, because they feel conditions one and two are "dangerous". (Condition three is hammer down on an empty chamber; two is hammer down on a loaded chamber; one is "cocked and locked" - loaded chamber, hammer back, safety on.) Maybe even worse than "which one is the safety?" is that very quiet sound of the hammer dropping on an empty chamber. It tells the bad guy you meant it and, more important to him, the chamber is empty and you must rack the slide. He'll be both pissed and emboldened by this series of events; he knows he can get to you before you can rack the slide.

Revolvers have none of these drawbacks. They are always loaded; every chamber. There are no safeties other than you.

Another plus for revolvers is that they are currently out of vogue. You can get damn good ones dirt cheap. Old police cast-offs that were carried more than shot are a dime a dozen as they have switched to autos. New ones tend to run much cheaper than equivilent quality autos.