There are a lot of great resources available online related to firearms. During a detail strip of my 1911 pistol recently, I found this cool animation that shows how the 1911 pistol functions. The cool thing about it is that you can choose what parts of the pistol are visible, and even toggle some to be partially transparent. This kind of visualization is VERY helpful when learning about such a piece of machinery!

You can see this animation in action HERE at m1911.org. One of the interesting things to note when you watch it is how the link lowers/disengages the barrel *after* the bullet leaves the barrel. This is how you can have a very accurate semi-automatic pistol without a fixed barrel.

There you go- if a picture is worth a thousand words, what’s an animation worth? 🙂

-Gavin