Top picture is silver medalist Thomas Paine from the 1896 Summer games, the first year with a shooting competition. Bottom is gold medalist Vitalina Batsarashkina from the 2020 games.
The grip of the pistol has a nook in it, the handle at the top is much more narrow. It creates the illusion that her thumb is really long, but really most of her palm is behind the pistol grip because it's so much wider at the base it hides it.
lol, I figured it must have been some sort of specialized handle, but thank you for taking the time explain and most importantly showing the other side of the gun.
In general yes. However, the popularization of the two handed “weaver” pistol stance is quite modern, rising to prominence in the 60s and 70s. Until then, pistol technique focused almost entirely on using a single handed grip. Military, police etc were all taught to use one hand.
The US government even defines a pistol as “a weapon originally designed, made, and intended to fire a projectile (bullet) from one or more barrels when held in one hand”, which is a relic from an earlier era.
The rules in Olympic pistol shooting limit shooting to one hand because they are like Olympic fencing and many martial arts disciplines. It traces its root to combat arts. However, it’s now a unique sport with esoteric rules and techniques that divorce it from any practical usage.
For most modern semi auto pistols, with modern self defense, hunting or military oriented ammo, almost always yes.
Go back in time and this changes. Older revolvers in particular, with the kind of handle style grip are very much designed for single handed aiming and firing. Also older derringers and snub noses.
Modern revolvers tend to fire more powerful rounds, have larger frames and different grip designs that allow more easily for a second hand to grip, and its very useful as you'll likely need that second hand for the recoil, as well as the strength of both hands to more easily keep steady aim while pulling a double action trigger, which requires much more force to pull and fire than a single action revolver.
But these modern competition pistols have very low recoil rounds, and as the other user pointed out, theres a whole category of these things where being limited to one hand is the point.
On a non Olympic level, these days there are actually (in America) a good number of competitions of old west style revolver shooting, where you have a single action six gun, hold the trigger and fan the hammer, western movie style.
The pros can do this technique and hit six different targets at close range in under a second. Then usually do a gun twirl and holster, haha.
I have a single action .22 lr revolver. It's good ol fashioned fun shooting that thing. I set up a bunch of empty cans between 10 and 40 yards away, and plink away at them with one hand, sending them flying into the air when I land a good shot along the bottom of the can.
If I recall correctly, it doesn’t actually work by just holding the trigger and fanning the hammer. You actually have to fan the hammer and pull the trigger every time to get the cylinder to revolve to the next shot. I recall an episode of Mythbusters where a guy could do it so fast that it looked like the Hollywood version, but he was still having to pull the trigger for each shot.
There may be competition guns that allow for the Hollywood fan, but I’ve never seen or heard of one in real life.
You could also argue that reducing the need to dynamically compensate for the variance of a more traditional firearm is a key part of the coordination.
This is just a very specific tangent. It is obviously different than the baseline shooting experience. It would be difficult to mistake this kind of target shooting for anything resembling practical shooting. That's alright. It can exist as its own thing.