Llanerosolitario, I must take exception with your statement that one hand shooting is more accurate at long range. If it were so metallic silhouette shooters would have shot one handed. I never witnessed that in my years of participating in that sport.
Now with that said for me as in individual I shoot as well if not better with one hand vs two but it's probably because I am a classically, Marine, trained bulls eye shooter and feel constrained when shooting two handed. However when a precise shot is required I tend to use two hands.
Will Ketchum
Metallic cartridge is about hitting, not about getting scores.
If shooting two hands were more accurate, ISSF 50 meters pistol shooters, who shoot 22 lr pistols one hand at 50 meters, would surely use 2 hands and as a consequence would demand a change in the rules to allow it. But they know that two hands shoting is, in fact, a drawbck when compiting againts an acomplished one hand shooter in pure accuracy matches.
these guys are able to put 60 rounds in the area of a small cup of tea at 50 meters, not only thanks to intensive training and excellent single shot pistols and selected ammo, but also because one hand shooting provides more eye relief to the sights, which means less angular mistakes, but also allows the shooter to modify the grip to make the gun melt with the hand and arm ( as well as having more trigger feeling and control). The fact that the shooting eye is perfectly behind the sights without any momentum or angle as in two hands shooting is important too to avoid or minimize the pararell and horizontal mistake in sights aligment, in the long distance shooting.
The sum of all those facts above means that, technically and practically, shooting one hand is the most adequate position for maximum accuracy...at the price of more fatigue in the shooting arm after 30 rounds..( matches are 60 rounds). More demanding, but tecnically more rewarding too. This was well known in the old times and has also a military origin.
It is interesting to say that these disciplines are old, being most from the late XIX and widely practised with modified centerfire revolvers in its time....interesting also how little known they are, outside Europe and Assia.
in my opinion, the revolver as a military tool in the USA had great importance. It was a key gun in the Mexican American war, specially againts armoured mexican lancers, and in the later indian wars, its 6 shots ( loading 5 is something from modern times) capacity provided more chances to survive for the soldier or pionner at a time when repeating arms were not allways avaiable and the most common arm was the single shot.
I dont think that life in the Old West towns was specially violent. Everybody was well armed, so most people were polite. Just a bad word to a decent woman could mean being linched or hanged, or, at least, being whipped. There was not a urban self defense culture or discipline in the Old West cities......the main danger in the Old West was far away from the city, where the hostile savage attacked, ambushed and provoked terror. Or where army deserters, or criminal gangs were active, attacking, destroying, creating havoc like in post War times.
Gunfights in the West surely were few ...thats why some became famous.
note: the size of the black of the international pistol target is about 2 mm from 50 meters. The world record is about 583....of 600 maximum for 60 shots.... it literally means at least 80 % of rounds in a dime area at 50 meters standing.