Ah, I stand corrected. I was thinking about firing action only (a double-action .357 Magnum), not the ejection (or not) of the spent shell casing.
A way to think about which firearms are semiautomatic is if the act of firing one round brings another into position for firing. When you are firing a semiautomatic firearm, the energy from the first round ejects the casing, then as the slide moves forward another round is put into position.
With a double-action revolver, once you have fired on round the spent casing is still in front of the hammer. Pulling the trigger to fire the next round brings the round to be fired into position.
To further confuse things, there is actually a semiautomatic revolver, the Mateba. The energy from one round is used to rotate the cylinder into position for the next shot.
As for the OP, the Beretta 86 was what I came in here to mention. A magazine can be inserted and then the barrel tipped up to put a round in the chamber, eliminating the necessity of racking the slide. It is sometimes mentioned as an alternative to a revolver for those who do not have the requisite hand strength to rack the slide.
If one cannot rack the slide, should one have a weapon at all? Just a question.
I am a petite female, but when the only handgun in the house was that .357 mag, I learned how to handle and shoot it. Sure, it’s a big heavy gun with a hell of a kick, and I couldn’t fire it all day or anything, but I am very comfortable with it.
It seems like possessing or using a gun you aren’t comfortable with is an accident waiting to happen. People should come “up” to the weapons, rather than having the weapons come “down” to them.
I’ve always thought the fact that automatics allow an empty chamber with a loaded magazine is a big safety advantage. With a fully loaded revolver, the firing pin is always resting millimeters away from a live cartridge, and you’re just a hammer’s strike away from discharging the weapon. An automatic without a cartridge in the chamber can be dropped, kicked, and dry-fired to your heart’s content. Until you rack that slide, it’s as harmless as a water pistol.
I am surprised Enfield has not checked in on this one, or the Airman. They are both really up on this sort of thing. In their absence I will try to fill the void. To the best of by knowledge there is no such weapon as you decribe, save maybe one, the gyrojet. I have never actually handled a gyrojet, or been in the same room with one. So I am far from sure if it would meet your specs, but it is the only thing I can think of that might come close. Not having actually seen one in use, I am not sure if it can fire from the magazine or if there is an intermediate charging action (such as racking the slide on on a .45) to load the chamber and bring the weapon battery.
I can’t think of a single weapon that acts in the manner the OP describes except for the small caliber tipping barrel handguns where you can load one into the barrel breech.
The bottom line is that there are two conditions for a semi-automatic pistol to function: the round has to be in battery, which means that it must be fed from the magazine. As previously mentioned, there are styles of weapons that are exceptions to that rule, but they do not involve feeding from the magazine, so they are not what the OP is looking for. The other condition is that the firing pin must be able to strike the primer of the inserted round, and since the firing pin is always integrated into the breech face on the slide it is necessary for the slide to move forward, which means that the action is not open and a separate action must be taken to allow that contact, such as releasing the slide forward or racking the slide through its full travel, which also inserts a round from the magazine into an empty chamber.
I can’t imagine making a weapon such as the one the OP describes, and from a standpoint of safety I don’t know why you would want to. That’s not to say that you couldn’t, though. I’m not a designer, and such obstacles can generally be overcome, but again, what for? If you want it to fire immediately upon magazine insertion, simply do a tactical reload, which involves inserting the new magazine before the previous one is depleted, thus leaving a round in the chamber. I suppose you could design an open bolt pistol with the features you describe, but they would be illegal as all open bolt firearms are classified as automatic weapons and are thus illegal to manufacture for public use and have been for a long time.
As I mentioned before.
But maybe you could answer a question I 've always had: exactly what purpose does that serve? Both Beretta & Taurus make tip-up barrel pistols, but I’ve never understood why one would want to load a round like that. Do you?
It eases loading the weapon. It is a blowback action, and like all blowback actions it is much more difficult to draw the slide back. Try pulling back the slide on a Walther PPK and then try it with a GLOCK and you’ll notice the difference.
If you put one round in the barrel and then lock the barrel in place you’ve eliminated the need to rack the slide.
My question has been answered to my satisfaction, thanks everyone.