A sport pistol or standard pistol is a type of

handgun A handgun is a short- barrelled gun, typically a firearm, that is designed to be usable with only one hand. It is distinguished from a long gun (i.e. rifle, shotgun or machine gun, etc.), which needs to be held by both hands and also braced ...

used in several

shooting sports Shooting sports is a group of competitive sport, competitive and recreational sporting activities involving proficiency tests of accuracy, precision and speed in shooting — the art of using ranged weapons, mainly small arms (firearms and airgun ...

, including the Olympic 25 metre pistol event and

25 metre standard pistol 25 meter standard pistol is one of the ISSF shooting events, introduced at the ISSF World Shooting Championships in 1970. It has its roots in the conventional pistol competitions developed by the National Rifle Association of America T ...

. Since 2005, the 25 metre rapid fire pistol rules also require the use of sport pistols, with a few extra requirements. Other sports to make use of this gun are women's 25 metre military rapid fire pistol,

bullseye Bullseye or Bull's Eye may refer to: Symbols * ◎ (Unicode U+25CE BULLSEYE), in the Geometric Shapes Unicode block * (Unicode U+0298 LATIN LETTER BILABIAL CLICK), the phonetic symbol for bilabial click Animals and plants * Bull's Eye, '' Eury ...

(in one of its three stages), and a variety of other national shooting sports. By the

International Shooting Sport Federation The International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) is the governing body of the Olympic shooting events in rifle, pistol and shotgun (clay target) disciplines, and of several non-Olympic shooting sport events. ISSF's activities include regula ...

's rules, sport pistols must be in

caliber In guns, particularly firearms, caliber (or calibre; sometimes abbreviated as "cal") is the specified nominal internal diameter of the gun barrel Gauge (firearms) , bore – regardless of how or where the bore is measured and whether the f ...

.22 LR The .22 Long Rifle or simply .22 LR or 22 (metric designation: 5.6×15mmR) is a long-established variety of .22 caliber rimfire ammunition originating from the United States. It is used in a wide range of rifles, pistols, revolvers, smooth ...

, with a minimum capacity of five rounds. Revolvers are allowed, but not at all as popular as in

25 metre center-fire pistol 25 meter center-fire pistol is one of the ISSF shooting events, and is normally a men-only event. Its origin lies in competitions with military-style service pistols, and as such its history dates back to the 19th century. 25 meter pistol (forme ...

. Minimum trigger weight is , and maximum overall weight is . The gun may only have

open sights Iron sights are a system of physical alignment markers (usually made of metallic material) used as a sighting device to assist the accurate aiming of ranged weapons (such as a firearm, airgun, crossbow or even compound bow), or less commonly as ...

, and there are restrictions to the design of the grip. Common examples of sport pistols are the Benelli MP90S and Benelli MP95E,

Walther GSP The Walther GSP, ''Gebrauchs Sportpistole'' (Sport Pistol for Standard Use), is a single-action, precision targetshooting pistol made in Germany by Walther Sportwaffen. It has the same technical base as the Walther OSP and thus is almost identi ...

, the Baikal MCM, Hämmerli 208, Hämmerli 280 and Hämmerli SP20, the Pardini SP, as well as the High Standard .22 Pistol and the Smith & Wesson Model 41. Many of these have also spawned .32-caliber versions for use in the center-fire pistol event.

References

{{reflist Handguns