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Pistol-whipping or buffaloing is the act of using a handgun as a blunt weapon, wielding it as an improvised club or whip. "Pistol whipping", Random House Unabridged Dictionary Such a practice dates to the time of , which were brandished in such fashion in close-quarters combat once the weapon's single projectile had been expended.
The modern terms pistol-whipping and to pistol-whip were reported as "new words" of American English in 1955, with cited usages dating to the 1940s."Fifty Years Among the New Words: by John Algeo, p. 142, from vol. 30 (1955), no. 4 of the American Speech, the journal of the American Dialect Society
There are arguments as to the efficacy of either approach. Author Paul Wellman notes that clubbing an opponent with the butt of a gun held by its barrel, as seen in some Westerns, is problematic. First, the danger of an unintentional discharge could fatally wound the wielder. Second, many early revolvers of the black-powder cap and ball era were relatively fragile around their cylinders relative to solid single-shot weapons. Third, rotating a gun so that it can be held by its barrel takes extra time, potentially crucial in a conflict.
To avoid the risk of damage or potential delay, pistol-whipping may be done with the gun held in an ordinary manner, hitting the target with an overhand strike from either the barrel or the flank of the gun above the trigger. It was a fairly common way to incapacitate a man in Western frontier days (assisted by the heavy weight of the handguns of the era), known as "buffaloing", with the verb form being "to buffalo". The Trampling Herd: The Story of the Cattle Range in America by Paul Iselin Wellman (1988) , p. 196. The True Life Wild West Memoir of a Bush-popping Cow Waddy, by Charley Hester, Kirby Ross, 2004, , Chapter 14: "Buffaloing".
The practice was seen as a means of avoiding fatal confrontations. Instead of opening fire, an officer could knock someone unconscious with the barrel of their revolver which they claimed lowered mortality rates.
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