A revolver has a rotating chamber that houses the bullets a pistol has a "clip" or "magazine"
The difference is that a pistol has a magazine and a revolver has a rotating cylinder that has individual chambers to shoot
Some people distinguish between pistols and revolvers. Both are handguns, but revolvers may not be pistols. A pistol would be an automatic, a single shot, a derringer type pistol, etc- but a revolver must have a cylinder holding the cartridges that revolves.
A revolver is louder than a pistol due to the barrel-cylinder gap that is located between the cylinder face and forcing cone of a revolver.
revolver
A "gun" generically refers to any firearm. A "pistol" generally refers to any hand gun. Minor addition: "Pistol" is used colloquially used to refer to any handgun, but technically, it refers to a semi-auto handgun as opposed to a revolver.
Obviously, it will depend on the caliber of pistol, and the distance between you and the pistol. A person firing a .357 Magnum revolver would be exposed to ABOUT 140 dB.
Very generally speaking, a revolver has a revolving cylinder that rotates in order to bring a new round in line with the barrel. A pistol has a single chamber, and fresh rounds are fed into the chamber from a magazine. That is the more recent and slang use of those words. Revolvers and magazine fed semi-automatics are both pistols.
It's the round which makes the difference, not the pistol. A .45 automatic pistol is going to be more powerful than a .38 revolver, for example. There are revolvers chambered in cartridges such as the .454 Casull and .500 S&W Magnum, which aren't available in any automatic pistols, but it's still ultimately the round which matters, and not whether it's an automatic or revolver.
a shotgun is pump action and a revolver "revovles" the ammo.
A semi-auto pistol would be more prone to malfunction than a revolver.
38 special is only a revolver caliber. that's like saying a 44 magnum revolver or a 500 special revolver. a revolver is a revolver
the revolver allows multiple shots with reloading,that can be handy.