The deal with gas ports to reduce recoil is they function like thrust reversers on jets, or the muzzle brakes on artillery.
Recoil is made up of 2 major components:
Inertial reaction to the accelerating mass of bullet and powder/gas, and
jet blast effect of high pressure gas exiting the muzzle after the bullet has left the barrel.
Muzzle brakes do several things: they
reduce the gas exiting the muzzle to reduce the gas jet effect by diverting it through the brake,
deflect gas to act against the inertia effect of the bullet accelerating through the barrel to reduce the straight aft recoil,
and produce a upward directed gas jet which reduces the rotation of the gun, particularly handguns, during recoil.
The effectiveness of muzzle brakes depends on how well these are accomplished. That depends on the relative case capacity to bore diameter, barrel length, cartridge operating pressure, gas pressure at the muzzle.
I have an S&W PC 500 Hunter. It has a 6 ½” barrel with a pretty descent muzzle brake. When I fire it with powerful loads, I think I can feel the short duration recoil pulse from the bullet accelerating down the barrel and then the longer, opposite effect, produced by the muzzle brake, after the bullet has cleared the barrel. The overall effect is to mitigate the recoil from a hand canon to something tolerable.
In a single action .454, the action line of the barrel is fairly high compared to the support line of the hand. Using a brake to reduce the muzzle rise during recoil would certainly work, but it may work at the expense of increasing the linear rearward thrust onto the hand. That depends on the design and efficiency of the brake design.
