Purpose of dual points?

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Okay so I have been messing about with a Mallory distributor that was on one of my industrial Model A engines.
It seems to me that to have it work properly both sets of points will need to open and close at the same exact time. If one were to open earlier it would not cause the high tension spark to occur until the other one opens as they are both tied together. So why have dual points?
Redundancy or am I missing something.
Looks to me that one set of points could be removed and it wouldn't miss a beat.