With the horror stories I hear, and the poor workmanship I see on the new revolvers, I’ll stick to buying the older models. Some of them may even have that ghastly hole.

David Deplorable,

About 7 years ago I purchased a new Rock Island Armory snubnose revolver (chambered in .38 Special) on sale for $225. The double-action trigger is very smooth and surprisingly not heavy. The single-action trigger is fantastic without any creep or take-up whatsoever–you just apply pressure until it breaks like a glass rod. And that single-action trigger is nice and light, probably breaking around 3 pounds of force. I cannot begin to imagine how Smith and Wesson is apparently unable to match that trigger.

And frankly, the triggers on new Smith wheelguns suck assorted farm animals. I just picked up a used J-frame for a little over a third of that and it’s got a silky-smooth trigger that’s a joy to shoot. I’ve also got three new production Smiths that have triggers worse than 80s/90s-era S&W Sigmas. The Ruger LCR has a good trigger compared to them and it’s nothing to write home about compared to old S&W wheelguns.

It’s like all their experienced master gun guys who did the fit and finish retired and they failed to teach the new people how to do a decent job.

So no thanks, Smith. Try harder. Do better.

A significant advantage of a revolver (over a semi-auto pistol) for self-defense is that you you can press a revolver into an attacker’s torso when you shoot and still be able to shoot again–unlike a semi-auto pistol which will almost always fail to cycle in the same situation. (The attacker’s body interferes with a semi-auto pistol’s slide moving back and totally forward into battery often limiting you to a single shot in that scenario.) In that situation (where you are pressing your revolver’s barrel into your attacker’s torso), there is an overlooked wounding mechanism: the super-high velocity gases exiting the barrel. Those super-high velocity gases are moving fast enough with enough force to impart a fatal injury in and of themselves even without a bullet.

In light of the fact that combustion gases exiting the barrel can be an important wounding (and hence incapacitation) mechanism, I want a non-ported barrel on my self-defense revolvers to ensure that ALL of the gases go forward into my attacker rather than a significant amount of the gases porting away from the muzzle and therefore away from my attacker.

Choose wisely.

Personally, I like a similar although slightly smaller revolver chambered in .38 Special +P since .357 Magnum’s minimal extra velocity out of a 3-inch barrel does not significantly increase its “stopping power” for human attackers. To each his/her own of course.