I agree. Send it back. However, the risk chief38 states is quite real. Sad that you have to put more work/money into a brand new gun to make it more 'new'.

I can't tell for sure, but it doesn't look like anything actually breeches the rifling. Although right along the edge there are marks that may. Overall a very poor crown. You could try shooting it, and if accurate, the marks are just cosmetic. Still, a consumer should not have to just 'deal' with this.

I agree it isn't just S&W, it's about any new age company. The day and age we live in, the make it cheap and disposable world. It's a numbers game, produce as many as possible as quickly as possible. If only so many come back for repairs, then it is profitable. All they need to do is keep the returns under a certain %. Since the majority of revolver owners have no in depth understanding of their gun's action design, build, or function, the chances of them realizing a problem is slim. Thus S&W beats the % odds on returns. The internet does make it easy for problems to be known, but that is also how these 'newbies' discover problems they didn't know about. Like the OP in this post who wasn't sure if that was acceptable or not. If he wouldn't have posted here, he probably would have just kept his mouth shut and kept the gun. No return for repairs, no money out of Smith's pocket. So I would consider the internet helping bring all these issues to light. Not making them appear exacerbated.