My former mother-in-law has the same little gun you describe as her purse gun. Her Marine gunnery sergeant husband must have bought it for her in the early 80s, and he was a man who I trusted to know what he was doing as far as firearms go. I was able to take it to the range, and as a point and shoot snubbie it functioned flawlessly. An older gentleman explained that during a certain period in South America the Rossi company manufactured under license to S&W. Eventually Rossi moved away from that arrangement but continued manufacturing on the same S&W equipment, making that Rossi potentially a very nice little clone. The point being...an older one from a certain era may be a whole lot better than a newer one. I'm not stating any of this as fact, just that this was the story as it was explained to me.