The young man's article was basically a gentle rehash of the long-standing common complaints about small revolvers
and their users.
Well, writers need to write. That was basically a simple knock-out piece that didn't cover any new ground and probably entertained some readers who had seen snub revolvers in display cases and secretly wondered about someday buying one.
I thought it was probably aimed at the crowd of relatively younger gun owners (40's and under) who had been raised in the "modern defensive pistol era". If that's your target audience, you write to it.
Me? The older I become, the more I appreciate my J-frames. Of course, that's primarily because I invested so much trigger time using them on the range while working as a LE firearms instructor, and having started in LE during the last hurrah of service revolvers.
The article had the usual generalized complaints about the difficulties experienced by inexperienced revolver shooters. Well, it's not like
that's changed any, right?
I've owned and have carried a pair of 642-1's, a pair of M&P 340's (with & without the ILS), a older 649 (.38SPL), a neat 37-2DAO and a couple of 36's (nickel 3" and blue 2").
Well, I've owned and carried some other "snubs", including a pair of original 3" CA Bulldogs (blue & stainless), 2 1/4" SP101DAO, 2 1/2" & 3" K-frames and an assortment of snub Security/Speed-Six wheelies (wish I still owned those Rugers).
Complaints about a "short sight radius" isn't an excuse not to be able to make solid hits with 2"-3" revolvers out to distances far beyond those encountered in "normal" self defensive distances. I regularly ran my J-frames out to 40-50yds on standard paper and reduced size steel silhouettes and poppers. It wasn't the "short sight radius" so much as the itty bitty targets perched atop the comparatively wider sights. (That was one instance where the thin dime-thick 649 front ramp and rear notch was actually handier than the newer wide ramp/notch of the newer snubs.
)
My SA-capable 2" 649 and 3" 36 allowed me to get hits at the longer distances as easily as when using my 4" revolvers ... albeit it took a moment longer to recover from +P felt recoil if I was using +P loads in the lighter +P capable snubs. The DA & DAO snubs naturally made me work harder at it as the distances got out there.