The idea that the ammo makers loaded .44 S&W Special (the round's proper and full name) cartridges to such low power levels because of older, weaker guns doesn't really stand up to scrutiny.

The first .44 S&W Special handgun was S&W's Triple Lock. Then, Colt chambered their New Service and Single Action Army revolvers for it. At the times these were produced, they were about the strongest handguns around. There WEREN'T any "older, weaker" .44 Special revolvers to worry about. Even today, the "weakest" .44 Special handgun you can buy is probably the Charter Arms Bulldog, and it is a pretty stout piece.

Time has probably lost the reasons that the .44 Special cartridge was developed with such a mild power level, a 246 grain lead bullet at 750 feet per second. It was the direct descendent of the .44 Russian, ballistically and dimensionally, the only difference between the two is the length of the cartridge case. The .44 Special is basically a ".44 Russian Long" sort of thing. Same bullet weight, same velocity. The Russian had been a black powder round, and the Special was primarily loaded with smokeless powder, but smokeless is less bulky than black powder, so the need for the extra room in the Special's cartridge case to accomodate smokeless powder doesn't make sense. One would think that S&W and the ammo makers would have taken advantage of the greater powder capacity of the Special to boost the round's performance, even 100 feet per second wouldn't have made a huge pressure difference, but they didn't.

I have thought about this for years, having bought my first .44 Special 35 years ago, and the best I could come up with is that, with S&W's new N frame Triple Lock being made with a cylinder long enough for the bigger .45 Colt round, the .44 S&W Special may have been cooked up as a way to help focus public attention on the name of the maker, Smith & Wesson, and away from the foreign connotation that ".44 Russian" may have had. In other words, marketing. After all, the gun maker's major competitor's top round, the .45 Colt, has it's maker's name as part of it's title.

It is a great cartridge, no matter how or why it came about. I think that, outside of the .38 Special I used to handload by the bucketfull for pistol competiton and practice, I have loaded and shot more .44 Special than any other centerfire round.

I think that if I had to streamline my ammunition supply and handloading capacity to a single centerfire cartridge, it would very simply be...






... the .45 ACP.