I agree with all those who prefer the old ones, the good ones, with pins and recesses.

And of course I'm out front in condemning some of the modern botched jobs coming out of S&W recently.

But there are some very positive things we should keep in mind. There are still some fine craftsmen lurking within S&W, not yet unleashed. Not all of them are oldsters. And the CNC technology which permits large scale high precision manufacturing is right there, in place...if utilized. That's how the good cylinder lockup happens.

And in the '80s - '90s, they started to get it right with the 3rd generation semiautos. S&W has outstanding engineering design capability. That good old S&W craftsmanship is not something which is simply dead and can never come back.

So if anybody at the top of S&W management ever decides they want to make the company and its products better than ever before, even better than in the recessed-and-pinned era, it could be done, in record time...with a memo and some hard-nosed followup supervision.

So far, it is obvious that no such decision has been made. I think the bean counters are still firmly in charge.