And I have seen old ads for the .38-44 Heavy Duty which read "Also available in .44 Special and .45 ACP" as I recall. All it meant that the otherwise same gun was available in those calibers, NOT that they were all .38-44 Heavy Duty models. We all know the .44 Special is a .44 Hand Ejector or .44 Military, and the .45 would be a .45 Army or Model 1917.

If you look far enough you can probably find an ad for a .32 H.E. that said "Also available in .38 S&W" too. It may even go back to the New Model Number 3 Double Action which was available in .44 American (I believe) .44 S&W Russian, .44-40, and .38-40 (at least). Even though they were identical except for caliber and/or chambering, it would not be correct to call a .44 Russian or .38-40 a "Frontier Model", which was specifically the .44-40 chambering. No one the least bit knowledgible of S&W revolvers would argue this point.

If it were correct, and it isn't, to call either a .32-20 or .38 Spl. K-Frame a "Military & Police", it would be the only occurrence in all the named models where two different, common, calibers shared the same model name!** Even the .38 S&W (.38-200) guns were not called M&Ps. They were the K-200 to the factory, not a .38 S&W M&P!

Basing a definition of a named model based on advertising is not well founded.

I have never seen anyone on this forum reference "Smith & Wesson Handguns" by Roy C. McHenry and Walter F. Roper. Both gentlemen were S&W employees during the period when these models were current production. They gathered the information for their book during their employment prior to WWII. Mr. McHenry was, at least un-officially, S&W Historian during this time, much as Roy Jinks has been for years. They make reference in their book to the .32-20 Hand Ejector as the "Winchester Model", not .32-20 M&P! Unfortunately I have not seen Roy take a stand on this issue. And, yes, Walter F. Roper is THAT Walter F. Roper.

I don't know about any of you, but I would take the word of the S&W Company Historian long before that of an advertising copy-writer who is trying to get the most possible information in the least possible space, and takes the liberty of adding "Also available in....." to a model picture that fairly represents several very specific models that are cosmetically identical instead of writing the full blurb with photo for each separate item. An 8 page pamphlet would turn into a 20+ page book in no time at all if that was done.

**There are two exceptions, maybe. These are the .22 Military & Police (Post Office Model) and .32 Military & Police models. Both extremely rare models. I Would ask, however, did S&W refer to these two models as .22 & .32 M&P, or is that just a collectors term for them? I would expect the designation as the "Post Office Model" really answers it for this one! What did the factory refer to the .32 version as in internal documents?

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Gunsmithing since 1961