Nothing personal against you, but your words are quotable.

I think this is very much over-used by passionate gun folks who love a certain kind of older, discontinued gun. The kind of people who hang out in this area of this site obviously love these pistols and we chase them. And while nobody is likely to drop a thousand on a new production 5906, some of us would spend that on a 1006. But that isn't my point.

The point is that our passionate, vocal little group of folks is a smidge of a slice of a tiny bit of a small partial wee little nugget of the gun buying public. If anyone who reads this can't understand that or agree to it, just visit any large firearms/shooting discussion site that isn't dedicated to one brand or type and you'll see simply by the volume of discussion.

If you don't buy that as evidence, visit ANY shooting range and make note of everything you see and try and determine what percentage is a S&W metal framed 1-2-3rd Gen.

If you can't accept that, visit any/every gun store and tell us what the percentage is there. Sure we see some (we buy them and we show them off here!) but just look at the numbers.

The passionate arguments made in favor of the 3rd Gens were more relevant a decade ago than they are now. It's not because the pistols are worse now and new guns are better (no way), it's because TIME HAS PASSED. The world has evolved.

The answer to the question of WHY the 3rd Gens are "gone" is pretty simple, IMO. It is not the M&P line and not polymer guns across the board. The answer is the 1911. The ridiculous wave of popularity associated with the 1911 pretty much forced S&W to also jump in the fray and something had to give.

The 3rd Gen pistols is what had to give.