After just over 30 years or so…
See, it was sometime in the spring of 1995 or thereabouts and like a lot of folks I was more than a little ticked off by Bill’s crimes and most specifically the 10round magazine capacity restriction. To this very day I’ve never had anyone satisfactorily explain to my face how a gun, any gun, could conceivably be more dangerous with an 11, 15, 20 or even 100 round magazine than one with just 10; being that you can only realistically shoot one round at a time.
Several years earlier when I turned 21 and was still in college I had purchased a stainless steel Ruger Blackhawk in .357Magnum but later sold it off owing to its extreme inaccuracy (likely from being dropped and buggered up as it was a display gun; long story.)
So after much hanging around the magazine racks (remember those days?) and reading lots and lots of fun rags I think I finally ran across an article on the S&W 411. I knew our local sheriff and PD both carried stainless Smiths which turned out to be the 4003 and 4006. But those were simply a bridge too far at the time for a poor sap like me, and so I did the next best thing - put down a deposit on a 411. In due time I managed to pay it off and take it home. I didn’t get to shoot it nearly as much as I wanted because ammo was always expensive. Long long story short I think I ended up selling or trading it off to raise money to buy something nicer, like the USP45 or Sig 229?
It would be another twenty years before I finally did come across a nice, clean, S&W 4003 in the box that wasn’t imported from Israel (used and abused) or overpriced, etc on GB and that became my second Third Generation which I still have to this day, since then in the past year or so I’ve added a 6906, 915, 4006, 4003TSW(sold), WVSP 4566TSW, 1006, and finally just today, the same gun that got me all started in this little adventure, the original, one and only 411, with original box and one mag. It looked like it was shot with dirty ammo and put away dirty but it cleaned right up beautifully, recoil and magazine springs are good and strong so I don’t thing it was shot much at all. The box is literally perfect - as good as possibly can be expected for going on 31 years old.
About the only mystery if there’s any is that the triple alpha prefix on the box and gun, VAF8494, doesn’t show up on page 586 of SWCA 5th Edition. Maybe someone with access to more detailed files may be able to shed light on that as the 915 and 411 were both short run models based on the 5906/4006 just before the 1994 Crime Bills then replaced by the 910 and 410 respectively.
Tom
See, it was sometime in the spring of 1995 or thereabouts and like a lot of folks I was more than a little ticked off by Bill’s crimes and most specifically the 10round magazine capacity restriction. To this very day I’ve never had anyone satisfactorily explain to my face how a gun, any gun, could conceivably be more dangerous with an 11, 15, 20 or even 100 round magazine than one with just 10; being that you can only realistically shoot one round at a time.
Several years earlier when I turned 21 and was still in college I had purchased a stainless steel Ruger Blackhawk in .357Magnum but later sold it off owing to its extreme inaccuracy (likely from being dropped and buggered up as it was a display gun; long story.)
So after much hanging around the magazine racks (remember those days?) and reading lots and lots of fun rags I think I finally ran across an article on the S&W 411. I knew our local sheriff and PD both carried stainless Smiths which turned out to be the 4003 and 4006. But those were simply a bridge too far at the time for a poor sap like me, and so I did the next best thing - put down a deposit on a 411. In due time I managed to pay it off and take it home. I didn’t get to shoot it nearly as much as I wanted because ammo was always expensive. Long long story short I think I ended up selling or trading it off to raise money to buy something nicer, like the USP45 or Sig 229?
It would be another twenty years before I finally did come across a nice, clean, S&W 4003 in the box that wasn’t imported from Israel (used and abused) or overpriced, etc on GB and that became my second Third Generation which I still have to this day, since then in the past year or so I’ve added a 6906, 915, 4006, 4003TSW(sold), WVSP 4566TSW, 1006, and finally just today, the same gun that got me all started in this little adventure, the original, one and only 411, with original box and one mag. It looked like it was shot with dirty ammo and put away dirty but it cleaned right up beautifully, recoil and magazine springs are good and strong so I don’t thing it was shot much at all. The box is literally perfect - as good as possibly can be expected for going on 31 years old.
About the only mystery if there’s any is that the triple alpha prefix on the box and gun, VAF8494, doesn’t show up on page 586 of SWCA 5th Edition. Maybe someone with access to more detailed files may be able to shed light on that as the 915 and 411 were both short run models based on the 5906/4006 just before the 1994 Crime Bills then replaced by the 910 and 410 respectively.
Tom
