Thanks Snapping Twig.
The sad thing is S&W has made this worse for both themselves and us by:
1. not marking the guns
2. by not maintaining a list of which guns get checked
or
3. both
Judging by the small number that actually get kept, (I believe the number is 1, in recent years) I suspect that most of the problem guns were found in within the first year or so. We are just retesting those same guns over and over again. Even though S&W didn't do it in the beginning, don't you think it would be a good idea for them to start doing either 1, 2 or 3 at this point? Perhaps we could start maintaining a list of our own. Those of us who have guns that have been checked submit the serial numbers and someone here maintains a list with and notes. Such as;
S/N AHBXXXX shipped after the problem date.
S/N AHBXXXY Checked in 1987 OK per S&W.
Obviously not perfect, but at least we could limit some of the shipping and the stress this causes owners. It would also be honor system as there is no way to verify that an owner who submited their gun to the list was being truthful, although I see no reason that someone might lie about it.
