Taurus makes decent "utility" grade guns.........the Taurus 82 and 65 have been popular with private security companies in the US and foreign countries for decades.........because they're cheaper than S&W and Ruger and they go bang when needed.
Not to get into a "history lesson" but at one time S&W and Taurus were owned by the same company, and supposedly Taurus was slated to be a "budget" line for S&W.
The springs on all of my newer Taurus revolvers (2 82's and an 80) were sub-par and had to be replaced with Wolff springs. The firing pin spring on one of my 82's was mashed into uselessness and I had to put a better spring in. Luckily I'm decently skilled as far as working on DA revolvers or I would have had to pay a gunsmith to fix my $120 security trade in 82.
With Taurus, IMO the QC is hit or miss. I have 4 Taurus revolvers that range in quality from awesome to low mediocre. One, an older Model 83, I had to file about .002 off the forcing cone to get the gun to stop binding up after 20+ rounds. It was a security gun, and my guess is that for the 12-18 rounds a year it was fired for quals (if even that) it worked well enough.
The steel used in Taurus guns is not as good as S&W, and the price reflects that.
Patience will be your friend, and IMO it pays to look for PD and security trade ins.........you can get a new $450 for a new Taurus PT92 or $350 for a new Taurus M85 when there are a lot of PD trade in Glocks, Beretta 92's, S&W 10's and 64's on the market right now for less. I have bought trade-in Ruger Service Sixes for $2-300, and even with holster scouring and 1,000's of rounds through them, I'm still getting more gun for the money than a new Taurus.
I have seen dealers at gun shows flat out refuse to take anything Taurus in trade. They basically have 0 trade value as used guns. My local gun shop stopped being a stocking Taurus dealer because he was tired of them coming back with problems. He says the Taurus .22 revolvers were some of the worst he's seen.
Taurus makes their bread and butter selling cheap snubs like the 85 and they have been selling Judges hand over fist. They also acquired Rossi and ironically Rossi is now Taurus' "budget line"
My opinion, overall, is that Taurus will give you a gun that will go bang but out of the box issues are more common and the warranty work turnaround time and quality for Taurus seems to range from decent to nightmare.......
Unless I see used Taurus' for bargain basement prices, like the cheap holster buffed 82's I got, I won't ever buy a new Taurus.
