S&W phasing out metal auto 3rd gens?

ladder13 said:
Make that 12, only 388 more needed for a special run.
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I wonder what kind of commitment it would take from current 3rd gen owners to show S&W that there is a profitable market available if they were to develop a 4th gen all metal semi auto. Maybe if we got a petition in favor of a 4th gen gun with over 400 signatures on it and presented to the right people at S&W, could be a proactive way of letting S&W that "yes there is a market, and yes people will buy the guns" Infact maybe we should add a poll to this thread pertaining to the likely hood of people purchasing a 4th gen gun.
 
Ooops, my mistake, think Smith will make a run if it's for 500 or more guns. So we need 488 more buyers.
Don't forsee a 4th G all-metal gun, I think the M&P is their focus. :(
 
I believe we would need 500 guns to put together an order of some model that they make or have already made in the past. If you want a new gun design then you would probably need a larger order or some design and set up capitol first. Anyone win the lottery recently?
 
Aaaaa lots of stuff here that I will choose to ignore.

BUT tell me where I can call up and get a NEW TSW. I have not seen any new 3rd gens in distributors listings in years. So, maybe I'm reading this wrong, but where are those that are about to stop? I want a couple more.
 
curioushooter said:
In response to the entire "it's what people want so you can't blame the company for giving them what they want" line of thinking...

The human experience is about EDUCATION: knowing what is worth knowing. Otherwise we are clever apes. Children would probably eat snow-cones exclusively if allowed to, and un-educated adults do the same thing. Someone is educated when they know what is good and worth doing. Eating vegetables is good and worth doing if you want to have good health. Tradition, intellect, and experimentation are the tools we have for knowing things. Tradition indicates that steel is the material of choice for guns, intellect can proves this trough demonstration of what properties of steel make this true, and experimentation shows that steel guns far outlast polymer and offer superior shooting dynamics (accuracy, balance). I for one have never seen a polymer-framed target competition pistol.

Same goes for standard transmissions and rear-drive. Better fuel economy, acceleration, and ability to control the transmission (for engine breaking, etc) are good features and actually cost less than automatics. You may notice that about 50% of Europeans drive standards, while 95% of Americans drive autos. So at least not everybody is ignorant...yet.

Rear drive "feels" better and performs better. All competition grade cars are rear drive (a few 4 wheel drives ones have existed). The best anybody could ever do with handling in a FWD was the Honda Prelude (Car and Driver did an extensive handling test back in the early oughts), which featured a special torque transfer system that attempted to make up for the deficiencies of FWD in cornering. The fact that the car has this system proves that FWD is inferior to RWD. Sort of like the goofy metal slide guide on a Glock. If polymer is so great, then why do you have this little metal thing doing the real work of the frame: guiding the slide? Notice too how Glocks now have steel inserts in the mag wells so a tightly gripped hand wont prevent the magazine from releasing.

People like .380 auto because they are un-educated. It is an underpowered cartridge. It's only respectable feature is that it is so underpowered that it works in straight-blowback pistols, which are inferior designs in terms of longevity. Almost all "experts" agree that a .38 SPL +P or 9mm Para is the MINIMUM power level for social work. 38 Super, .357 Sig, .40 S&W, 45 ACP, and 10mm are all better choices. Remember when .25 ACP was the rage a while back? Finally people woke up to the fact they were shooting grossly overpriced .22 LR!

People like polymer framed pistols because they are either penny wise and dollar foolish or they are un-educated. If they knew the drawbacks, and knew the modest increased expense using steel, they would buy steel. The fact is many people are rather like sheep: "everybody buys a polymer .380 pocket-pistol so I will?" I find the same type of thinking with certain brands of pistols that start with the letter G and end with the letter K.

The educated pistol shooter selects a H&K P7, a 3rd Gen S&W, heck even a 1911! The REALLY uneducated buy things like Hi-Points. The sophomores (wise fools) buy better quality polymer framed pistols and such.

The educated beer drinker drinks Trappist brew, the uneducated drink PBR, and those that think they know what is good drink Sam Adams.



No company will stay in business long with the strategy of giving people what they want. Competition will assure demise of any company with this idea. Co-operation is far more profitable (that is monopolies form). Great companies only stay in business by creating new markets, taking over existing markets, or changing the market in a way that gives them an advantage if they don't co-operate.

The sad fact is that if the firearms companies spent a dime on broadening the appeal of shooting for every dollar they spend trying to get everybody that already owns a good pistol to go out and buy a plastic one, they would be profitable and we wouldn't have to worry about losing our liberties.

I see people all around me spending lots of money pretending to shoot things (video games), but I am one of the few I know that actually shoots. I am fairly convinced the launching of a projectile is a uniquely human activity (no animals do it with any efficacy) and something we inherently enjoy (almost all our sports involve a projectile of some sort, the most refined sports have the most refined focus on the use of the projectile: golf, bowling, shooting). If the companies could tap into this, they would make the professional sports looks like chump change. In countries where shooting is a major sport (Finland, perhaps second to hockey and Switzerland perhaps second to skiing), people are more educated and shooting is respectable. It is supported by the government to a degree instead of operating under a cloud of suspicion.



Couldn't agree more. Preference for plastic is a symptom of the disease in the same way as these other things you mention here.
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You have a LOT of opinions and little facts.

Plastic is a material. WHY do police agencies use plastic guns? They are cost efficient, have little weight and WORK reliably. They have better mean time between failures with GOOD ammo than many firearms. Plus you can MASS Produce a LOT of plastic guns in a short time.

I SUSPECT that you will find 1911's and revolvers have GREATER failure rates than plastic service pistols. Mainly because they are manufactured as COMMERCIAL PRODUCTS NOT military or police qualitiy products. Once made for recreational shooters the manufacturing and quality practices will decline to commercial product levels. LOOK at the recent complaints about 686-6 issues.

Guns are NOT heirlooms or objects of worship. They are tools. I don't care if my gun lasts 100 years or more. I am not buying for my grandchildren, I am buying to SHOOT. I WANT my grandchildren to have the right to buy ANY gun they want. That is more important than heavy obsolete firearm made of steal they can't get parts for like a 3rd generation S&W. (I think these guns have LOW failure rates based on their design, however, being proprietary, having MANY parts and the 3rd generation guns having hidden plastic parts in some models or NYLON parts, are MADE to fail. Look at S&W revolver captive spring J-Frames.

I think you are missing the point of plastic guns. They are STATE OF THE ART. They are easy to carry, shoot and maintain. They are cost effective for todays economy. They work and they protect.
 
They stopped making them to the general public

I just talked to a S&W service representative when purchasing parts and she said they are not making them for civvies like us, only for LE.
 
Smith and Wesson's website still shows a number of 3rd gen guns that they no longer produce. I called them and asked about it. They still produce a small number of some models because they are still used by some police departments, but they are not for sale to the public.
I got my 3rd gen guns from GunBroker.com.
 
S&W will still make 3rd gen guns for its LE/Gov customer base, especially those who have already been using the 3rd gen guns and wish to continue using them ... for now, at least.

That doesn't mean they won't eventually be trying to talk those same customers into switching over to the M&P series. They've already quietly been doing that with some of their previous SW99 customers.

Don't be surprised if S&W eventually decides to offer to transition existing LE customers from using newer 3rd gen guns, like TSW's, over to M&P's for a can't-pass-this-up type of deal.

Yes, it's rather a shame that S&W, who basically created the traditional double action, metal-framed service pistol concept adopted for widespread LE use in this country, is seemingly willing to let a couple of foreign based companies essentially take over the manufacture of such pistols for use by some of our LE/Gov agencies.

Last time I called the LE Sales folks at S&W, and then discussed it with a S&W law enforcement distributor, the company will still sell 3rd gen guns either to agencies or directly to individual cops. The individual LE sales must be conducted through a designated S&W law enforcement distributor, not a commercial distributor. I was told the guns available to individual cops are those which may be available in their vaults as part of occasional production overruns for LE agency orders. The LE distributor sets whatever price they choose, unlike when a gun is ordered directly from the factory under either the armorer purchase or the VIP programs, where the factory sets the discounted price, collects it and then ships the gun to the distributor or chosen FFL dealer.

What's available can vary depending on what they have on hand at any given time. The luck of the draw, so to speak. I was told that one fellow had been lucky enough a while back to be able to buy a brand new production 5906, not a 5906TSW, because there was one available that had been left over from a production run fairly recently done for an agency customer who had been using the pre-TSW 5906's and had wanted to buy some new ones in sufficient quantity to result in a new run. Lucky guy.

And yes, it still seems that on those occasions when the company seems to desire to clean out part of their vaults, they do release some guns directly onto the commercial market through a non-LE distributor.

LE trade-ins and Demo models are sometimes available, too.

If more people had been willing to pay the freight on the metal-framed 3rd gen guns when they were on dealer's shelves we wouldn't be having this sort of conversation, would we? ;)
 
Yeah, "pay the freight".. Over the years, I've noticed too many guys caught up in repeating the bad mouthing (of these pistols) they've heard from someone else. Sometimes it is simply the "glamour" of a foreign pistol.

Range time can help quite a bit, unless they they keep their eyes and mind closed to something they do not want to hear. Hah! I'm sure I've never been like that! ;)

So here we are. I'm not sure the 3rd Gen can be improved, except for accuracy - which S&W already knows how to do. Hopefully they'll decide to do that and bring them back like the Classic revolvers, and sooner is better.

And not only is S&W finally making 1911/45's, but they're making a lot of them. Go figure...
 
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I just got a NEW 3rd Generation CS9 from S&W. I bought it through the 40% Off Military program that they had last year.

I had originally ordered the Duo-Tone 22A because I needed another 22. But, not long after ordering it, I landed New-Old_Stock 2206. Happy MAN!!!:D

So, I emailed Helene at the S&W customer service department to see if I could change my order. She said yes. So I did. When I asked about the CS9, she told me that it was discontinued, but they had around 15 of them still in stock. Well, I got one.

"NOTE to SELF: You are an idiot for ever selling your 1006!"

So, now I'm going on a quest to replace my 1006 before they're all gone.

SgtSam:cool:
 
M&P Pro Series 4inch

I have to say i have had some great gen 3 guns over the years and i still have and carry my 3913TSW but my new 4inch pro series M&P shoots as good if not better than $2,000 pistols i have owned. If you can get over the polymer issue its a great, reliable (1k rounds thru it 0 problems) pistol.
 
andyo5 said:
S&W are merely focusing on what the public will buy. Sales of their all metal guns does not justify continued production of them. Police department long ago dumped their all metal guns in favor of Glocks. The public appears to have followed suit. The good news is that you can get a good deal on a used all metal pistol right now. I bought a lightly used 4583 with utility rail for $500 and love it.
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Exactly, let the general public buy the Glocks and other plastic guns. That leaves more 3rd generation S&W's for the guys that appreciate guns that are made without plastic.

Regards,
roaddog28
 
Atlanta_SW40 said:
I wonder what kind of commitment it would take from current 3rd gen owners to show S&W that there is a profitable market available if they were to develop a 4th gen all metal semi auto. Maybe if we got a petition in favor of a 4th gen gun with over 400 signatures on it and presented to the right people at S&W, could be a proactive way of letting S&W that "yes there is a market, and yes people will buy the guns" Infact maybe we should add a poll to this thread pertaining to the likely hood of people purchasing a 4th gen gun.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't hold my breathe. I gave SA a petition about a year ago with 2500 signatures asking for a 10mm XD. They said that the existing calibers were selling just fine and they were not interested.

I would be willing to bet S&W would say the same.


If you want to start a petition I would sign it.
 
Super Trucker is on the right track.

I do not believe a petition with 20,000 signatures would matter. Unless S&W is different than most firms providing goods, they make their product decisions based on their own market analysis.

A 'sackfull' of potential/maybe purchases such as indicated by a petition would have little bearing with most firms.

And yes, I would sign a petition also.
 
Sorry was out of town and got away from the forums for a minute. I'll definitely start one...why not you know? Only good can come from it.
 
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