Why NOT to Carry a .38 Snub

[bmcgilvray]

Oh ... another revolver tie up occurred to me.

Years ago a piece of thread from off of a homemade cleaning patch became lodged beneath the extractor star of my favorite Smith & Wesson Model 10 after a cleaning session. Next time it came out for shooting use the revolver was balky, but it would have "sorta" worked. The thread was discovered and removed, the extractor star returned to seating properly, and a lesson was learned about attention to detail in revolver maintenance.

 

[AManWearingAHat]

I guess I still don't understand how anyone can recommend a 2" J frame, even with reduced recoil loads for the occasional shooter. The revolver defenders here act like Automatics are the most complicated things in the world tuned like Swiss watches with any one of its hand fit intricacies ready to break at a moments notice.

Have you taken the side plate off a revolver? Have you seen a cut away drawing of a glock? At best the complexity and points of failure between the two is a wash.

Shooting Revolver - Load rounds, Close cylinder pull trigger
Shooting Automatic - Insert magazine, rack slide, pull trigger.

If your mental capacities are over whelmed by this change, you have no business carrying a firearm.

Reloading Revolver - Open Cylinder, transfer to non shooting hand, hit ejection rod (did all the cases eject?), fumble with loose rounds or insert speed loader, discard speed loader, close cylinder, pull trigger. (Of course I know we're all Jerry Miculek's here and have practiced our reloads endlessly under pressure and couldn't possibly hesitate or fumble a movement that requires a lot of fine motor skills. I certainly know I am )

Reloading automatic - Depress magazine release, insert fresh magazine, rack slide, pull trigger.

The automatic seems a lot simpler to me. They point just as well as any snub nose and generally come with highly visible 3 Dot sights with better, crisper, triggers from the factory and with a capacity advantage. Sure you may not need the 5 -10 extra rounds, but the one time you do you'll be glad they're there.

 

[Ziggy2525]

I guess I still don't understand how anyone can recommend a 2" J frame, even with reduced recoil loads for the occasional shooter.
...
Reloading Revolver -
...
Reloading automatic -

Mechanically the clockworks in a revolver may be less reliable than a semi comparing range guns over thousands of rounds (maybe), but in the instance of a single use, IMO there's way less chance for a user induced malfunction with a revolver than a semi-auto (limp wrist, mag not inserted all the way, slide not in battery).

With reloads, are reloads even a thing in a civilian self defense encounter? Hasn't the ASP guy said he's never seen one ever used in the tens of thousands of videos he's reviewed?

 

[bmcgilvray]

The revolver has one very important characteristic trait that no automatic pistol can claim. The revolver is operated by direct mechanical manipulation.

In order to function, the automatic is totally dependent on the correct function of the cartridge in ways that the revolver is not dependent on the cartridge. Cartridge dimensions and bullet shape must of necessity fall within a more narrow dimensional range for the automatic than for the revolver and the powder charge requires more more narrow constraints. Correct cartridge performance is far more critical to the proper function of the automatic than it is for the revolver.

The cylinder of the revolver can arguably be considered a more reliable mechanism for introducing a cartridge into battery than the detachable magazine of the automatic. Those magazines can and do become troublesome to a far greater extent than does the revolver's simple mechanically advancing cylinder.

 

[pawngal]

This discourse could go on forever.....
Just think about this for a minute, What if there was only one type of handgun made? Revolver, semi, or even a single shot Derringer? Whichever it was we would have to adapt. Thankfully we have choices.

Kind of the like old quip, if all the old guys liked the same thing, they would have all chased your granny.

I do however take offence by the the statement made above:
"If your mental capacities are over whelmed by this change, you have no business carrying a firearm."

 

[fredj338]

No one yet has mentioned the thousands of us who watched a conflict between L. H. Oswald and Jack Ruby. It would be difficult to explain to my nine year old self how a 38 wasn't enough gun.

Uh, an assassination is not a conflict. If you were handcuffed I could probably kill you with a pencil. I wouldn't want to rely on a pencil to defend myself if attacked. 5rds is enough, until its not. Study gunfights, knife attacks, pretty easy to see where it all can come apart in a hurry.

 

[bmcgilvray]

Why yes, yes we have taken the side plate off of a revolver.

We've also taken down a Glock and seen "the inwardness of the thing."
We haven't even had to rely on a cut-away drawing of a Glock.

Nobody here's acting as if either is akin to the intricacies of a Swiss watch.

My mental capacities, never all that great and diminishing as I age, are yet not overwhelmed by use of either revolver or automatic.

Why NOT to Carry a .38 Snub

To which could be replied: Why not carry a .38 Snub?

I'd recommend the revolver, snub or otherwise, even to the occasional shooter.

 

[Mister X]

One of the revolvers greatest strengths IMO is its reliability regardless of the shooters grip, stance or how well the gun is generally supported. A particular semi-auto may be perfectly reliable through thousands of rounds under range conditions, but I think it important to consider the possibility you may not be able to get two hands on the gun, may have to fire from retention or while pulling the gun back, while moving, in contact with attacker, while injured, on the ground and so on. Under such circumstances, a seemingly perfectly reliable semi-auto can suddenly become not so.

And then there is also the issue of intentional or inadvertent contact being made and either forcing the gun out of battery(at least momentarily) or the slide movement being fouled. It could be as simple as the slide making contact with your clothing. I was reading a post on another forum where someone stated their M&P 9c was very prone to this issue. It honestly doesn't take much to stop an autoloader from cycling as Tom Givens demonstrates in this video... [ame]https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=re8oMnGbnh4[/ame]

I also recently came across an article from Greg Ellifritz which the following excerpt was taken from..

"Observation #1– Please understand that normally reliable guns will occasionally sh*t the bed when fired from a retention position.

I noticed this was especially true with a Glock 43 and a couple of Walther PPQ pistols in class. I also saw the same issue with a S&W Shield (although with less frequency). The guns were completely reliable when shot with two hands. They had all kinds of feeding problems in anything but the most stable thumb/pectoral index shooting position from retention.
Some pistol models seem to be significantly more prone to malfunctioning if not shot in an incredibly stable firing platform. If the gun wasn't fully supported in all 360 degrees, the malfunction rate skyrocketed."

Source: Oops! We can't find that. | Buckeye Firearms Association

I have no clue as to the likelihood of this actually occurring in real world conditions or the degree it's relevant to armed self-defense, but I definitely think it's worthy of at least some amount of consideration.

 

[Fastbolt]

Yep. It can be pretty surprising to some folks when they find themselves in a situation where their normally "dead-nuts reliable" semiauto pistol chokes because something touched it in just the wrong way.

Might be when they're being run through some range scenario where their pistol touches a barricade (during recoil, and they don't realize it happened) ... or some article of clothing gets too close to the action going on ... or they simply aren't able to grasp the pistol as well as they expect, or think they are ... and the pistol doesn't operate quite like they expect.

Revolvers can be induced to choke, too, especially if they have external hammers, but the shooter may have to work a bit harder to make it happen.

 

[AManWearingAHat]

I do however take offence by the the statement made above:
"If your mental capacities are over whelmed by this change, you have no business carrying a firearm."

That's fine. I stand by it. It wasn't targeted at anyone in particular. But if a person cannot grasp such a simple manual of arms, I worry about their mental state and decision making in a deadly force situation.

The skill floor for double action shooting (most likely in an SD scenario given how fast they happen) of any revolver is much higher, and requires a much large dedication of time from the occasional shooter. Revolvers are great training tools for teaching fundamentals and wonderful range guns. But my opinion is that you will produce a safe and more competent shooter, making better hits on target, faster with an automatic. Additionally the automatics and the ammunition available today has largely closed the "reliability" gap. Judging by the Gun Store cases stacked high with polymer guns, I'd say the market at large agrees with me.

Again carry what you want, I'm just some guy on the internet arguing for some entertainment through the pandemic. Remember we're all here because we love revolvers at the end of the day, what ever we choose to use them for.

 

[eb07]

Just to show you my line of thinking. I am almost 300 miles from home in a hotel in Nevada for work getting ready to head up on the hill to do some work in the morning. I do not have my snub with me that I carry almost every single day. There is a time and place for everything. This time I can't avoid SSS so I prepare differently.

 

[cremaley]

I own and carry both the Sig P365 and P320 X-Compact but recently picked up a S&W 327 8 shot snub nose revolver that I will work into my carry rotation. In my opinion this is a beautifully made Performance Center revolver that is both easy to shoot and carry. It's definitely not a pocket revolver but that's fine with me as I never pocket carry. I always carry OWB at four o'clock.

 

[southchatham]

Typical I can't do it so it's bad. None of the 4 reasons are valid, at least for me.

 

[tops]

Or she would never be a granny Larry

 

[ruger 22]

Some of the fallacies of the aforementioned article were well explained here. I have carried a BHP for over 40 years backed up by a 2" Model 36. The few, (thank God), hot encounters I had were all very close range and the snub could have handled these alone very easily. I liked the idea of having two guns but positively one of them would always have been the snub---my favorite load for it then was the now no longer available 200 grain super police load.

 

[okiegtrider]

Like a lot in this thread, not much impressed with this, "vaunted", writer or his take on .38 snubbys. Never heard of him before today. I'll be hanging on to my .38s.

Meh.

 

[eclayton]

IMO none ( that survive). In a panic driven adrenaline rush there's no time to use sights, unless you've got the demeanor and time to take aim at 20 yards plus; then ya go to jail.

Jim Cirillo survived a few, and I remember a quote from him to the effect that the single clearest memory he retained from the moment when shots were fired in his first lethal force encounter was the mental image of the serrations on the front sight of his Model 10, because at that instant he was concentrating on his front sight like his life depended on it—which it did. Jeff Cooper trained a whole generation of professionals to focus on the front sight.

 

[ContinentalOp]

Jim Cirillo survived a few, and I remember a quote from him to the effect that the single clearest memory he retained from the moment when shots were fired in his first lethal force encounter was the mental image of the serrations on the front sight of his Model 10, because at that instant he was concentrating on his front sight like his life depended on it—which it did. Jeff Cooper trained a whole generation of professionals to focus on the front sight.

Plenty of accounts of people not using their sights in a gunfight, including Bob Stasch, who survived 14 gunfights while a Chicago PD officer. Also, plenty of accounts of people who did use sights, including Cirillo.

There are also threat-focused approaches where you focus on the target with your blurry sights in your line of vision. I've used this method and it works quite well. I've also just brought the gun up into my line of sight to get a rough alignment on the target.

Another reason why sights, and practicing sighted fire, can be important is because it helps build "muscle memory" for getting the gun aligned on target. Even if you can't see the sights, or focus on them, prior practice will help instill proper alignment and improve your ability to hit the target.

 

[ultra45]

Take what the author "Jim Grant" states in his article, with a grain of salt. He is a writer and videographer and reviews guns. He is entitled to his opinions, that all the article is.

The snub nose revolver has served LE and civilians well and will continue to do so. Are there better platforms, sure, but to lambast the snubby, well, that's just un- American, IMHO. Many a life has been saved and crimes prevented with revolvers. The true experts will confirm those FACTS.

It all comes down to personal preference and personal risk management, as well as ones level of training. Just my 2 cents and 40 yrs in LE.

 

[Robspeire]

Oatmeal is better than no meal.