Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns S&W Model 60

Well then, I guess the next question is this:

Would the lock keep you from buying a new model if this is the gun you want? (don't worry TRH, I already know how you feel)

The main reason for ME not wanting one with a lock is that I think the lock us fugly as sin!

Yes I did.

Due to states of residence and overseas travel, I din't own a handgun until I was in my thirties. At that time, after careful deliberation, I bought a 3" Mod 60. Great gun.

When it came out in .357 I upgraded, to an even better gun. With mild reloads I taught my wife and son to shoot, in the woods I carried it with 180 grain Federal Castcores, and it still does duty as the go-to home defense gun loaded with .38 PlusP's. Simple for anyone in the house to operate, even under duress.

I have been fortunate. Only twice in the past twenty years have I felt myelf in imminent peril from a potential opponent (rattlesnakes dont count). As luck would have it both happened this year.

Back in June while doing field work I encountered a 400 lb feral boar hog in the woods that weren't inclined to run. Twenty yards out it just stood while I yelled at it it to no avail. After a bit it abruptly ran into a dense thicket and stood there just out of site, blowing and puffing. I had to walk by that thicket. First feral hog I've ever run into that didn't run like a scalded cat.

For a number of reasons I didn't shoot it, not the least of which was I felt not certain that I could drop 400 pounds of inbound hog with that Mod 60 in just two or three seconds. That same week, mindful of that and the even bigger hogs I have run into from time to time, I bought a 10mm Glock 29.

The second occasion of apparent peril happened just a couple of weeks back: It is my usual practice to put in my daily five mile walk with the dogs early in the morning, but, not having been able to do that for a few days instead I headed out late at night, around midnight.

Here on the wrong side of town I was walking down a deserted stretch of street, empty lots, old businesses, no houses. I was walking on the left side sidewalk. An old, beat up eighties sedan cruises up from behind quite slowly, passes me and then makes a sudden abrupt turn to the left, stopping crossways in the middle of the street, driver's side toward me, maybe forty feet away from where I stood.

The driver was a rough-looking, older Black guy, thirties or forties. He was staring at me hard.

There's prob'ly a number of possible explanations for that sequence of events, but at that time, at that location, the most likely explanation still is that I was an intended victim.

For a moment there I really thought it was going to happen, to the point that I put a hand to the Glock (legally carried).

I dunno who would have prevailed, but I do know that the fact that MOST of my range time with handguns over the last two decades has been spent on close range "panic" drills at fifteen yards or less helped immensely just then. Even as the slow motion/tunnel vision thing began to kick in, I felt long familiar with the draw, aim and then shoot movements I was gonna make if it came to all that.

Just like that the guy drove off and it was over.

I'm sure that, had worse come to worst, I might have prevailed in both situations even with that familiar Model 60. But given a choice, in those situations I'd rather have eleven rounds of easy-to shoot 200 grain loads at 1,100 fps over five rounds of harder-to-shoot 180 grain loads moving slower than that.

The Model 60 is a fine handgun, it just ain't "enough gun" fer me anymore.

YMMV,

Birdwatcher

You attention whore. Can't you step out of your front door without some sort of dangerous thing happening to you?