Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns Best Fighting Sixgun?

Factory armalloyed S&W Model 58 - There isn't a fight with man or beast that this won't solve.

I am very much in agreement. I think that velocity is crucial to these smaller calibers. IMO, if you can get the 38 Spec. "jacked up" enough, it's fine, but why bother when you've got the 357 and 9mm? The 357 is great and the 9mm is adequate and the 38 is barely so in their best loadings. I want at least 1300 fps. That makes for a mid-range .357. No doubt the .357 is the best of the three. In the old days it was always claimed that one of the reasons you didn't shoot such hot loads in 38's was that they didn't have as strong a steel as the .357's...at least in the Smith's. Thus you get failures from 38-44 Heavy Duty's and model 13's that run fine, even though the 38-44 is the bigger gun.

Yeah, that's one of the things about smaller case volume pushing the same bullets - the higher pressure seems to generate faster bullets from short barrels. Hot 9mm's seem to be able to get 200 fps more than .38 Specials.

One can eyeball the numbers on ballisticsbytheinch.com.

True,..but a .38 special loaded to the same pressure as a 9mm will stomp all over the nine.

I like calibers that start with 4 and bullets of at least 180 gr.

A lot has happened in the ballistics arena in the last 25 or so years. Your pappy's old 158 gr. lead round nose at 850 fps has been surpassed a long time ago in modern .38 Special loads. Same goes for the 9mm, though that is a different subject from the OP's topic at hand.

Really liking my 329 now because of the lightness.Have been shooting 44 spl. handloads with 200 gr. hollow points at 1100 fps.

I've carried my 329PD on two multi-day hunts and was very pleased with the light weight also. Like carrying a balsa wood sidearm in a major caliber. How can you beat that?

the ruger security six is my choice

My choice for a "practical/all around fighting revolver, for my uses in the area I live would be a bit different than most.

I would choose a model 29 44 magnum with a bit of a twist. I would take a 6.5" model 24"barrel and have it cut back to 5"s. this would require the rear of the barrel to be properly smithed to accommodate the longer magnum cylinder.

This would essentially give me a 5" model 29 skinny barrel mountain gun.

Top it off with an interchangeable Classic DX type front sight system, so I can have night sights, or a Patridge front sight with horizontal bars for long range shooting embedded into the sight.

Chamfer and number the individual chambers, narrow and smooth the trigger along with the action job and call it a day.

95% of the time this piece of awesomeness would see moderate, easy recoiling loads in the 10 grain Unique/ 240 grain projectile load. The heavy loads would simply be available as needed, hence why this is chambered in Magnum, rather than Special.


In a long winded nutshell , that is what I envision.

Cheers!

Issued M67 .38, carried in a Hoyt breakfront for duty. Worked quite well more than once. It still wears the Pachmayrs I bought for it when I was in the Academy in '84. DAO per dept regs.


Off-duty. M10-8 .38, usually carried in an old Bianchi. 3" barrel, DAO, action tuned and trigger face polished smooth for DA work by dept armorers. Tyler T-grip.


Both guns were loaded with dept-issued ammo, which at the time was Remington 125 gr +P hollowpoints. Dept issue is now (for those old warriors still packing .38s) 135 gr +P Gold Dots, which is a more effective round.
Bob

Has it got to be a 6 gun? for Me I'd go with a Smith mod 686 Plus (7 shot) with a 4" barrel..................Hb

hey Henry,

This is a cool thread, and I have been watching it for a couple of days...

my pick of revolvers would be the 4" model 65 with herretts jordan trooper grips. I have carried this combination a lot, and I consider a good fitting grip to be an important consideration. I got mine in the late 70s...

I too, read some of the westerns... I'd love to have lived that life, for a few weeks... ride the range, fight the bad guys, save the girl, shower, kiss the girl...

Every now and then I wish that I'd rode off into the sunset after kissing the girl...

Ain't nothing "decent" about the 38 special round in my experience even in +P+ certainly better than standard 38 special but not where I would feel warm and fuzzy carry one as my primary

Doesn't the increased controllability compared to hotter rounds count for something?

Regarding the .38 Special...everyone I knew who shot people with them, there were no 158s RNL bullets...it was a the vaulted 158 LSWC +P FBI load, 124 +P Nyclad and one I think 110 or 125 JHP +P.

My first 1/1 story about .38 failures was from the son of a friend who was on Houston PB in 1972 when I was working for US Customs while in college. He had just gotten out of the academy in 1968 when the race riots hit. He was across the street from two guys who were shooting at him from behind a stand on the corner USPS mail box..the big heavy ones... My friend's son was behind a telephone pole. The two guys shooting at him never even came close but that pole as he said, "felt as small as a toothpick" trying to hide behind it. After exchanging fire a car pulled up and the two guys jumped in while he was reloading and took off. After all was over he went back to the scene of the shooting as he could not understand how he had missed...and found he hadn't...there were six dents in the side of the mail box. A few days later he bought a 6" Model 57 .41 Magnum...and his father, C. W. Hendricks, went on to invent the No-Sho holster to hide it while in plain clothes....

Fast forward to 1980...Dallas PD Range... A co-worker and I are doing some practice and there is a...stand on the corner mail box...that has let us say, seen better days... So we decide to add to the holes. I have a Commander in .38 Super that is running a lead 125 grain bullet at 1250 fps and a my friend a BHP 9mm with 125 grain LRN bullets at 1100 fps...both my reloads.

Another co-worker joins us and is carrying the city issue 64 with the city load...158 LSWC +P load that clocks just over 900 fps from a 4". He sees our holes in the mail box that went through both sides and decided to give it a try....he fires and I start laughing... His quote..."why are you laughing, you are always making fun of my city issue"... I then said "because your bullet is stuck in the side of the mail box"..... "It is not!!!"...but it was...from 30'. He backs up and tries again...and now there are two stuck side by side... Two days later he has a 6.5" Model 27 with real .357s on board...

Like jwp said...I don't get a real warm and fuzzy feeling when carrying a .38...they are not so "Special"...

Bob

...do your own tests... Take your favorite .38 and then full .357s and do some fast and dirty shooting like happens in real gun fights and see. Do multiple targets...

I have and find almost no difference...until one gets to the UltraLite snubbies...those are just downright uncontrollable with full .357s...

Bob

In a M-60 1 7/8" barrel 38 +P+ gett a bit sporty. In a M-19 4" barrel real 357's are easy to shoot in my experience. By real 357's I mean 158's near 1400 FPS

The 158 SWCHP +P is a very poor penetrator of hard barriers even hard wood. The only thing that it does reasonably well is soft tissue and it ain't that impressive even in that media in my experience. My testing is mostly from J-Frames with 1 7/8" barrels