Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns Snub nose .357

I'm surprised at these exposed hammer comments. I only shoot single action when I do some kind of ammo test.

And yet you admit you still find it useful. How do you know I use it for anything different than you do?

"Nice", indeed... and I don't mind the weight - when touching off any .357M load the extra weight helps recoil.. But even then, it's a handful...

No, I don't have one, but every one that I've picked up at the gun counters has had exceptional fit and finish in my opinion. Just throwing it into the mix.

This is mine,


Fits in the palm of your hand.


whoops.

My mod 66 2.5" is what I sometimes carry in the woods in a OWB holster



For every day town carry my mod 60 2" in a IWB holster is easier to carry. The only difference is 5 instead of 6 in the wheel



On days when I'm going to be in a "bad" area, the G19 is with me

i haven't tried a new one, but have the old one. it works all right, but it does feel kind of cheapo to me next to a smith, but then what do i know? I know i am a smith whore.
The cobra is light and it does have that extra round.
at the distance any of these are designed for, they don't need a telescopic sight.

Two snub .357s live at my place, both the 2" versions- an SP101, and a Smith Model 60.
My wife shoots the Smith, the Ruger is mine. Neither is hard to handle, though she doesn't really
enjoy shooting them, and I don't like more than 20 rounds at a time. Both have nice triggers, though
the SP101 took some work. I don't mind that it's "heavy" for its size, I'm glad it is. For the money, I think
it's the nicest .357 out there. I replaced the ugly grip panels with elk scales, and it's prettied-up, or uglied-up,
with my own engraving, but I'm too stupid to post pictures. It's a heavy- coat pocket gun, mostly, and I rarely
need one anymore, but I'm gonna keep it, and I fire a few through it, weekly.

It depends on what you will be doing with it. I have a S&W 340 which as noted by another poster is ferocious when shooting full power .357 loads. But I carry it....a lot, because it is light and small.

I carried a full size Ruger Service Six with a 4 inch barrel on duty and off duty for years. At the time, my department restricted the types of off duty guns that were allowed to be carried, and one had to qualify with them to be covered for liability by the department if it was used. We were restricted to revolvers in either .38 or .357.

I also carried a model 60 in .38 for awhile, but decided I wanted a .357 after riding to the hospital in the ambulance with a fellow that had been shot in the head during a close quarters gun fight with one of my co-workers...the 158 grain semi wad cutter load had hit him square in the forehead and stopped. You could see the base of the bullet protruding from his cranium and he was very much alive, although it rung his bell pretty good.

In an effort to get a more concealable carry gun I bought a 2 1/2 inch Colt King Cobra as I wanted to be able to carry full .357 loads. I found that this gun was really pretty useless in that it was harder to shoot accurately with the shorter barrel than the 4 inch Ruger, and really wasn't any more concealable. It was heavy, and the 1.5 inch shorter barrel didn't make any appreciable difference in the ability to carry it concealed. Hence it has sat in it's box since I bought it in the 80s.

For carry all the time, the 340 is great, and I know even in the summer time wearing shorts, I can carry it and have a reasonable chance of penetrating the cranium of even the thickest . skulled. Most encounters I have had were always at close quarters so I don't feel handicapped by it's lighter weight and heavy recoil.

In my experience the most painful handgun I've ever fired with magnum loads. I was stupid and fired a full cylinder full. The experience could easily be duplicated by laying your hand palm up on a table and beating the web of your hand with a ball peen hammer.

Having owned and shot a few different configurations of 357 snubbies I'm left wondering what the appeal is of the gun. The round looses a significant amount of velocity from a 2 1/2" and shorter barrel and the muzzle blast, noise and recoil is off the charts compared to the performance of the round.

I'm a huge fan of the .357, one of my favorite rounds. But I can't see getting a .357 with a barrel shorter than 4".

I think this pretty much covers it regarding frame/grip design shortcomings and the ballistic loss of a full 357 mag loads out of a true snubnose 2" -2 1/2" barrel.

I'm down to 4 SP101's (all 3"ers) in 357 mag. All either have Hogue grips or Trausch grips (which are very difficult to find anymore) and they really help control the recoil of the magnum loads. One of my favorite guns.

The muzzle blast out of a short barrel .357 is a double edged sword.

True it is unpleasant to shoot, and not terribly helpful for long range accuracy.

If you are in a close range fight with someone, muzzle blast ain't a bad thing. It stuns the person, dog, coyote or whatever it is directed at.

In a really close fight such as a contact fight with someone, which does happen in real world, the muzzle blast entering someone's chest along with the bullet can have as big of or bigger incapacitating effect as the bullet. Fights don't end just because a slow velocity handgun bullet enters a body. It is hard to continue to fight however when a bunch of hot gas from a contact shot enters your lungs. Or blows into your face and eyes. In this kind of fight I want all the muzzle blast I can get.

They were called "Belly Guns" for a reason.

Not the first time I've heard that happen with a 38.

Interesting. Never heard of that happening before.

The human skull is pretty tough. I've read about it stopping 22, 25, 32, 380, and 38's. I can't recall if I ever heard of a 9mm not penetrating a skull though? It wouldn't surprise me.

Excellent post, there my friend.. Kudos..

And one more undesirable feature of the short barreled 357 mag is your total loss of night vision once you light one off. There are some low flash defense loads available today but even reducing the muzzle flash in half still leaves you with a very bright blinding after affects from what some guys at the Sig Academy have told me. It's worth considering either way

Agent Starling used the flash to see in the dark so as to kill Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs.

Me thinks having a load that generates 1000 fps at the muzzle with a midweight for caliber bullet tends to aid in penetration.

The problem with cast bullet loads is if the ammo is that if you have a soft bullet lube and store the ammo in a high temperature environment the lube can migrate into the powder and cause squib loads. I wouldn't expect a 158 gr swc @ 1000 fps (+p load) to be stopped by a skull, but at a velocity that barely exits the barrel I wouldn't be surprised.

Then again bullets just do funny things on occasion. I've loaded hb wadcutters base forward in a 35 whelen with cat sneeze loads using 1 1/2 gr of powder that just barely exit the barrel and they expand to 3/4" and penetrate 2/3's of a phone book.