Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns Colt vs. S&W

Well it's been a long time for Colt but they recently announced the production of the King Cobra. So who is king of the hill? Colt or S&W?

https://www.colt.com/category/revolvers

In terms of the old days, they are about equal. Hard to say today.

King of the hill? Today? Ruger!

Much as I love my OLD Colts, today I'm with lastround.

Yeah, Ruger is making some good stuff.

Humm… been a long time since I owned a Ruger double action wheel gun. A stainless security six in 357 magnum it was. Went to the range with a friend who had a Smith & Wesson 686. Sold my Ruger and bought a Smith. Never looked at the Ruger double action revolvers again. That was a long time ago. I guess Ruger upped their game.

IMO Smith and Wesson won the civilian game if you called it before the ascension of the semi-auto...let's say 1983. You just didn't see nearly as many Colt's in the holsters of cops and IMO everyday citizens favored Smith's too. IMO Smith's were more accurate and a bit less likely to break. In fact, I'd say it wasn't even close. I'd GUESS that Smith outsold Colt by about 70-30. If you were an oldster and had a centerfire handgun, there was a good possibility it was a Smith model 10 or variant thereof. There are a whole lot more model 28's and 19's around from that era than there are Troopers and Pythons if you want to go into the Magnum range.

Let's say the "double action" era was from 1900-1983. Prior to that would have been the single action era from 1870 to 1899. Colt won that. Lots of Smith and Wesson single actions were sold but many were to overseas military's. The Colt single action was much more popular than any variant of the #3 Single Action or Remington's or Merwin Hulbert's, etc. A good argument can be made for it being the best gun also. Smiths and Merwins were probably more accurate. Remington's certainly were not. Maybe Remington's were the most robust. Merwin's were certainly the most finely made...Colt's had a combination of reliability, sales, and power. They were easily tops in this timeframe/era.

In the current era where semi-autos are king, I'd say Smith's still easily beat Colt's. I'd like to try one of the new King Cobra's though-and you don't have to deal with the lock. To my mind neither Smith nor Colt have the looks of the older guns but Colt is closer than the new Smith's which leave me cold.

Rooger? lol

Colt needs to stop fugking off and build the Python.

Nobody's chomping at the bit to find a new production King Fugkin' Cobra.

I'd bump that to around '95.

Speakin' of Rugers.

Was I passed out when this thing came about?


https://www.ruger.com/products/gp100/specSheets/1770.html

Too lazy to look it up now but IIRC over that period of time S&W actually outsold Colt by a comfortable margin.

Yeah, that's how it played out around here.

I say again, Smith's single action sales were mainly to overseas military.

I'd don't think a 12 year difference in timeline alters the gist of the post. Around here, the switch to autos was pretty much over by 1995.

I looked at the new cobra yesterday...meah..

When I was in my 20's back in the 1980's....I would have loved to have owned a Colt. They were simply unaffordable to a young guy starting out compared to S&W and Ruger.

One could get a new Ruger for the price of a well used Trooper or Cobra or a like new S&W. As someone also stated, model 28's were very affordable. One of my first pistols.

Dan

Don't know, but a 1st gen 4" blue Trooper is a fine revolver, as is my 5 screw 1955 model S&W 45 ACP/Auto Rim, I'm damn happy with both and through looking.

Both of those are classics. That era is over. I'd rather have a Bangor Punta Smith than one of the new ones.

10-4 EE, I'll have to google a BPS, never heard of one, but did see a Colt 38 Super work back in the day in beautiful downtown san salvador, el salvador. any geographical similarities?