I was recently listening to a podcast with a couple of gun writers and they were talking about snub revolvers. They were hammering on a particular point that gets a lot of play in the gun community and that for the most part I don’t have any issue with. However there is some Nuance there and said nuance rarely gets addressed, so I’m going to take a couple moments and bring that to the forefront.
The point they were making is that a snub is an expert’s gun, and looking at their simplified view they are correct. The problems typically brought up to support that argument is that the sights are suboptimal, the guns are difficult to grip well, the triggers tend to be awful, and punishing recoil makes them unpleasant to shoot. All of these tend to be true IF we are only looking at a select and specific type of snub. Without a doubt for the last 20 to 30 years the most prolific, most used and most encountered snub is one of the Smith & Wesson j-frame 38 specials airweights, usually typified by the 642, 638, for Model 36. Stock out of the box and coming directly from the factory, all the above criticisms are manifestly expressed in these guns.
And while these guns for a long time were the most ubiquitous, they by no means today are necessarily so. Moreover, all of the above criticisms have already been addressed or can easily be addressed by the end user if they expand their view of snubs.
A few months ago I wrote an article talking about how easy it is to find a perfect aftermarket grip that can be installed in minutes by anyone. This is one of the easiest fixes to a snub, and some of the newer ones come from the factory with better grips anyway. While it can be a pain to try to shoot a typical out of the box grip, it is dead simple to make monumentally better.
As well, many of the newer snubbies have either better sights as is (for example the Kimber K6) or have sights that are pinned and are as easily replaced as grips. On my personal Ruger LCR I replaced the front sight with the green fiber optic and it took me less than 5 minutes and only one punch and immediately the sight picture was exponentially better and more functional.
Most factory triggers are not great on any gun (not just snubs) produced today. While there are exceptions these tend to be just that: exceptions. But on many of the snub revolvers produced today the triggers are substantially better. Again, the Kimber k6 is a standout example of this, and while my LCR had a reasonably okay trigger out of the box, with a bit of dry fire and live fire it has smoothed out to the point where most people who shoot it ask me what gunsmith I sent it to and are shocked when I tell them that’s the factory trigger.
As far as recoil, there’s not much that can be done to a small airweight in 38 Special. It is just not pleasant. My preferred carry load in that situation are 148 grain wadcutters at standard velocity, but even they are not fun to shoot. They are merely tolerable. The great news is however that we are not stuck with only 38 Special as the only caliber available. We can drop down to smaller calibers and with modern loads such as Federal Punch or Buffalo Bore combined with well placed shots we lose very little and functional power, but what we gain more than offsets that little loss.
One hugely important thing we gain is that they become enjoyable to shoot, and the dirty secret of practice is that a gun that is enjoyable to shoot is a gun that we go out of our way to shoot and practice with again and again. And that extra and focused work leads to mastery in performance, so even if the caliber we’re shooting is a third less effective than a 38 special or 9 mm, we are far more likely to put the bullets exactly where they’re supposed to go. Which equates to a substantially greater chance of the rounds doing what we need them to do when we need them to do it.
For those with physical issues such as extreme arthritis or hand injuries, we also gain the ability to shoot the gun effectively in a way which we can never do with the larger caliber guns. Again, shooting something that we enjoy and does not bring pain or extended discomfort means we will spend far more time shooting and practicing.
Another important game is greater capacity. The Smith & Wesson J frame in 38 Special is a five shot. My Ruger LCR in 32 holds six rounds, and many 22 caliber snubs hold as many as eight rounds. A substantial Improvement in capacity in the same size package means I have more options and versatility in my carry plan.
There are a few people besides myself that have been playing with this concept the past few years. Darryl Bolke of Hardwired Tactical, Chuck Haggard of Agile Training, and Rhett Neumyer of Demonstrated Concepts have all been working on this paradigm and we all have similar conclusions, including the realization that with these smaller caliber snubs, even novices can become good and functional defensive shooters fairly quickly, and enjoy the experience. If you select the right snub in the right caliber, they are no longer “expert’s guns”.
