Greek said:
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I like both the Model 60 in .38 Special (stainless) and the S&W 640 in .357/.38Special.
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Finally, somebody got around to mentioning what I consider to be the best J-frame snub.
MellowC, I heartily recommend the 640 .357. If you can find one to shoot sometime in the coming year, by all means do so. I think you will be impressed with its wonderful balance of concealability, good handling and potential power.
I say potential power because I am not recommending that you fire .357s out of it. If you want to, fine, but you have stated that you're looking for a .38 and I think that's a great choice. I haven't the slightest inclination to convince you to use .357; personally, .38 +P is all I ever fire in either of my two 640-3s.
The reason that I'm at such pains to explain my position about using only .38 in a .357 is that there are some curiously single-minded individuals who unfailingly come along and rain on the parade whenever .357 snubbies are recommended to those seeking .38s.
Their mantra always goes something like this: "There's no reason to buy a .357 if you're only going to shoot .38 in it. Why spend the extra money?"
Or, "The .357 model xxx kicks like HELL, so it's useless for self-defense." (because of controllability and follow-up shots issues).
Reading such advice, you'd think these people sign an oath in blood every time they buy a .357 that they're only going to fire .357 out of the gun, or have some major ideological opposition to not using the gun to its full potential. As though every time they pull the trigger on a .38 round in a .357 chamber they're just tormented by the thought that, if only there had been a .357 in the charge hole, so much more fire and brimstone could be coming out the barrel.
Why buy a .357 only to shoot .38 in it? There are good reasons for doing so:
The problem that overlies the whole argument against buying a .357 for shooting .38 is this one, big, flawed assumption: the assumption that, whenever a .357 is considered for purchase, there is an equivalent gun - identical with respect to all features other than the caliber - chambered in .38 Special, just waiting to be bought.
This is definitely not the case, as a moment's thought will show.
Take, as a case in point, the 640-3 (or 640-1) .357. Imagine I'm in the market for a carry revolver and I only plan to fire .38s out of it. I see the 640 in the case and it looks great in every aspect - strong, all-steel construction, good balance of size and weight, snag-free Centennial frame and, what is of great importance to me, the ability to accept high-visibility, aftermarket white dot/tritium front sights - except it has that darn .357 Magnum designation on the barrel. Can't have that, according to the nay-sayers.
So, I go looking for the equivalent, newly-made gun chambered in .38 +P. Except such a gun doesn't exist, because it's senseless for S&W to manufacture a dedicated .38 +P version of the same gun when it can kill two birds with one stone and make a gun that covers all the bases. Of course, for most people, this is not only
not a bad thing, but maybe even a nice thing: if their shooting preferences dictate that only .38s be used, there's a lot of strength left over to serve as an increased safety factor. What's not to like about that? Not that such an extra margin of strength is needed, of course - the gun's perfectly safe already. But as I said, it's by no means a
bad thing.
Continuing my quest for my carry snubnose, I go looking at used guns.
There's the older, no-dash 640s available, chambered in .38. Are they equivalent to the 640 .357s except for the caliber? In most aspects, yes, they are. But in the critical feature of being able to accept a replacement front sight, they are nowhere near the same as the 640 .357.
Now, I do understand that some people, for reasons utterly incomprehensible to me, dismiss the issue of high-visibility sights (at least the front sight - not much can be done about rear, at least that I'm aware of) on small, short-barreled revolvers. It seems such people have relegated the snubbies to a role as practically contact-distance weapons, as though they are good for nothing except point-blank shooting at power-burn distances. "At the ranges you'll be using that gun at, you won't even be using the sights", the sage admontions frequently go. Yup.
Well, I don't know about you, but I like high-visibility/night sights on my guns. All of them. No matter how small, or how weak a caliber they're chambered for. For me, the presence of sights that can be quickly and easily picked up in all light levels is a huge consideration when purchasing any gun that might be called to serve in a defensive role. If I wind up point shooting, then no harm done. I just ignore the sights. It's a much better deal than needing the sights and not having them.
If some people don't place as much emphasis on the sight issue as I do, that's perfectly fine, of course. No problem. The only time I get a bee in my bonnet is when people become flippantly dismissive about it and act as though they can't possibly understand why anybody would ever buy a .357 if they weren't going to use it to its full potential, as though people who do so are acting irrationally instead of carefully weighing which features they want and choosing the gun that works best for them.
Again, I urge you to consider the 640.