Smith & Wesson

Smith & Wesson’s iconic Model 19 is back, and it looks like it could be better than ever. It’s been nearly two decades since the company stopped producing the 357 Magnum revolver, but they’ve responded to customer demand and made some improvements on the old design.

The M&P Bodyguard 38 combines modern construction and features with the tried-and-true. It’s a slick 5-shot revolver chambered for .38 Special +P.

Last year, the release of the M&P 2.0 family of pistols was one of the biggest stories fo the year. Unlike other companies, Smith and Wesson seemed to listen to every customer critique over the preceding 10 years and fixed every one of them in the 2.0. Not some, spaced over the next 3 generations. All of them. Right now. Ready go.

Smith & Wesson has dominated the revolver sports as long as I can remember, so it is no shock the Performance Center 686 Plus has every feature a growing boy needs.

I was a young cowboy with a fondness for horses, firearms, and pretty girls, in that order. One afore-mentioned pretty girl awaited my arrival across a high mountain pass that guards my Rocky Mountain home, but as my diesel pickup growled its way upward toward the pass I knew I was going to be early for our date. So I geared down and pulled off the highway into a small patch of ponderosa timber. The motor grumbled to a halt and I lifted my most recent crush off the truck seat, it’s long frame svelte and gleaming in the late afternoon light. The action was as smooth as whipped cream sweetened with maple sugar, and I forgot all about my upcoming date. Carrying the curvaceous form a little way from the truck I swung it to eye level and squeezed. A distant twig disappeared with a thunderous crack, and smoke rose in slow spirals from the six-inch barrel of my vintage Colt Python. I was in love.

At this time of year, many of us are taking to the field for hunting. Unfortunately, hungry predators are also gearing up for winter, which always leads us to a discussion of bear and mountain lion guns. Archery hunting is fun and all, but a bow is not what anyone wants to be holding when we find ourselves between a momma and cubs. The problem with most guns of caliber big enough to stop a bear is that they are heavy and unwieldy.  Smith and Wesson, always innovating in revolver design, has stepped in to fix that with the Combat Magnum Model 69.

With 2017 now in our rearview, I’d like to briefly look back on the “best of times” from 2017. What I consider to be some of the best new handguns brought to market last year.

An ideal home defense Ar-15 should be lightweight, modular, decently accurate and equipped with a light, laser, and a red dot sight. Smith and Wesson’s new M&P15T with M-LOK and Crimson Trace LiNQ System, perfectly fits these requirements, and I recently had the pleasure of testing one.

It has been almost a year since Smith and Wesson introduced the M&P 2.0 upgrades, and the market agrees with me it was a fantastic set of improvements. Smith and Wesson actually listened to consumers over the decade since the original M&P series, fixing every major complaint with the 2.0. I haven’t heard one bad [...]