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Author: Grumpy
Almost 50 years ago I was ready to obtain my first .357 Magnum revolver. It seems strange to say, but my grandfather was leery of the relatively new Ruger brand. Ruger’s double-action revolvers were competing squarely against Smith & Wesson and Colt brands. The price was right—about half the cost of a new Colt Trooper and considerably less than a Smith & Wesson Combat Magnum.
Ruger designed this midsize revolver with an investment-cast frame to provide a strong and reliable but relatively lightweight service handgun at 34 ounces.
In production in 1971 and generally available by 1972, the revolver was offered in blue steel. The barrel was four inches long, and it was chambered in .357 Magnum. A few were chambered in .38 Special, and there were numerous variants: the Police Service-Six; Speed-Six; and variations with a square butt and round butt, respectively.
Stainless steel revolvers followed. I carried a four-inch-barreled stainless-steel revolver on duty in the early 1980s. Among the best balanced versions was a relatively compact 2.75-inch-barreled revolver that provided good balance and a bit of recoil dampening over competing guns with shorter barrels.
The Security-Six offered the most rugged adjustable rear sights of the day, and a ramp front sight offering an excellent sight picture. The hammer spur is easily grasped to cock the revolver for single-action fire. The double-action trigger is smooth enough, and while heavier than the competition there are no hitches or rough spots in the action.
The grip design was a matter of much discussion at the time. While it is a square butt, it isn’t similar to other revolvers of the day. Elmer Keith felt it offered an excellent shape for fast instinctive shooting, but Jeff Cooper thought the grip angle was poor for control in rapid fire.
Ruger later offered larger target-style grips. The original press-checkered wooden slabs were nothing fancy, but they were small enough to allow most any hand size to wrap around the grip. The Ruger is fast to a first-shot hit. In single-action fire the grip frame isn’t a drawback.
Ruger’s Single-Six wasn’t the first to use a transfer bar action, but it was a step forward in magnum revolvers. Today a variation of the transfer bar action is used in most revolvers.
The Security-Six can be field stripped with nothing but a coin. Remove the grips, cock the hammer, put the supplied pin in the hammer spring, and slip out the action.
The Single-Six featured a solid frame, eliminating the side plates, and was a strong design. Leaf springs were replaced by coil springs. The cylinder release presses in to release the cylinder to be swung out for loading or unloading.
At the time the Security-Six was introduced, the major ammunition makers were developing the 125-grain .357 Magnum cartridge for law enforcement use. This powerful load was hard on the guns of the day, but the Security-Six suffered less than most.
The youngest Security-Six is now about 35 years old. They are not as common as they once were, but you can find them. A fair price is about half that of the new GP100 that replaced it.
The Security-Six is a good choice for anyone wishing to own a versatile defensive handgun with a good balance of weight to power. And it’s a piece of history because the Security-Six paved the way for Ruger’s successful double-action revolver lineup.
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The S&W 460 is built on S&W’s largest frame, the X-Frame, which was developed because none of S&W’s existing double-action frame designs could handle the muzzle energy and pressures generated by the .500 S&W cartridge.
The .460 S&W Magnum is essentially a longer and more powerful version of the .454 Casull, itself a lengthened and more powerful .45 Colt. Able to push a 200 grain bullet past 2,300 fps, the .460 S&W is not just one of the most powerful handguns in the world. It also fires at one of the highest velocities of any revolver in the world, allowing for unprecedented penetration when hunting with a revolver. This example is the Emergency Survival, or ES, model and comes with its emergency kit. (I can’t even imagine what the report & recoil must be like on this mighty midget of a gun!)
Speaking to the House Democratic Caucus Issues Conference Wednesday in Baltimore, President Joe Biden once again vowed to ban so-called “assault weapons” as the Democrat audience cheered.
The reaction Biden received only serves to reinforce what the Second Amendment Foundation said recently in the organization’s 2023 advertising effort: “Your Second Amendment rights are under attack like no other time in history.”
Biden had been speaking for 24 minutes before he told the audience, “I know it may make some of you uncomfortable, but that little state above me, Delaware is one of them, has the highest rate, one of the highest rates of gun ownership. But guess what? We’re going to ban assault weapons again come hell or high water and high capacity magazines.”
However, Ammoland checked and discovered Biden’s remarks about Delaware are not true, according to a chart posted online by World Population Review, which lists Biden’s home state near the bottom of the list with 34.4 percent gun ownership. Putting this in perspective, Montana is at the top with 66.3 percent, followed by neighboring Wyoming at 66.2 percent and Alaska at 64.5 percent.
Going down the Top Ten list, Idaho is fourth at 60.1 percent, West Virginia is next with 58.5 percent, Arkansas at 57.2 percent, followed by Mississippi at 55.8 percent, Alabama with 55.5 percent, South Dakota at 55.3 percent and North Dakota 55.1 percent.
While the remark is yet one more example of Biden fibbing about guns, his remark inadvertently recognized how uncomfortable some members of his party are about the rate of gun ownership in the country.
Thanks to the SAF advertising effort, Biden has become infamous for telling a CNN Townhall audience in 2021 that he not only wants to ban semiautomatic rifles—the so-called “assault weapons” against which has crusaded for decades—but also 9mm pistols, the most popular personal protection handgun in the country. The film clip of Biden actually saying so is at the heart of the SAF 60-second advertisement.
SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb noted recently that their advertisements were aired more than 1,000 times last year, and were viewed by more than 85 million people, including those who saw the ad “multiple times.” The message is broadcast on several different cable networks.
While Fox News reported Biden’s remarks, other news outlets have overlooked his promise, instead focusing on other parts of the president’s 34-minute speech.
Biden has repeated the vow to ban “assault weapons” since the Feb. 13 attack at Michigan State University left three students dead and others wounded. The man believed responsible, Anthony McRae, was not a student or staffer at the university in Lansing, Mich. Authorities still haven’t publicized a motive, and McRae left the campus only to take his own life a couple of hours later. He used a handgun, not a rifle, in the attack.
That attack came almost five years to the day (Feb. 14, 2018) that 17 students and adults were murdered at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.
But Biden may be unable to fulfill his threat to ban semi-auto rifles for a couple of reasons:
- Republicans now control the U.S. House of Representatives, and the caucus appears in no mood to entertain the president’s anti-gun agenda.
- Federal courts in Maryland and California are currently in the throes of re-examining bans in those states under the new guidelines established by the Supreme Court last June in the Bruen ruling.
Biden has been a leading proponent of gun control since he arrived on Capitol Hill some 50 years ago. He claims credit for shepherding the Clinton ban through Congress in the mid-1990s, but never mentions that passage of that legislation—during Bill Clinton’s first term as president—cost Democrats the majority in both the House and Senate in the 1994 mid-term elections.
His promise to ban “high capacity magazines” is also in trouble, as state-level bans are being challenged in federal courts by SAF and other gun rights organizations.
According to the World Population Review report, “Estimates show that there are anywhere from over 200 million to more than 350 million guns in the U.S. Because of variances in regulations throughout the nation, it’s impossible to get exact numbers when it comes to the total number of guns in the nation and the number of guns in each state.”
About Dave Workman
Dave Workman is a senior editor at TheGunMag.com and Liberty Park Press, author of multiple books on the Right to Keep & Bear Arms, and formerly an NRA-certified firearms instructor.
