Did you know that the revolver you know today as the Model 10 was the first M&P®? Introduced in 1899, this revolver has not only withstood the test of time, but also paved the way for all M&P’s to follow in its path.
Building off of the M&P’s immediate success, D.B. Wesson was determined to create an even more powerful .38 cartridge than ever seen before. Thus, the .38 S&W Special cartridge was born. The combined innovation of the M&P’s hand extractor system with the more powerful .38 S&W Special led to a full lineup of Smith and Wesson M&P revolvers by 1936.
In 1942 the M&P joined the fight. The .38 M&P revolver was updated and shipped to the British military to join the allied forces during WWII, supplying over 800,000 revolvers. This line of revolvers sported the serial numbers prefix V, better known today as the Victory models.
In the 1950’s Smith & Wesson worked to develop their first auto-loading 9mm pistol. Called the Model 39, this pistol was the first American designed double action semi-automatic pistol marketed in the U.S. While it did not sport the M&P moniker, the Illinois State Police adopted it in 1968 making it the first ever Double Action auto-loading pistol ever used by any state law enforcement agency in the United States.
However, the strength of the original Smith & Wesson M&P design held strong. By 1960 it was estimated that 85% of the world’s law enforcement officers carried a .38 M&P revolver.
It wasn’t until 2005 when the polymer frame pistol line that we know as today’s modern M&P came to be. Within its first year over 100 police departments were carrying the new line of M&P pistols.
Since then the M&P line has expanded to encompass everything from the smallest M&P bodyguard, to the tried and true Shield, all the way through the M&P 15 modern sporting rifle.
With lines sure to have a positive impact on your heart rate, Roy’s Bowen
conversion of a classic 38/44 Heavy Duty to .45 Colt is notable for its
singularity — and ability to whisper to whoever sees it.
Behold — the revolver. It appears I have peers among you who also suffer — perhaps not quite the right word, there — from an affliction I affectionately call “Um, uh … I really like revolvers, do you?” Leading me directly to the part where I have to laugh when I hear people say, “Wow, there is sure a lot of interest in revolvers these days, isn’t there?”
These days? I think for a certain segment of we die-hard “gunists” (may I call you fellow Guncranks?), the revolver renaissance supposedly occurring today isn’t newly minted. It’s been going on in my own life for, well … 60 years or more. I’ll also wager a significant bet on the fact it’s been going on for some time prior to then too. I think what we have here are people who are suddenly discovering these marvelous contraptions in which cylinders go round and round. “Wow, these are great, aren’t they?” they exclaim in wonder!
Cue we ’Cranks smiling in unison as we nod our collective heads.
If you still have your Nov/Dec 2000 issue of American Handgunner, go dig it out. I’ll wait. To kill time though, I’ll enlighten those who weren’t savvy enough to subscribe back then. You see, even then in the “very dark ages, a long, long time ago” there were revolvers of all sorts, and yes, some were even marvelous. The one in question here is, I feel, more “marvelouser” than most. Just maybe, dare I say it — “The Most Excellently Marvelous of All?”
Okay, if you’re back with your magazine, you’ll see a feature I wrote called “The Ultimate Outdoorsman,” which is, I might add, an incorrect title. It should have read, “The Ultimate Heavy Duty” but for some reason the then-editor called it by the wrong name. Oopsie. I wasn’t the editor at the time, but confess when I saw it I thought, Oopsie, that’s not right. It’s neither here nor there now, but I know what it is, and it isn’t an Outdoorsman. Now you know.
Roy Fishpaw’s unmatched craftsmanship with the grips defy the ability
of a sensitive finger to feel the juncture between metal and ivory.
Yes, your eyes don’t deceive, those are .45 Colt cartridges. An unexpected
benefit of the conversion is a lighter, more active feel to the revolver.
The Back Story
I always thought S&W fixed sighted 4″ N-Frames to be purveyors of all things good about fighting revolvers. Just enough heft, just enough authority in look and feel and even enough power to solve problems handily. At the top of the pyramid would have been a .44 Special and, more rare than common sense in Congress today, one chambered in .45 Colt — be still my racing heart.
As time passed, S&W brought out the Model 58 in .41 Magnum but alas, to me it was a swing and a miss. The heavy barrel, longer cylinder and more “clunky” feel wasn’t quite the right number of notes, if you will. Yet some did convert them to .45 Colt, and to his credit, the shop of revolver sage Hamilton Bowen turned the heavy barrels down and orchestrated other magical machinations turning even the challenging 58 into a semblance of loveliness. But to me, it was still an almost proposition.
Then I found an aging, beater of a .38/44 Heavy Duty with a 4″ barrel calling to me softly from a display case. Perhaps sensing someone was close by who would understand and rescue it, it whispered “Take me … take me …!”
So I did.
As I looked at it under the harsh fluorescent lights of the gun shop I saw past the nicks, scratches, worn blue and flattened checkering of the original small S&W “Service” stocks. This hardy gal had likely taken good care of a beat cop, then languished in a bedside drawer for how many years protecting a family? What I saw there in my mind’s eye on that olive-colored felt pad was the ghostly image of a richly blued, ivory-gripped, elegant lady with no small amount of experience in life.
I also saw her in .45 Colt.
Using the original barrel and reboring it allowed the original contours to remain unmolested.
Bowen’s attention to detail shows in the .45 Colt marking and new, pinned front sight.
The Smith & Wesson name is restored as it should be. Note the thin barrel walls and
serious .45 caliber bore looking back at you. An undeniably eye-catching combination, indeed.
Bowen Understanding
Hamilton is a teacher, author, accomplished pundit, genial soul, old friend — and the best revolver pistolsmith in the world. I told him what I had and asked if a .45 Colt would be possible. Hamilton said it’d be a tragedy to install a heavier barrel on the svelte gun so I grinned and said, “Heck, let’s rebore and re-rifle the existing barrel, take off the caliber stamp and turn it into a .45 Colt barrel.” When your skills can keep up with your imagination, saying such things earmark what follows as something to often wonder at.
Time passes, slowly I might add. Eventually, after administrations at Hamilton’s shop, a trip to Roy Fishpaw for ivory grips — the junction of metal and ivory isn’t discernible by touch — the old girl came home.
Hamilton and his gremlins turned the beater into a beauty, magically erasing those hard-living decades. The custom pinned front sight, 600-grit hand polish, case-coloring on the hammer and trigger and sublime yet meaningful blue conspire together, creating something triggering most who see it in the flesh to simply sigh, look at me, back at the gun, at me again, then sigh again.
I understand completely.
I do shoot it, have been known to carry it now and again thanks to Thad Rybka and the Milt Sparks shop, and it often spends weeks on my desk simply being there to enjoy. If you don’t own such a thing, do not pass go and do not collect $200, but sell some safe queens and put the money to use while you still have time to enjoy it all. Trust me on that.
Is this the best revolver ever? Some might argue the point with me, but I confess to smiling often knowing at least this one — is mine.
All across Canada, citizens looking to purchase a firearm are now finding handguns hard to come by, thanks to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s proposal to “cap” ownership. That’s right — the most aggressive firearm restrictions “in a generation” announced at the end of May have caused so many residents of the Great White North to go purchase a firearm that there aren’t many left to be found.
As The Toronto Star reported on Tuesday — a week after Trudeau made his announcement:
A week after the federal government proposed to freeze handgun sales and bring in tougher measures to curb illegal gun violence, gun vendors say handguns are flying off the shelves.
“It’s insane,” said an employee at a York Region firearms store.
Sales are “going crazy,” said Sylvia Shi, manager of Solely Outdoors in Markham.
“It’s very busy. We sold over a couple of hundred handguns in three days,” she said, adding business has “more than tripled” the usual pace, before politely saying she had no more time to speak.
At G4C Sports Gun Store Canada in Markham, nobody had time for an interview because “we are all busy doing transfers for handgun sales,” said one employee, adding the store had to bring shipping department staff in to help with transfers.
The Star’s is just one anecdotal bit of coverage backed up by similar stories from multiple provinces.
In British Columbia, AFP reported that gun stores “saw lines out the door within hours of the liberal leader’s declaration” that “has pushed some Canadians to rush out to gun stores while they still can.” Another BC warehouse manager told CBC News that his “store had sold out of all the handguns it had by noon” on the day following Trudeau’s announcement. At another firearm retailer in Vancouver, its website “has a note posted saying the store is closed until further notice as staff ‘works relentlessly to get all the current orders processed.'”
In Canada’s Capital of Ottowa, Ontario, one strip-mall retailer reported that “we sold 100 handguns, or almost our entire stock, in the last three days, since the prime minister announced the freeze.” Another shop owner in Toronto said that following Trudeau’s proposal, “[p]eople are now rushing out to buy handguns. Almost all stores are sold out, including me.”
The rush for those with appropriate licenses to procure firearms is good news for retailers — for now — but some sellers worry that this may be their last hurrah. One such is the owner of a store in Winnipeg: “This handgun measure is going to take away livelihoods and break up communities,” he said. “It’s a Catch-22; we’re busy now, but I fear we’re going to be put out of business in the fall.”
Over in Calgary, Alberta, Global News reported that a range and retail owner had sold — just between his two locations — 1,000 handguns in the week after Trudeau laid out his new supposedly brilliant gun “control” plan. The range in Calgary, where shelves “used to be packed with handguns” for sale — but they’ve all been purchased and “all that’s left are used ones people have brought in to sell.”
In each report from across Canada, some version of the same point was made: lawful firearm owners are not the problem, and should not be punished by Trudeau’s government for the crimes committed by — no surprise — criminals.
While it surely wasn’t his intention, it turns out Prime Minister Justin Trudeau might go down as the most successful gun salesman in Canada’s history.
Chile’s far-left President Gabriel Boric said on Monday that he hoped to “imitate” a policy implemented by leftist Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that would significantly limit gun ownership in the country.
Boric made the remarks while visiting Canada. Both leaders are expected to attend this week’s Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, California.
“We have discussed details about the firearms restriction policy that has been promoted in Canada for quite some time, which has had very good results and which, in Chile, we also want to precisely imitate as well, because good ideas are great to replicate in our countries,” Boric said in a joint statement with Justin Trudeau at the end of the diplomatic encounter.
In the same statement, Boric called for international firearm control legislation.
“We have to promote international legislation. Hopefully an awareness will be generated, beyond our borders, that the possession of firearms is bad for societies,” Boric asserted. “That is why we do it from Chile to Canada, hopefully with all the countries that are close, hopefully it will be of some use.”
The meeting between Boric and Trudeau took place a week after Trudeau announced a complete freeze on handgun sales in Canada. Boric’s gun control statements in Canada are a continuation of his government’s ongoing push towards firearm control in Chile.
On May 19, Chile’s Ministry of Interior and Public Security presented the “Fewer Guns, More Safety” program. Through it, the Chilean government will seek to establish a legal framework to reduce both legal and illegal access to firearms in Chile.
Before traveling to Canada, Boric, in his first annual speech as president on June 2, called for a total ban on gun ownership in Chile.
“Armed violence will not be tolerated in our country. And that is why our ‘Fewer Guns, More Security’ Program proposes the radical limitation of its legal access,” Boric said in his annual address.
Additionally, he asked the Chilean congress for “all support to pass a law that allows us to move towards the total prohibition of possession of weapons and at the same time strengthen the institutional framework.”
“A Chile without firearms is a safer Chile,” Boric added. According to the Investigations Police of Chile, there were a total of 50 reported firearm related deaths in January 2022, up from 35 in January 2021.
Currently, Chilean law allows any resident over the age of 18 to legally own up to two firearms, provided they go through an extensive procedure which includes registering with the national firearm authority, obtaining psychiatric approval, and passing an official exam on the proper use and maintenance of firearms. Obtaining a carry permit for said firearms is a completely separate process and certain firearm types, such as semi automatic, are outright forbidden by law.
Chile and its citizens have been victims of continuous leftist violence and rioting since 2019, when then-President Sebastián Piñera faced condemnation because the capital, Santiago, proposed a fare hike for public transportation. The alleged fare hike protests rapidly morphed into acts of terrorism with no overt relation to the Santiago subway: multiple churches burned down, supermarkets looted, and residential communities attacked.
Violent attacks continued through last year’s presidential election, when leftists supporting the winner, Boric, assaulted family-friendly campaign events for rival José Antonio Kast. Boric did little to stop the attacks.
As a result of the ongoing wave of violence unleashed by leftist protesters, Eduardo Vergara, Chile’s undersecretary for crime prevention, lamented on a radio interview held on April 18 that Chile is experiencing “its worst security moment since its return to democracy.”
During a May Day celebratory march in the Meiggs barrio (neighborhood), Chilean journalist Francisca Sandoval was shot in the face. Saldoval died after being in ICU under critical condition for 11 agonizing days. Protesters disturbed a silent vigil honoring her memory.
On May 14, a group of armed delinquents broke into the house of Chilean Defense Minister Maya Fernández Allende. While she was not at home at the time of the incident, the perpetrators, who made it out with stolen electronic devices and a vehicle, punched her son and handcuffed her husband. Fernández Allende is the granddaughter of Salvador Allende, Chile’s socialist president overthrown by Augusto Pinochet in 1973.
That same night, one of the drivers of the presidential escort was assaulted by three unidentified men. The bodyguard was shot in his arm. Perpetrators threw the victim on the street and took away the stolen government vehicle.
Shortly before these attacks, Boric pleaded with the same leftist groups he once supported to stop “normalizing violence.”
The continued violence has caused huge fluctuations in President Boric’s approval rating. Boric’s approval rating plummeted from 50 percent down to 36 percent a mere month after he began his presidency — bumping back to 44 percent after his first annual address.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
Governor Mike DeWine signs law which also applies to custodians and bus drivers, while slashing training requirements
Governor Mike DeWine: ‘This does not require any school to arm teachers or staff. Every school will make its own decision.’ Photograph: David Richard/AP
Ohio’s permitless gun carry law for “qualifying” adults went into effect on Monday – a measure that would lift restrictions on school teachers, custodians and bus drivers from carrying firearms at work.
After Governor Mike DeWine announced he signed House Bill 99, which lowers the required training hours for armed personnel from 728 hours to 24 hours, DeWine said he still preferred law enforcement officers to carry the guns at schools.
Signed into law after 19 children and two teachers were killed at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, the legislation no longer makes it a requirement for Ohioans aged 21 and older to complete eight hours of the handgun training course to carry and conceal a firearm. And it eliminates the requirement for gun carriers to tell police officers they have a concealed weapon on them, though they must say if they are asked.
“My office worked with the general assembly to remove hundreds of hours of curriculum irrelevant to school safety and to ensure training requirements were specific to a school environment and contained significant scenario-based training,” DeWine said in a statement after the bill passed earlier this month.
He thanked lawmakers “for passing this bill to protect Ohio children and teachers”.
DeWine said local school districts may still prohibit guns on school grounds. “This does not require any school to arm teachers or staff,” he said. “Every school will make its own decision.”
While school boards will not be required to arm personnel, they will have to notify parents if they choose to do so. Boards can mandate additional training beyond what is required in the new state law.
According to the bill, training must include how to stop an active shooter, how to de-escalate a violent situation, trauma care and first aid, at least four hours in “scenario-based or simulated training exercises” and completing “tactical live firearms training”.
Republican state lawmakers have said that HB 99 was a “doing something” response to the Uvalde massacre and other recent deadly mass shootings.
However, Democratic politicians in the state have argued against the measure, saying that lifting carry laws for teachers was not what the community was asking for. “They’re not asking for no guns. They’re asking for background checks,” state representative Juanita Brent, a Democrat from Cleveland, said after the bill passed.
In Ohio, school employees have been allowed to carry guns on school grounds for years as long as the local school board consents. The Ohio supreme court ruled in 2021 that they should receive the same 700 hours of training as law enforcement officials or security officers.
In Ohio, “permitless carry” applies only to adults over 21 who are not prohibited from possessing a firearm under state or federal law. Under the new law, adults who can lawfully own a firearm will be able to conceal carry a handgun without a permit or background checks.
———————————————————————————– As a retired teacher I think that this is a REALLY BAD IDEA! As I would not trust most of the Teachers that I worked with a Swiss Army Knife let alone a gun. Also how about just hiring instead some retired Cops. As I am sure that a lot of them wouldn’t mind picking up a few bucks and being around kids. Instead of some hardened Psycho with a machete etc. etc. Grumpy
