Hyphen-happy post...about a "good little cartridge"...
My Secret Service Special, an H&R-manufactured five-shot top-break revolver chambered for the oldy-but-goody .38 S&W, is a 'teens/twenties finely-built, deep-blued piece of wishes-it-was-a-REAL-S&W-but-still-excellent workmanship that puts modern work by the aspired-to company to shame.
With modern black-equivalent reloads, this gun displays superb accuracy, no doubt assisted by the infinitesmal grooved-latch rear sight, and almost-sharp blade front sight. If you can SEE the sights, they require nothing short of precision alignment. Beyond that, the relatively cheap reloads I've been able to find ($11-$13/50) have been very consistent despite an equally-consistent tendency to leave funny yellow unburned powder flakes behind.
This flyweight, dinky little gun has negligible recoil, is actually very quiet, and point-shoots at about 25' range easily as well as my Astra 600, of all things. (That tranlates into keeping 4/5 on a 1-gallon OJ jug on the first try, where the Astra was 7/8, and I do not practice any kind of point shooting. Both surprised the heck outta me.) It's smaller than a j-frame, too.
Typically loaded with a 145-grain LRN bullet rated at a piddling 685 FPS from a 3" barrel, what really interested me in this cartridge was Elmer Kieth's endorsement of it in Sixguns. He called it a good little cartridge that was accurate, and had a place in small top-break revolvers of which there are many and numerous examples. For that reason he thought it should be continued in the factory line-up. He particularly credited an old S&W top-break pocket pistol he had that would regularly out-shoot other, larger guns, much to the consternation of a few wager-willing lawmen.
Kieth's endorsement was also balanced against the competition of a few different Colt calibers that used heeled hollow-base bullets, as these calibers were notoriously less accurate than inside-lubed rounds. The Colt calibers, while adequately accurate for defense purposes, could not withstand the marketing claims of greater accuracy by the S&W line, and have since fallen by the wayside. (Formal target shooting was a big part of everyone's advertising then, back before handguns developed that well-known penchant for going off by themselves, and shooting children on purpose.) This includes the very good .41 Colt, which has no supplanting equivalent inside-lubed round like the .41 Special. (A lack I feel someone should try and fill, and not with a .357 Mag or a .44 Special. Colt frames are more properly .41 size. But that's another discussion.)
In my direct experience, Elmer's right. The .38 S&W IS a good little cartridge, particularly in guns sized to it's output, and I'm more enamored of it's 145-grain bullet than the .380's and 9mm Mak's lighter 90-grain loads. The dinkum little top-break revolvers made by decent builders have accumulated an undeserved reputation as "Suicide Specials", and I think they still have a legitimate place in a self-defense battery. They work, they're small, they're accurate. What else does one need? They sure beat a .32. (Except maybe those tiny Iver-Johnson 5-shot .32's. Those lethal little toys are like watchmaker's guns. They can go where even an I/J-frame can't.)
And while everyone goes on about the Detective Special, one shouldn't forget the Banker's Special that preceeded it. Those are gems. I want one, especially now that I have a Police Positive Special so I knop what Colt D-frames are all about.
And ask C.R. Sam about his I-frame S&W. See if he'd part with it, or trade it for a 9mm. 'Nuff said.
