Confederate
Member
No, the 66s are just very nice guns and, like the Ruger "Six" magnums, they're just no longer available.
The .357s benefit from weight, no doubt, but the decisions by S&W and Ruger to revise their .357s by making them heavier just made them more difficult to carry. Perhaps they saw that police departments would switch to automatics and decided to make them more range friendly. I suspect that S&W simply wanted to produce a magnum that would compete wth Colt's Python, and that Ruger just followed suit. The first 686s did, in fact, gice the Pythons a run for their money. The GP-100s, however, did not. They were good, heavy accurate guns, but they weren't target pistols. In fact, the only advantage that the GP-100 seemed to offer was that the heavier barrel dampened recoil to a greater degree.
What was unfortunate is that mid-frame .357s were no longer available from S&W or Ruger. Luckily, one can still buy old 66s and Security-Sixes, and Taurus has some good medium frame .357s, I think.
If one looks at the snubby 66s and the 6-inch 66s, they'll see the advantages in size immediately. I rounded the butt of my Security-Six snubby and it's a gem. Ruger offers nothing like it today.
The .357s benefit from weight, no doubt, but the decisions by S&W and Ruger to revise their .357s by making them heavier just made them more difficult to carry. Perhaps they saw that police departments would switch to automatics and decided to make them more range friendly. I suspect that S&W simply wanted to produce a magnum that would compete wth Colt's Python, and that Ruger just followed suit. The first 686s did, in fact, gice the Pythons a run for their money. The GP-100s, however, did not. They were good, heavy accurate guns, but they weren't target pistols. In fact, the only advantage that the GP-100 seemed to offer was that the heavier barrel dampened recoil to a greater degree.
What was unfortunate is that mid-frame .357s were no longer available from S&W or Ruger. Luckily, one can still buy old 66s and Security-Sixes, and Taurus has some good medium frame .357s, I think.
If one looks at the snubby 66s and the 6-inch 66s, they'll see the advantages in size immediately. I rounded the butt of my Security-Six snubby and it's a gem. Ruger offers nothing like it today.
