Flirting with .22 Magnum pistols, for fun or seriously?

I'm such a twit. When it comes to pistols I'm still a kid at heart, or more accurately a raging-hormone teenager with a head that's easily turned.

Such is the case of my latest would-be sweetheart, a Smith & Wesson 351PD AirLite .22 Magnum 7-shot Revolver with a beautiful set of wood grips.

I listed one on gunbroker today for the gun shop where I'm working and it stole my heart. Again.

It's a bit pricey, $600, but it just so happens that's there one at the shop in like-new condition that someone traded in just the other day that's priced a bit lower than that and maybe it will fit into my light-carry handgun plans.

I've been fond of .22 Magnum since Hector was a pup and I was, too. I bought a Winchester 94 .22 Magnum lever-action rifle some 30 years ago or more and like a fool I traded it away for something foolish. At least I still have the Ithaca Model 37 12 Gauge pump shotgun I got for it.

I needed a hunting shotgun at the time more than I needed a plinking rifle, or so I thought, and it must not have been a totally bad idea as I've quit hunting now but my Ithaca is enjoying a second career with a shortened 18.5" barrel as my home-defense riot gun.

I had a second fling with .22 Magnum more recently when I ran across an AMT AutoMag II semi-auto pistol in a local gunshop. I'd been wanting one for years and hadn't took seriously some tales I'd heard about the AMT's being jam-a-matics.

I bought it and then I found out how they earned that reputation. There's a good reason that .22 Magnum semi-automatic pistols aren't widely manufactured and the AMTs are exhibit no. 1. The engineering problems are hard to overcome and the one I briefly owned was not an overcomer.

The one I had was a very-hard-to-find 4" barrel model, center in the bottom photo, shown with my currently owned Steyr M357-A1 .357 Sig pistol and my formerly owned S&W 1076 10mm pistol.

I tried every type of .22 Magnum ammo I could find in that AMT AutoMag II and it didn't like any of them. Best it ever did was cycle two out of 10 shots without jamming. Not good.

I traded it back to the local dealer where I got it and moved on. But that S&W 351PD may be more than just a passing fancy. It only weighs 10.5 oz. and though it is hardly serious enough for a main carry, I think it is serious enough for a back-up carry. Since I took the job at the gun store, I've gotten very serious about carry, always toting a main and a backup piece to work.

Gun stores and cop bars are probably the two worst places in the universe to try to rob because almost everybody in both places will be armed and ready to respond vigorously. But crooks aren't rocket scientists in the first place or they wouldn't be trying to rob places. So as the military experts say, plan for what can happen, not just what you think may happen.

Or as gun writer Clint Smth puts it, one gun equals no gun if it fails, so two guns equals at least one. As another gun writer I like, Massad Ayoob puts it, I think I'll carry one semi-auto and one revolver on the theory that St. Peter will surely smile on Jeff Cooper and Bill Jordan.

Single-Action bug bite may be worse than swine flu

A funny thing has happened again on the way to downsizing my handguns.

I keep getting sidetracked in my plan to downsize from full-size pistols to subcompact, light carry pistols. I nearly gave in to the lure of my first single-action 6-shooter a couple of weeks ago when I took a Hy Hunter Six-Shooter for a test run from the gun shop where I'm working. That's it in the top photo.

The beautiful black-steel single-action with fake pearl grips caught my eye when someone traded it in and with a bit of googling, I discovered it's a copy of the Single Action Army Colt known as the Peacemaker. And the killer is this particular model was made in what was then West Germany in the 1980s by J.P. Sauer & Sohn. In case you're not a gun nut like me, that's the Sauer that merged into Sig Sauer, which IMHO makes some of the finest handguns in the world, bar none, at any price.

So I shot it, which I loved, but I reloaded it very slowly, which I don't love. As I reported at the time, now I know why all the old cowboys are dead. They got killed while they were reloading, one cylinder at a time.

So I thought I was over my single-action pistol desires. And then this week, somebody traded in a Ruger Blackhawk .41 Magnum with a 4-5/8" barrel, second photo. My S&W 29 .44 Magnum has a 4" barrel which I think is just about perfect for balance while shooting as well as ease of carry and quick handling. And the extra 5/8" on the Ruger .41 Magnum barrel feels pretty darn handy, too. I may have to beg the shop owner to let me take the Ruger for a test fire run, too. God help me, I think I'm getting bit by the single-action bug. Again.

I've always wanted a .41 Magnum but never shot one. I love 10mm pistols and .41 Magnum is the revolver equivalent of 10mm in semi-auto pistols. Maybe somebody in the shop or on gunbroker will buy this Ruger before I can find time to scratch this itch. I've already made plans this weekend so I can't make it to the range. But if it's still there next weekend...

Charter Patriot .327 Mag gets an upgrade with Lasergrips

My Charter .327 Federal Magnum got an upgrade today. The gun shop where I work got in a set of Crimson Trace Lasergrips for Charter pistols and it just so happened I had a little surplus built up in the pistol fund.

So the Patriot is now laser-powered. Can't wait for Saturday to take her to the range and zero the fierce little bugger. My only complaint with the Patriot is that she shoots about 3-4" low from point of aim, forcing me to use Kentucky elevation with the fixed sights to hit what I'm aiming at.

The Lasergrips will solve that problem pronto. But with every solution comes another problem. For lo these 61 years I've been using these eyeballs, since the day I first fired a thunderstick, I've been taught to focus on the front sight, not the target. Lasergrips change that to focusing on the target, not the sights.

I've played around with my daughter's .38 Special S&W with CT Lasergrips, but was never serious about learning to shoot it well. Now I gotta get serious and teach an old dog new tricks.

It's a skill that has real-life application. I've never shot anybody in a real face-to-face fight, with the sorta exception of shooting 5-inch naval shells from a destroyer off the coast of Vietnam. But in a real gunfight, I strongly suspect all your focus will be on whoever the threat is, particularly if the threat is shooting at you or threatening your life. So I probably wouldn't see the sights anyway. And if someone isn't threatening your life, you don't want to shoot them anyway.

My first snubby: Charter Arms .327 Federal Magnum

Bought my first snubby today. When I discovered that one of the Charter Arms Patriot .327 Federal Magnum revolvers at the gun store where I work was one of the first 1,000 released and included a free $50 Kershaw knife, that made the decision for me. Who can resist a pistol and a good knife?

The Kershaw is one of those quick-openers, much faster than my Gerber, so I'll start carrying it tomorrow. The snubby will have to wait until this weekend when I get a chance to shoot it. Bought a box of Federal American Eagle 100-grain jacketed soft points to try it out and may get the Speer 115-gr. Gold Dots and 85-gr. Federal HydraShoks to try out also.

From what I've read on reviews of the .327 Federal Magnum it offers ballistics quite close to .357 Magnum but recoil in the .38 Special range.

What I really wanted was a Charter Bulldog .44 Special snubby, but we didn't have one at the store and I woulda had to wait for a special order. When I found out about the free knife with the .327, that sealed the deal. And it didn't hurt that the Patriot holds six rounds vs. five for the Bulldog .44. Of course, if five rounds of .44 Special won't solve your problem, you probably aren't going to survive anyway.

Range report to come Saturday if the good Lord's willing and the creek don't rise.

Anybody here got any experience with .327 Mag? It's available now in Ruger SP101s and Taurus snubbies as well as Charter Arms. And Charter also offers it in a 4" barrel target version, so I'm adding that to my list. And a Bulldog .44 snubby and a .44 Bulldog Target and ... and ...