![]() 38 Short rounds in the cylinder to stop the assailant in the nick of time. The time came when he was attacked by a crazed man with an edged weapon. While there, he carried a Safety Hammerless in. The gun remained popular well into the 20th century, but many had switched to solid-frame, swing-out-cylinder Colts and S&Ws for their small revolver needs by WWII, and after the war, S&W did not renew production of the Safety Hammerless.ġ952: The great combat shooting authority Rex Applegate had linked up with S&W in the postwar years, and sold the company’s guns among other materiel in Latin America. The streamlined “hammerless” shape allowed the New Departure Safety Hammerless to glide swiftly and effortlessly out of the pocket and into action. An attempt to quickly draw in self-defense would often result in the spur of the exposed hammer catching on fabric and, perhaps fatally, stalling the draw. In those days, a great many good Americans carried concealed handguns when they were out and about, and most carried them in a pants or coat pocket. RefinementsĪ hopeless attempt at “child-proofing” had been the design’s raison d’être. But what sold it to a great many buyers was the sleek silhouette of the “hammerless” design. Apparently, “out of sight, out of mind” was a thing even in the late 19th century. ![]() This internal hammer design led to the semantically incorrect but ever-since-enduring “hammerless” designation. To that end, the hammer was completely concealed inside the frame and thus could not be cocked to a lighter single-action pull. The mechanism was designed around a very long and heavy double-action-only (DAO) trigger pull, again in the hope that a responsible adult’s hand could operate it and make it go bang but a little kid’s could not. It incorporated a grip safety in the backstrap that supposedly would require an adult hand to span both that part of the “handle” and the trigger. Company honcho Daniel Baird Wesson, the legend says, became concerned about children accidentally getting hold of a parent’s revolver.Īyoob: 5 Cases That Show the Dangers of a Hair Trigger ![]() Its features are described in its “Safety Hammerless” designation. 38-caliber centerfire rounds of the period. The timeline of the gun and its predecessors at Smith & Wesson runs something like this:ġ887: S&W introduced its New Departure Safety Hammerless revolver, a top-break double action chambered for the short, weak, stubby. Of course, this model builds upon a decades-old tradition for lightweight, hammerless pocket revolvers, and I think the concept reached its apotheosis with the M&P340. Let’s look a little deeper than the bare bones of how it’s described on the S&W website. My favorite of the J-Frame breed is the M&P340, which was introduced in the first decade of the 21st century. It is a unique blend of metallurgy and features. Of its many variations, one seems to stand above the rest in terms of performance. Since 1950, Smith & Wesson’s snub-nose J-Frame revolver series has just about defined its own genre.
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