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Smith & Wesson

The company that introduced the American-made “double-action automatic” took a while to get it right. There were a lot of feed failures and breakages in early Model 39, 39-2, and 59 pistols. Moreover, those guns were not drop-safe unless the thumb safety was engaged. Illinois State Police made them work by having their Ordnance Unit throat the feed ramp areas of all 1,700 or so pistols in inventory.

The second generation was drop-safe, and designed to feed hollow-points. These were characterized by three-digit model numbers without hyphens: the 9mm Model 459, for example, the Model 469 compact 9mm that the company called the “Mini-Gun,” and the first of the long-awaited S&W .45 autos, the Model 645.

Ergonomics, however, still weren’t great. The trigger pull suffered by comparison to the SIG, and the grips felt boxy and square. The introduction in 1988 of the third-generation guns with four-digit model numbers (5906, 4506, etc.) cured those problems. The only remaining source of irritation on S&W’s “conventional style” defense autos is the occasional badly placed sharp edge.