Читать книгу The Gun Digest Book of Combat Handgunnery онлайн

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The little notch at the tip of ramped front sight is an improvement on current S&W J-frame snubbies with all-steel barrels. This is the LadySmith Airweight.

Accuracy is in the barrel assembly. The 342 AirLite Ti, left, has a thin barrel within a shroud, and a too-high sight that makes shots print low. The conventional one-piece steel barrel of Airweight LadySmith, right, delivers better groups and proper sight height puts shots “on the money.”

The thin steel barrel sleeves of the Ti and Sc guns just don’t seem to deliver the accuracy of the all-steel barrels of the Airweight and all steel models. All four guns are DAO, so it wasn’t the trigger. The same relatively deteriorating accuracy was seen in the super-lights with mild .38 wadcutter ammo and big Pachmayr grips, so it wasn’t the recoil. To what degree this is important to you is a decision only you can make.

Now, let’s put all that in perspective. In the 1950s when all this ultra-light gun stuff started, Jeff Cooper defined the genre as meant to be “carried much and shot seldom.” Alas, the days when we can do that are over, at least in law enforcement. Any gun we carry on the job is a gun we are required to qualify with repeatedly. As I look at my 340 Sc and 342 AirLite Ti, it occurs to me that if I’m deliberately going to do something that hurts like hell, I should go to Mistress Fifi’s House of Pain and at least get an orgasm out of the deal.