The .44 Special is the best handgun caliber

Me | N/A | None

[calex59]

I believe the .44 Special is the best handgun cartridge ever made. It is accurate and has enough energy in factory loadings to drop the bad guy. It can be handloaded to near .44 mag velocities if the revolver is of good quality.

[Centurion2000]

I’ll stick with my 45 Colt.

[Old Student]

“...Uberti...”

And in the .44 mag, IIRC. Personally, I’d take one in any caliber I could get! ;)

Grew up on an old (even then) Uberti SAA Colt-copy in .22 LR or WMR, and loved it. My dad still has and uses it, and HE loves it. They had a rep then for crappy guns, but that one is a jewel, and always has been.

[BooBoo1000]

I have a S/W 44 Special, I hand load it to the reccomended Elmer Keith Load, I pour the Keith bullets from a 4 cavity mould that Elmer reccomended to me. It is from Hensley and Gibbs. The thing that decided me that this was all of the gun that I need was when I saw a gun guru take my pistol and shot a telephone pole and the slug went all of the way through. I figured I didn't need any more power than that. As to the 44Mag, just a few more grains of powder and for that it is not worth the extra punishment. If you are going to load pup pie loads in the 44Mag, you might as well get a 38. I am sorry but I am baised, and as far as I am concerned a 44 Special loaded up to Elmers specs will take care of anything you are going to meet on the street.PS The Elmer Keith load is 15 grains of 2400..Large Pistol Primer, tamp her down with the Hensley and Gibbs, and blast away, if you want to have real fun shoot it at night. Boom.

[Jack Black]

HTV wrote” I owned a Winchester 1873 in 32 20 in the fifties. It was I believe the worst caliber in the 1873!
I believe you can still get revolvers in 32 20.”

*******************

Yep! US Firearms will make you a SAA (or probably a bunch of their other models) in that caliber. BTW the other name for the 32/30 is is 32WCF (Winchester Center Fire), which is what USFA lists them under.

It may be a lame caliber, but it did inspire a Robert Johnson song!

********************

“32/20 Blues” by Robert Johnson (King of the Delta Blues)

‘F I send for my baby, and she don’t come
‘F I send for my baby, man, and she don’t come
All the doctors in Hot Springs1 sure can’t help her none

And if she gets unruly, thinks she don’t wan’ do
And if she gets unruly and thinks she don’t wan’ do
Take my 32-20, now, and cut her half in two

She got a .38 special but I believe it’s most too light
She got a .38 special but I believe it’s most too light
I got a 32-20, got to make the caps2 alright

If I send for my baby, man, and she don’t come
If I send for my baby, man, and she don’t come
All the doctors in Hot Springs sure can’t help her none

I’m gonna shoot my pistol, gonna shoot my gatling gun3
I’m gonna shoot my pistol, gotta shoot my gatling gun
You made me love you, now your man have come

Ahoh, baby, where you stayed last night
Ahah, baby, where you stayed last night
You got your hair all tangled and you ain’t talking right

Her .38 special, boys, it do very well
Her .38 special, boys, it do very well
I got a 32-20 now, and it’s a burning

If I send for my baby, man, and she don’t come
If I send for my baby, man, and she don’t come
All the doctors in Wisconsin4 sure can’t help her none

Hey, hey, baby, where you stayed last night
Hey, hey, baby, where you stayed last night
You didn’t come home until the sun was shining bright

Ahoh boy, I just can’t take my rest
Ahoh boy, I just can’t take my rest
With this 32-20 laying up and down my breast

[Jack Black]

Here's the nice Ruger New Model Blackhawk in .44 Special

John Taffin wrote two great books on revolvers Big Bore Revolvers and Big Bore Handguns. I think he wrote a whole book on the .44 too. Anyway, he'd call this 'the perfect packin' pistol' for rural states, at least. Hard to disagree.

Of course I've always been fond of double actions too, and especially Smiths. My 6.5" inch model 29 mostly shoots .44 specials, though it's a mag.

[trisham]

Nice!

[Who is John Galt?]

Hey, Compadre!

I will agree that the .44 Special is one of the best handgun cartridges available! My problem is that I like way too many of them (I owned a .476 Webley at one, by way of example)...

;>)

[Who is John Galt?]

(That should have been, "I owned a .476 Webley at one time, by way of example"... ;>)

[Lurker]

I don't think Taurus compares to S&W quality-wise, but I have heard that S&W has been degrading on quality lately.

Mrs. L got her Taurus during the late unpleasantness with S&W back during the Clinton Administration. She's got a sweet little titanium frame .44 spl with a 2' ported barrel. The trigger was a bit rough right out of the box but a couple of thousand rounds have smoothed it out quite nicely.

It's accurate enough at the distances it was designed for and if you check the ballistics the .44 spl is roughly equivalent to a .45 ACP. She prefers revolvers to autos so I wanted her to have something that had enough punch to put a bad guy down. Since we already shoot and reload the .44 mag the purchase of the .44 spl made a lot of sense.

I later acquired a Charter Arms Bulldog on the private market and have fallen in love with it. It does what it was designed to do quite well IMO. It's not a competition gun, it's not a target gun. It's an "oh SH** I'm going to DIE!" gun.

I have a 686 Performance Center that I'm pretty sure that Taurus doesn't make a judgeworthy counterpart to.

S&W does the high end stuff pretty well I think. Mrs. L has a 629 that she loves. But the N frame even with a 4 inch barrel isn't exactly concealable and the weight, well...

A few years back I had an Illinois State Police Model 19 which in a moment of supreme stupidity I sold. It had a trigger job, target trigger, and some really nice sights on it. I REALLY wish I had that gun back.

As I said previously, to each their own. Suffice it to say I never feel 'under gunned' with that little Charter in my possession.

Have a safe and Happy Fourth Of July.

[Steamburg]

That is a completely unrelated issue. If I am in a critical encounter, I want the first digit in the caliber to be at least a 4. The .45 ACP is my all time favorite pistol (not revolver) pistol round. There are so many .45 ACP’s around that ammunition availability, which was my point, is unlikely to be an issue for years to come. The .40 S&W as well as it’s cousin the 10mm are far superior to the 9 mm. However, ammo availability was the topic of my comment. BTW, .45 ACP in half moon and full moon clips makes for a happy wheel gun.

[stockpirate]

I looked it up, this is a gotta get one soon item. It’s what I call a crowd pleaser. Use say, number 2 steel shot.

[EternalVigilance]

[texmexis best]

Taurus makes fine pistols. I know a number of people who wouldn’t trade them for Glocks or Kimbers. Charter Arms makes good pistols too.

Hipoint has a surprisingly loyal and enthusiastic customer base. Cheap but reliable. Those who don’t own them are the ones who “wouldn’t use them as a paperweight”.

As far as caliber goes, I am a devotee of the .45. That is, .45 ACP, .45 Long colt and .45-70. They’re all good.

The acp was the first pistol I had that I felt that I could shoot it all day. I consider the acp and the long colt to be “ranch guns”: Ones you carry all day and shoot all day.

[castlebrew]

Ruger’s “Lipsey’s (sp?) Special” gets my vote - Blackhawk w/4-5/8” barrel. Our Elmer Keith Memorial Pistol Shoot committee obtained 2; Hamilton and friends did a masterful job of converting it to the Keith No. 5 format for our raffle gun.

I purchased its sister (unmodified) to provide some seed money for next year’s event. A sweet shooter indeed...A candidate for John Taffin’s “perfect packin’ gun”, once I put some smooth-textured grips on it. The stouter loads tend to chew up the paws with the textured grips.

My only problem: Not enough time to shoot it, nor to reload for it.

[Jeff Gordon]

probably not if you hunt or fish Alaska or Africa or Detroit

If I was being hunted in Detroit I would still prefer the .22LR. ;-)

[castlebrew]

Specifications:
http://www.ruger.com/products/newModelBlackhawkBlued/specSheets/5232.html

And something about the Keith No. 5:
The legacy lives on Gary Reeder's Keith No. 5 (American Handgunner, Jan-Feb 2006

And one with pictures (only ours is blued):
Garry Reeder Does Elmer Keith Blog (not my blog)...

[OneWingedShark]

“Personally, if I have to shoot someone, I want a round that knocks them down and stomps all over them!”

Ahh...you want a RIFLE! Great choice, if available.

The truth is you can drill someone in the heart with a 44 Magnum, and the blood in the brain will still allow him to shoot back for 5-20 seconds - longer if the heart isn’t totally destroyed.

Rifles have 4 times the power or more of a handgun, and might provide some knockdown power. However, a lot of deer hunters have discovered you can shoot a deer in the chest with a perfect shot, and still have the sucker run 100+ yards.

What he wants is one of these:

[The Wizard]

I always used 44 specials in my 44 mag.

[castlebrew]

"More rounds fired equals more rounds fired enemy wounded or killed"

There you go. The theory postulated "more enemy killed' but the reality is that all things being equal, the .308 puts them down and keeps them down. As far as the 45ACP-to-9mm, the typical female's ability to control 45ACP recoil was a factor, as was the cost of training ammunition and standardization to NATO (read the story of the Army's push to get NATO to move to 308, then the Army backing off to the 5.56mm round).

The average soldier (in the '80's) also barely had ammo to qualify on their rifle (pistols were only assigned to a few) under static conditions, much less develop proficiency under dynamic, stressful conditions.

Today, soldiers in the box have both rifle and sidearm, but are still stuck with the training resource constraints. I and about 300 of my compadres were issued 9mm pistols on our mobilization in 2007, and very few understood, much less had developed basic pistol-handling skills.

[Tainan]

Heh heh heh...you just had to do it...LOL!

Good thread. Of course I agree with .44 specials ability.
I also know that both Charter Arms and Taurus make fine pistols in this caliber.
I obtained a Target Bull Dog in a trade and was so impressed with it I later got a Pug in .44 spec and had a good 'smith make it into one sweet carry gun. Smoothed out, tuned and ported with rubber(neoprene?) grips. Later I had some carved finger grooved wood grips fitted - just so nice looking and a pleasure to hold. I also sent it to be 'Robared' and it was ready to go in all kinds of weather/Sweat/Sand, etc. I highly recommend their work.
My standard carry was a .45 acp, either an Combat or an Officers, both with "extra" work. So its easy to see I also agree with the maxim - "Any caliber as long as it starts with a 4.