.44 magnum.
For when you’re in bed and need to shoot the home intruder, in the kitchen, behind the refrigerator, at the neighbors, 4 houses down.
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I picked up one of those at a gun show … My hand wouldn’t reach around the grip. Mind you, I shoot a S&W mdl 29 .44 magnum for fun.
My favorite one isn’t one I can concealed carry. And it draws a lot of attention the few times I’ve open carried it.
But it’s such a heavy revolver it makes the .44 a joy to shoot.
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What model is that? It doesn’t look familiar. Looks like a marriage between a S&W 629 and a Magnum Research pistol.
I like it. 
Ah! I found it … S&W 629 Competitor … I wasn’t far off.
It’s called the 629 Competitor.
My Mark IV is very fun to shoot. I have custom grips and added plates on both sides of the trigger. It’s a part of my hand.
It’s gorgeous! What’s the weight on that puppy?
In a way I’m glad I started my .44 journey with that gun… if I had started shooting .44 with my 2nd one I likely would have moved to something else.
It was one of those featherweight titanium framed S&Ws. 329 maybe?
I bought it two days before a training class. But I used the Competitor all through the class. 600 rounds no problem.
At the end I was like “I wanna try out the new one I got to carry!!”
I shot 6 bullets out of it.
Sold it used the next day for a $200 loss.
Each pull of the trigger felt like catching a baseball bat in your bare hand.
If I remember right it’s like 56 oz.
When you run out of bullets it’s still a lethal weapon.
That tends to take the fun out of shooting. My Ruger ECS9 is like that.
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I can’t remember who I heard say it, but it’s true:
The goal of concealed carry isn’t to carry the smallest gun possible. It’s to carry the biggest gun you can comfortably conceal.
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Those tiny pink revolvers they market to women are a personal pet peeve of mine and I hate being in gun stores and hearing a clerk recommend them to women.
It depends on where you’re concealing it. I carry +P hollow points in the ECS. As pistol fights tend to be at about 4 ft, I expect any engagement will be settled one way, or the other, before my hand gets too sore.
LOL 
At that weight it must be a breeze to shoot. I’ve been shooting Ruger Blackhawk .44s since I was 13, but when it comes to shooting just for fun, I prefer my S&W 29 because of its slightly heavier weight and larger grip (I put a Pachmayr western style grips on it because I didn’t like the flair on the wood grips) and it only weighs about 42 ozs.
Cosmetics… Currently looking at a Kember Micro Stainless for the Better Half.
Yeah it’s not so much about the real world emergency shooting hurting.
It’s the training with it. Theory is that you “should” train with the same weight/load of bullet you carry with.
A trainer phrased it like this to me once when I told him the story of the ultra light revolver:
“Which will be the better weapon? The heavier gun that you shoot with all the time with hundreds of rounds, or the lightweight gun you only clean once a year because you never pull its trigger?”
Or something like that. It made sense. At least when comparing the 2 polar opposite revolvers.
The most punishing hand gun I ever shot (and I have shot some bigger than the 44 that will make your wrist and then your elbow hurt after six rounds) was a Smith scandium frame ,44 mag “Backpacker.” I think it weighs something like 25 ozs. Shooting it was like holding your hand palm forward and having someone swat it as hard as they could with a 2x4. NOT FUN!
I still shoot it routinely, just don’t find it near as pleasant as my Mark IV.
Think we’re talking about the same gun. Lol.
329PD and there was a limited edition one called the backpacker.
