I bought this gun on the advice of a friend in the local big city PD. He's carried a similar gun when off duty for decades, as have many of his fellow officers- the .38 Special snub-nosed revolver is a style that goes back to at least 1927 with the appearance of the first Colt Detective Special.
The .38 Special is a cartridge that goes back to black powder days, having been introduced as an improved version of the US Military's standard sidearm, the .38 Long Colt, in 1899. The .38 special was simply a lengthened version of the .38 Colt case, much as the .357 magnum is a lengthened .38 Special. (The Special case was lengthened to increase powder capacity, whereas the .357 case was lengthened to prevent higher-pressure .357 loads from being inserted in guns designed for the low pressure .38 special.) Within a year smokeless powder versions were introduced, and the modern .38 Special has been with us since- 112 years this year.
Few handgun cartridges have withstood that test of time. The .25ACP, .32ACP, .44 special, .45ACP and .45 Colt come to mind, and of these, only the .45 Colt is older, having been launched in 1872. Most of these older handgun cartridges are considered somewhat marginal for their original use by modern standards. The .45 Colt is popular with Cowboy Action shooters, and some hunters, and the .32ACP is making a bit of a comeback with its use in ultra-compact automatics, but the .38 special is far and away the most popular of these by far. It's used by hunters, target shooters, police officers, security personnel and homeowners. For many decades it was the standard sidearm for police officers in the US. You can buy loadings that range from mild target wadcutters up through 1400 fps +P defensive rounds. It can be handloaded with bullets ranging from 85-175 grains, and it's one of the few handgun calibers for which shotshells are commonly available.
Even though it's no longer the standard police sidearm cartridge it once was (most departments having switched to automatics) it's still popular as a backup gun in the form you see above- the compact "snub-nosed" revolver. Easily concealed, and having about as fail-safe a design as any ever made, the revolver is still the most reliable repeating arm ever made. Pull the trigger, and it goes bang. If it doesn't, pull the trigger again, and a fresh cartridge is moved into position.
Short barreled guns like the 442 above give up a lot of power and accuracy in return for their compact size; you lose 30-40% of muzzle energy compared to the same cartridge in a 4" barrel. A load that would deliver 300 foot-pounds of muzzle energy in a 4-6" barrel will only produce 200 foot-pounds from a 2" barrel, which brings it down to the level of a .380ACP fired from a 3.75" barrel- or a .22 magnum fired from an 18" rifle barrel.
Fixed sights and a very short sight radius means that this is a close-up gun, but that's what these guns are designed for. The shrouded hammer insures that it won't snag being pulled from a pocket. The light weight (14oz) makes it that much more comfortable to carry, but again, there's a tradeoff: Recoil in a 14 ounce gun is going to be twice as nasty as the same load in a 28 ounce service revolver. This is the least comfortable to shoot handgun I've ever owned, and that includes a Dan Wesson .44 mag I had in the 1980s. Even the 148gr target loads (swaged wadcutter over 2.7gr Bullseye) I made up were uncomfortable, and a lot of the bullets were keyholing downrange.. The most comfortable (if you can call it that) load I tried was the 110gr +P Hornady "Critical Defense" load, probably because a lot of the powder was still burning when it left the gun.
This isn't a gun you shoot every day, of course, but like any gun you want to rely on, you need to shoot it often enough to be both familiar and reasonably accurate with. For me, no gun is interesting unless it's both accurate and enjoyable to shoot- so this one is probably going up for sale soon.
UPDATE: I took it back to the store where's I'd bought it, to see if they'd consign it for me. No, but they offered to buy it for less than half of what they sold it to me for. Uh, thanks just the same. I took it to Cabelas, where they gave me a very fair price.
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