Yesterday my American Rifleman magazine arrived, so I sat down, made a coffee, and had a good read. I have yet to meet a single member from any of the gun-control organizations who reads American Rifleman because I have yet to meet a single follower of Gun-control Nation who is also a member of the NRA.
Now how you can spend time, energy and money trying to reduce the influence of an organization without knowing how that particular organization argues its case is beyond me. But lots of things are beyond me, so let’s just leave it at that.
In any case, this month’s issue featured a review of a new product from Smith & Wesson, whose factory is right down the road from where I live. The product is a gun called the Shield Plus, which happens to be the pistol pictured above.
Like most of the company’s products, this gun is designed to be attractive to consumers who believe they want to have a gun at the ready to protect themselves from all those bad guys walking around. And since the number of bad guys has increased substantially since the ‘China flu’ arrived, obviously we should all be carrying a gun.
Incidentally, for all the talk about how everyone rushed out to buy a gun to protect themselves from the virus, or from the BLM marauders, or the Antifa gang, in fact March purchases of handguns this year dropped by almost 20% from the same month a year ago. No wonder S&W stock has been sitting at $18 a share since last September, down from $22 a share in 2016. The Dow has almost doubled over that same period of time. Oh well, oh well.
Now back to the Shield Plus. The gun called the ‘plus’ because it has been redesigned to hold more ammunition – the extended magazine holds 13 rounds and with a live one in the chamber you’re walking around with 14 rounds.
How big is this gun which holds enough ammunition to mow down half the entire roster of the New York Mets? Try this: 6 inches long from end to end. My droid is almost 6 inches long. How much does the gun weigh? A little over 1 pound.
I can fit this weapon with this immense amount of military-grade firepower into the front pocket of my pants or the shirt pocket of the jacket I wear when I go out on the golf course and I won’t even know that I have the gun with me.
There is simply no other consumer product that represents this degree of lethality. And by the way, the whole deal will set you back around $500 bucks. Yesterday I bought a new battery for my car which cost me $250 bucks. What’s $500 bucks? Nothing.
There is only one reason why S&W is making a gun which is both this deadly and this small. And it’s a reason you will never hear mentioned in all the advertisements for this gun. The reason goes like this.
What the gun industry is selling these days is not just lethality based on the number of military-grade ammunition you can fire before you have to reload your gun. What they’re really selling is lethality based on – ready? – stealth.
The problem is that there are lots of places where you can’t take a gun. You can’t usually bring a gun into public spaces like theaters and shopping malls, you can’t bring a gun into most schools. If anything, the recent uptick in mass shootings will only make us more, not less accepting of the idea that we should all be walking around armed.
But for the gun nuts and wannabe gun nuts who buy into the nonsense that the ‘bad guys’ can be stopped if all the ‘good guys’ have guns, the gun market will continue to be dominated by products as small and concealable as the Shield Plus.
Now where did I put my car keys?
Apr 21, 2021 @ 15:11:39
Sigh. Another day, another post by Mike the ANTIGUN guy whining about the evils of “military grade” handguns.
I’m considering buying a Shield Plus. It seems like a very practical handgun and the fact that it pisses off antigun folks like Mike makes it even better. Hopefully lots of other people buy a Shield Plus too so my investment in S&W becomes more profitable.
Apr 21, 2021 @ 16:34:31
My PX4 Subcompact is about the same size (6.2×4.8×1.4 vs 6.1×4.6×1.1) and is 13+1. I see Ruger has come out with another high capacity pocket cannon too that is even slimmer than the Shield Plus.
Be the first one on your block to have a gun that will fit in your socks…with apologies to Country Joe and the Fish.
Apr 22, 2021 @ 10:18:26
Oh no, not a Px4! That semi-auto is fed from the bottom and NATO-certified.
Apr 22, 2021 @ 11:21:09
Yep, Alan, I’ve always liked those “bottom feeders”…
Apr 21, 2021 @ 21:16:38
Just received my copy of the American Rifleman magazine. Great article on the S&W Shield Plus. Think I will stay with the Sig P365 I purchased the other day for $525. The semi-auto that loads from the bottom and shoots military grade ammunition is just a bit smaller than the Shield Plus, weighing a little less, around 4 ounces, and…wait for it… can hold 15 rounds of those military grade bullets in a factory magazine, plus 1 in the chamber. Now I can be walking around with 16 big ones. If I am feeling lucky, I can purchase a ProMag magazine that will hold 32 rounds of bullets. With one in the chamber makes 33.
Watch out Harry Callahan. It may not be the most powerful handgun in the world, but I will still ask, well, do you feel lucky. Well, do ya, punk?
A man’s got to know his limitations.
Apr 21, 2021 @ 22:44:06
Speaking of Inspector Callahan, I almost bought an Astra 44 this spring but put it off. someone else got it first.Figured I would hold out for the real thing: the S&W.
Apr 22, 2021 @ 08:01:40
I can get the surge in gun sales after the “peaceful protests”: especially after some relatives in Philly who were in the middle of it had people banging on their apartment building doors screaming “that’s where the rich people live!” And they weren’t in the apartment building that was burned and was on fire for a while.
But Covid-19???
And one of the problems I’m having with the GVP crowd is that they are blindly supporting BLM mentioning Daunte Wright, Adam Toledo, Breonna Taylor, Alton Sterling, Tony McDade, Philando Castile, and other people who are alleged to have been in possession of firearms when stopped by the police in their posts.
It’s hard to say that these weapons don’t belong on the street. Especially that they should not be in the hands of criminals. Yet support people who were active shooters (Adam Toledo and Breonna Taylor). Daunte Wright didn’t have a gun on him, or at least it wasn’t reported if he did, but he did have an active warrant for a gun charge.
It’s going to be a hard path to get people to understand that the idea was to get guns out of the hands of people like Adam Toledo and Breonna Taylor when GVP groups ignorantly say they deserve support.
Do we want the guns off the street or not?