Ruger SP101

Anyone have a Ruger SP101 hammerless?

How is the recoil with the stock drips when using 357mag's ?

How about using 38-P's ?

I'm looking for a throw away if it comes to that ($460). I sure don't want to loose my Colt 44mag(not replaceable) or 1911(not replaceable) just because of a paper work snag. CCW is in two weeks so that should lesson the risk of loosing any thing.

At the current prices it almost makes me want to get 12ga pump with pistol grips and a cut off barrel. I think that would be too much for the wife too handle for even one round. Big draw back is's not a CW.

I need "two" of whatever I buy.

A cheapie no name CW is just under $300eh.

T_Bone

I"ve been a very very staunch supporter of the Second Amendment ever since I was 15 or so (a long time back). Have been an NRA member since 16, and have had CCW permits in CT and PA. I"ve carried: a Ruger Security Six (DA, 357, 4"bbl), 1911A1 (Springfield, .45ACP, standard issue), a Glock 27 (.40S&W), and a Beretta Tomcat(tip-up bbl, .32). I have one of every holster ever made (it seems). I, too have had a lot of trouble carying in summer clothes....

The 45, and 357 Ruger all had a tendency to pull my pants down and were next to impossible to carry in the summer unless you used one of them "fanny packs" with a concealed holster built in. Tried it and hated it. What I found that works for me is to use a "pocket sleeve" for my Glock or my Tomcat. The gun goes into the sleeve, the sleeve goes into my front pants pocket. The sleeve has a friction material on the outside and a friction-less material on the inside. It looks like you"re carying a wallet in stead of a pistol. It"s prety easy to draw....especially when you"re held up and say..... "uhhh, "scuse me while I get my wallet from my front pocket".

Mostly I carry the Tomcat. It"s a good everyday gun and really disappears in my pocket. The Glock is a little heavier, but doable. I like the size of the Tomcat, it has a tip-up barrel so you don"t have to rack the slide before you let one rip, it"s real reliable, and has minimal recoil. Its about as small of a caliber as I"d feel comfortable in using..... .25 and .22 are just too dam_ light.

The Glock goes with me when I hike. Sometimes I take the .45 instead (just really like that gun). If I"m out of state hiking and can"t CCW a pistol, I carry a single barrel, break-breech, 20ga shotgun with an 18.5" bbl and a chopped stock. It is legal in all states (by 1" in overall length). It"s a factory made gun called the "lil pardner". Can"t remember the mfg. If I really need to cut weight while hiking and not pi-- anyone off, I take an Olin Flare gun with 12ga willy-pete shells.....that usually gets the attention of any bears (but the forestry service really hates "em and will hassle you a lot in the western states).

sorry for the long post but this is something I fell really strongly about.....

• Summit Gun Broker

Bobbed or hammerless a good for ccw from a legal aspect but finding a holster with retention device that disengages easily on the draw is not easy.

I am certified to teach CCW classes in Arizona and have been teaching them since the state started issuing CCWs over 12 years ago.

I also have a FFL and live in the county so no city sales tax. In Tuscon thats a 2% savings off the bat.

The steel framed S&W hammerless .357 I talked about in my earlier post weighs only 23 oz., not the 28 oz. I estimated. Not very useful to use as a reference if the weight is overstated by more than 20%.

Another thing came to my mind about you mentioning having a Colt revolver that you like a lot; you're aware, aren't you, that the trigger system of a Colt feels completely different from a Ruger or a S&W? In DA mode---which you're restricted to with a hammerless revolver---Ruger revolvers stage a bit but let off pretty cleanly. Colts stack in DA, a very different feeling. Personally, I don't think it's a good idea to mix trigger pull characteristics between a carry gun and a non-carry favorite. After I had fired a few thousand rounds through all kinds of Glocks, I found myself shooting unintentional double taps from a Browning Hi-Power---a pistol I had owned for over thirty years and put more cartridges through than even I can believe.

All the best, Stan

Well I should be using another term as the Sp101 is a bobtail, not hammerless. On this Ruger model that is a blessing as you can not cock the hammer back before firing. If you let go of the hammer in the full cock position, the hammer falls home without pulling the trigger. ???

The SP101 is a 28oz weapon. That's gonna make the hand a tad sore in 357mag. There is a spring kit available for smoothing the DA. Supposed to be about 1/2 the effort of normal DA pull. I guess this is why it's a popular back-up carry weapon amoung LE's.

In defense mode, I would think the average user would have a hard time getting off more than one shot without exsessive training, ie; the common double tap defense method. I was considering a 2shot 45LC darenger for this very reason. Alot of KO power in one punch.

Last night I was looking thru Davideson's online and a Ruger 45acp M#1911 is only $650, Redhawk 4" DA 44mag, $625. I like the #1911 for a CCW but with living in Arizona and wearing shorts, it makes walking more of a PITA without wearing a belt for the CCW. A pocket model would stop this concern.

T_Bone

The trade off between a carry weapon in a serious caliber and one that you can carry w/o feeling that you're gearing up for combat has always been the big problem, hasn't it? If .380 auto is considered marginal, what does that make .32ACP? Yet there was never any significant size benefit between the smallest .380's and the smallest .38's, so your only option used to be to look for a Seecamp .32ACP (and plan on spending a lot of money) or get even deeper into the "better than nothing" mode with a .22LR or .25ACP handgun.

The S&W J-frame revolvers and the heavier but not larger Glock sub-compacts might work for people in parts of the country where they have to wear a lot of clothes, but they're too much gun for light summer clothing. Either one will make the pocket of a pair of shorts sag noticeably, and it really takes a particular mindset to be comfortable wearing light clothing and a gun in what amounts to a harness. Mainly, nowadays you don't want people to be able to tell that you're packing.

The Kel-Tec autos solved the problem to a great extent, in my opinion, but with a couple of reservations. Foremost, I'd say, is reliability. I bought a Kel-Tec .32 a year or two after they first came out. At 9.6 oz fully loaded you could literally carry it in the pocket of a heavy shirt, if you were so inclined. It really is a carry pistol. Additionally, it's DAO, which I prefer. But---even though I haven't had any feeding problems with it after the 100-200 round break-in period, I can't honestly say that I'm 100% certain of its mechanical ability to get off more than one shot when fired under stressful conditions. Most autos can fail to feed due to being held too weakly; stress, and the Kel-Tec's small size make a less than perfect grip seem more than just possible under emergency conditions.

The other problem with Kel-Tecs is the unpleasantness of the recoil in that small a handgun. The .32ACP is slightly painful to shoot; I imagine that the .380 and the 40S&W must be terrible and horrible, in that order. Not that you really need to be too concerned about getting off more than one shot, if that. Statistically, just having a gun is all it takes to resolve the situation in all but a tiny percentage of cases. But if a gun is unpleasant to shoot, it's just human nature that you'll practice with it less than than if it were pleasant. If you don't practice with a gun you'll never get comfortable with it. If you're not comfortable with a gun you can't know with any degree of certainty what you'll do with it in an emergency. Shooting when you shouldn't and not shooting when you should are just about equally bad possibilities.

All the best, Stan

When S&W came out with the .357 version of the 640, I read that the first people to shoot it---gun writers and S&W technical staff---unanimously described the experience as one they would make an effort to avoid thereafter. That's the problem with hot loads in light guns. I think the steel framed version of the 640 in .357 (the one that the people who were supposed to be promoting it described as very unpleasant to shoot) weighed about 28 oz. So you might use that weight as a reference point. If the SP101 weighs less than that, you probably won't enjoy it (and your wife will probably hate it) with .357 mag.

What most people do, as you know, is to practice with lighter, cheaper loads than they plan to carry in the gun, and just shoot enough of the carry loads to zero them. I disagree with that practice. To the extent that familiarizing yourself with how the gun shoots is beneficial, you should be familiarizing yourself with how it shoots whatever is going to be in it when it counts, not the loads with entirely different characteristics that you shoot at the range.

All the best, Stan

An alternative to a hammerless is to have the hammer bobbed on a hammer model- won"t snag and easy to carry but you still can cock it for a smooth single action pull if you desire. That is what I have and I love it- gives the best of both worlds.

You won"t be disapointed with that little gun- beware the short barrel barks LOUD and shoots a pretty good flame with the hotter ammo. You would get your point across a lot more then say a .32 that is for sure.

I'm more liberal than conservative in many of my attitudes, but gun control is an area where liberals apparently "know the truth" and are simply not interested in any information that challenges their beliefs. Murders committed with firearms, particularly mass murders, are big news, of course, but instances where armed civilians prevent or resolve such situations are seriously, and by all appearances intentionally, underreported. Not a conspiracy so much as a mindset. Then too, when a crime is prevented by the potential victim displaying a gun w/o having to use it, there is no story.

I feel that rhetoric, hyperbole, misinformation, and propaganda are the bain of our culture---if not an impediment to civilization altogether---and there's an apparently unlimited amount of those things from every side. I tend to be least impressed by so-called authorities who know they are right, and so, find ways to dismiss or ignore information that contradicts their beliefs. Next in reduced credibility are those who have something to gain by promoting their point of view. Last are the bad thinkers, the careless misinformed, the ignorant, and the stupid, i. e. most people. They always have strong opinions, and usually view the strength of an opinion as a measure of its validity. Collectively, their attitudes are a political and social reality, but there's just no objective information to be had there.

The reason I went on at such length (besides the fact that I always do) about whose information is valid is because I have been intensely interested in getting closer to the truth of this issue of guns in America for about forty years now. Here's what I believe to be true about the issue of self-defence with a gun. Several sources who I consider to be reliable, and who are trying to be objective (a researcher whose previous actions and writings reveal a bias, but whose research forces him to acknowledge that a different condition appears to be true, strikes me as far more reliable than a researcher whose research supports what he already believed) have reported that the best research suggests that between 600,000 and 1.2 million crimes per year in America are prevented by the potential victim or a bystander having a gun. In all but a fraction of a percent of these events, the gun is not fired.

Let me finish with something I think is funny, as well as revealing. I read about a local firearms advocacy group whose members would sometimes make a "put up or shut up" offer to individuals at gun control rallies: if they didn't believe that the presence of a gun, or the possible presence of a gun, served as any kind of a deterrent to crime, would they be willing to post a sign in their front yard? The sign read "There is NO GUN in this house". I'd love to hear some of the reasons anti-gun people offered for not agreeing to post such a sign.

All the best, Stan

Well it's like, hold on a minute while I remove my trigger lock and get my ammo from another loacation other than my night stand lock box.

I don't know that many bad guys with this much patience, while knowing there fixing to get there head split open by a chunk of lead because of the bleeding heart liberals don't understand what being prepared is all about.

If you knew what time the theif was gonna show up, you would not be sleeping. Defense mode maybe a better idea???

T_Bone

Well according to Ruger the SP101 with a hammer can NOT be shot as a single shot. If you cock the hammer it will fall home.

I now know why they make the bobtail version and why Davidson'e has 120 hammer type and 0 bobtail in stock.

What a shock it must be to find out that there's no single action available the very first time.

T_Bone

That"s s sweet little gun. I"m partial to Rugers. My father and law is looking to buy that one with laser sights in the grip. I think he shot one at the gun shop and loved it. I imagine that for practice, .38 rounds will be agreeable for you and your wife. Keep the mags in it for protection.

JBMac

I have owned lots of guns in my life, not so many handguns...sorta like Quigly....never had much use for one, never said I didn't know how to use one. No need in publishing a list of what I have and all their specs. Bottom line is this:

In most cases, when the shooting starts, it ends nearly as fast. The first bang tends to get attention moi pronto. Aim for the center of mass..like the middle of the chest....doesn't make much difference what caliber you are shooting then. Badass gets sick real quick when a hole gets punched in there. It isn't necessary for you to have a 12 shooter or one that punches donut holes. Get something you can handle well. I like the PPK in .380....a fine design that is 60+ years old....works like a Timex. Up in size is any of the smith J frames. The 38 special will suffice, thank you. I'd like to have a kit gun in 22 magnum for a pocket gun. I have a friend who has used both the .45 acp and 9 mm in real scenarios and he told me there is very little real difference when it comes to shooting a man with either. His choice is the Browning Hi-Power for military use. He was a Ranger and they chose whatever they wanted to carry His favorite gun for overall use was a Czech smg in .32 acp! It was controllable and made lots of holes quickly on several targets in tight situations. Point is...control of your gun is extremely important..more so than shooting big diameter slugs that recoil harder. The Ruger is a reliable revolver, so are the J frames. 5 shots is plenty...4 more than you will likely ever need.