Taurus .380 Revolver (Yes, Revolver!)
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I love the panache of Taurus. They aren’t afraid to try new things, and they can often start a little stir in the industry. Who would have thought the original Judge would sell well, much less spawn specialty ammo and a whole series of revolvers based on the idea.
Next up for Taurus? The .380 ACP revolver.
The new .380 revolver is a five-shot revolver in a frame smaller than the Taurus model 85. The new .380 revolver will use ‘stellar clips’, which like moon clips, allow the shooter to reload the revolver very quickly. The clips also allow the use of rimless cartridges such as the .380 ACP.
“It’s the neatest little gun you’ve seen in a long time,” said Bob Morrison of Taurus USA. Morrison appeared on the May 30, 2010 broadcast of Tom Gresham’s GunTalk radio program.
5 Comments
June 8th, 2010 at 7:53 am
While I’m not a fan of Taurus, a smaller-framed would be interesting. Unfortunately Taurus has a record of announcing things that never appear. I’ll be more excited when they reach dealers.
June 8th, 2010 at 8:12 am
More vaporware? I’m still waiting to see a production model of Charter’s rimless revolver.
June 8th, 2010 at 8:50 am
Yeah, the Rimless Revolver is still MIA. When I spoke with Charter in April, they were still insisting the CARR would be ready this month (June). We’ll see…
–Richard
June 10th, 2010 at 10:26 am
.380 revolver? Lessee, about every revolver manufacturer made one 100-20 years ago. They were all low-power versions of the 38 S&W. Most were top-breaks, very handy little revolvers. I’ve owned two as curios, but they have little value for defense as the round is barely a man-stopper.
The .380, when shot out of a revolver, is going to lose enough of it’s speed jumping the gap that it will be no better than those old .38 rimmed cartridges.
Plus, the .380 is expensive to practice with, currently commanding almost $30/box for the ammo.
Defense guns are all about projecting as much stopping power as possible out of a small gun. A .380 in a 4″ semi-auto pistol is on the very low edge of having requisite stopping power. Out of a snubby revolver, it will not have enough.
June 11th, 2010 at 5:49 am
Maybe .380 won’t break the gun. I had a Taurus revolver in 9 mm – in the first range session the yoke retaining screw fell out before I got through a 50-round box of ammo. The second range session the transfer bar broke and locked up the action! The gun was sent back to the factory before firing 100 rounds – and they were told to keep it – my local dealer did the legwork and made good on my end.