Handguns

Once a stalwart of the American firearms industry, Colt Manufacturing has had issues in recent decades, to the point where we sometimes doubted its survival as a viable business.

When we compare the S&W Model 629 Hunter to an older Model 29 we have in house, it appears that Smith & Wesson mostly used the same frame as on the older version.

The P229 is a conventional double-action-first-shot pistol with an exposed hammer and hammer spur.

LTT is the company founded by noted competition shooter Ernst Langdon.

Manufactured in Switzerland, the Sphinx is a highly upgraded version of the CZ 75 Compact pistol.

Our September 2021 issue featured two double-action 44 Magnum revolvers that we thought were extremely well suited for personal defense. We tested an older...

Along with the Beretta 84 Cheetah, the CZ 83 was among the first high-capacity 380 Auto pistols. We find the workmanship on the used CZ pistol to be good, despite wear and cosmetic problems. The pistol is all steel.

We have seen these pistols on sale for $385, others at $479. Like the Beretta 84 it’s based on, the pistol uses an open-top slide, a double-action trigger operated by an external drawbar, and a high-capacity 13-round magazine.

The Bersa Thunder Plus offers no surprises. This pistol is the Bersa Thunder with a high-capacity magazine.

Toward the end of each year, I survey the work R.K. Campbell, Roger Eckstine, Robert Sadowski, Tracey Taylor, and Joe Woolley have done in Gun Tests, with an eye toward selecting guns, accessories, and ammunition the magazine’s testers have endorsed. From these evaluations I pick the best from a full year’s worth of tests and distill recommendations for readers, who often use them as shopping guides.

The Ruger LCR hit the market around 2010, and we were some of the early adopters. In the LCR, Ruger introduced a number of innovations we’d never seen on a wheelgun.

Smith & Wesson didn’t start using model numbers until 1957. Now, anything beginning with a 4 (and sometimes 5) is blued steel. Our 1978-vintage 38 Special is a Model 60, denoting that it is made of stainless steel.