Are We In The Middle Of A Revolver Renaissance?

[blues]

[QUOTE=11B10;981095]

Yep, that's me and my huge collection of six firearms. The envy of P-F.[/QUO




blues, compared to me, you're a hoarder - I'm down to exactly two. And, neither one gets the range time it should. Somehow I thought retirement would be days spent blazing away for hours on end. I've got to be doing something wrong.

That makes you pretty unique around here. I figure as long as you know what you need and can justify it, you're good.

I moved up here to NC, (upon retiring from LE), with three. A G19, a G26 and a shotgun.

I added a G17 for nightstand duty with an affixed light, a 642 because I always regretted selling the Model 36 and it's my walking around gun in the area in which I live, and an AR because I didn't have a rifle and it was the last type of weapon that I used on the job which I didn't personally own. (Aside from an MP5 and an AUG.)

If you can get by with less and are satisfied, I think that's all that matters. I know I could get by with only a G26 if I had to. It does everything I want in a gun.

[hiro]

That makes you pretty unique around here. I figure as long as you know what you need and can justify it, you're good.

I've 2, a rifle and a pistol, guess I'm unique too.

To the OP, first pistol back in the 90s was a Dan Wesson 15. I've a hankering for a 4" revolver but I think, at least for me, @HCM is right and it's nostalgia. My next purchase will likely be a 19.5 MOS and a RDS, but not a revolver.

[Tamara]

During the last few years there seems to have been a renewed interest in revolvers for CCW, Home Defense, and Hunting. I can remember when I had an FFL in the mid 90's, revolvers at least for defensive use, were about as popular as 40 S&W semi autos are today. I couldn't hardly give away police surplus S&W Model 10's. Today Ruger's LCR and LCRx have been very sucessful. In 2019 the Charter Arms PitBull, Charter Arms Professional, Ruger Wrangler, and the Colt King Cobra were released. New and surplus S&W revolvers seem to selling at a brisk pace and recently Colt announced the re-release of the Python. The number of revolvers in my personal collection dropped to 0 in 2008 and stayed that way until 2012. Now 40% of my handguns are revolvers.

I wonder if this is a generational push like classic cars for boomers or multiple other factors are at work here. I know a Zombie show brought the Colt Python back to life.

Your comment about the generational push is spot on. Generation X, my generation, is the last one to have seen revolvers in common use as duty guns and the mainstream choice for self-defense handguns. We're getting into our peak disposable income years now, and that's going to be reflected in the market.

A lot of us, myself included, got into firearms collecting back in the Nineties and early Aughties, and those Model 10s you couldn't give away were one of our gateway drugs (Mosin Nagants and Yugo Mausers were the other). When I was in my 20s, I couldn't afford a Python, but I could afford K-frames.

There's nothing magical about turning fifty that makes a person suddenly get into revolvers. When Millennials start turning into empty nesters with dough to spare, very few are going to suddenly start pining for wheelguns; instead I expect to see prices on early USPs and unmolestered Gen2 Glocks take a steep climb. The HK P7 is the Python for Millennials.

Twenty years from now, while there will still be a market for small carry revolvers, big hunting magnums, and SAA-lookalikes, I expect the medium frame duty-style revolver market to be a tiny fraction of today's, which is already a small ghost of its former self.

[Dave T]

I have been wrestling with the idea of going back to a revolver for about a year now. In my case because arthritis and nerve is damage making it increasingly difficult to manipulate semi auto slides. The simplicity of the revolver's manual of arms is a big draw. I have a 386 Night Guard that wants to come out and play, I'm just reluctant because I've spent my adult life (46 years) shooting, training, competing, and carrying semi autos (first Colt 1911s then Glocks).

I started my LEO career with a revolver and I've shot them in competition, just not nearly as much as the semi autos. In my mind the battle rages, back and forth. I recently bought and tried to carry a 642. Pocket carry doesn't work with jeans, which I've been wearing longer than I've been shooting handguns (lol). I can't decide if this conundrum is driving me crazy, or it's just keeping my mind occupied and I should be thinking of other things. Getting old really isn't for the faint of heart.

Dave

[blues]

I have been wrestling with the idea of going back to a revolver for about a year now. In my case because arthritis and nerve is damage making it increasingly difficult to manipulate semi auto slides. The simplicity of the revolver's manual of arms is a big draw. I have a 386 Night Guard that wants to come out and play, I'm just reluctant because I've spent my adult life (46 years) shooting, training, competing, and carrying semi autos (first Colt 1911s then Glocks).

I started my LEO career with a revolver and I've shot them in competition, just not nearly as much as the semi autos. In my mind the battle rages, back and forth. I recently bought and tried to carry a 642. Pocket carry doesn't work with jeans, which I've been wearing longer than I've been shooting handguns (lol). I can't decide if this conundrum is driving me crazy, or it's just keeping my mind occupied and I should be thinking of other things. Getting old really isn't for the faint of heart.

Dave

I made the switch from jeans to cargo pants a few years ago and haven't looked back. And I wore nothing but jeans forever. Once I appreciated the freedom of functional pockets I was sold. I'd never have thought so, but it was easy. (It's made easier since such attire is the norm around here, so nothing about it says "gun".)

[BehindBlueI's]

As much as I'd love to go down this rabbit hole, I have a feeling the "revolver renaissance" is constrained to mainly P-F

Kimber and Colt didn't enter/re-enter the market for PF alone. Ruger isn't cranking out new models for just us. I'm not completely up to date on what the magazines and social media are touting, but I strongly suspect Colt is getting plenty of both paid and unpaid attention in those arenas outside PF.

[Tamara]

Ruger isn't cranking out new models for just us.

Are Ruger's new models...which are all fairly "niche-y" in their configuration and/or caliber...to grow the revolver market, or to sell additional guns to people who already have .357 Magnum GP100's and SP101's?

[Cecil Burch]

........are all now getting to true adulthood and middle-age. They’re working in professional and corporate environments. They have grown-up jobs in soft (or hard) NPEs.

You know what works amazing in these environments and isn’t prone to the failings of many pocket semi-autos?

J-frames & LCRs. The interest in range guns, home defense guns, and competition guns that have the same manual of arms as the perfect pocket/bellyband/SmartCarry guns just naturally follows.

Combine it with isolated pop culture phenomena (e.g. the Walking Dead Python) and the peak boomer demographic in the marketplace, and you get a great market for compact and midsize revolvers.

The market is definitely not soft for Glocks and the new wave of optics-ready, flat-trigger-equipped doublestacks, and I think there is observable growth/interest in the 2011 market segment as well. But, the modern wheelgun definitely has its niche.

I think this is pretty much a good chunk of it.

As people get into their maturity and have some real world experience, those with good critical thinking skills start to see that the pithy, cliched internet advice of "if you can't conceal a G19, then you are 1) stupid 2) lazy 3) a fudd" is just that - cliche. They see that there are actual contexts for some people where that advice is so far opposite that is borders on Biden level.

On top of that, there is a segment of instructors who don't feel the need to toe the line regarding internet wisdom and are willing to not only talk about real use of different tools, but actually teach it, and the more people that see that, the more there is a interest in such things as snub carry, or k-frame carry for non-gun folks, etc.

And it is not a P-F thing. I talk to a lot of folks in my courses and in online conversation that have no idea of this forum, but are asking me about snubs. Is this going to be a huge new market? Not a chance, but there will be a steady interest which is enough to at least get some manufacturers into the game with new offerings.

[Guerrero]

Kimber and Colt didn't enter/re-enter the market for PF alone.

Point taken

[swampyank33]

- the young people that have grown up in a predominately shall-issue, CCW-normalized culture

are all now getting to true adulthood and middle-age. They’re working in professional and corporate environments. They have grown-up jobs in soft (or hard) NPEs.

You know what works amazing in these environments and isn’t prone to the failings of many pocket semi-autos?

J-frames & LCRs. The interest in range guns, home defense guns, and competition guns that have the same manual of arms as the perfect pocket/bellyband/SmartCarry guns just naturally follows.

.

I am this person to a T! Started out with poly striker fired pistols, but realistically a J Frame or LCR works for my lifestyle a whole lot better. I work retail and live in the suburbs of an area that is already heavily anti-gun.

The interest in the bigger wheelguns is just an extension of that.

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