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Want a giant handgun that shoots a supped up small caliber, super high-velocity round and has a funky loading process that you likely haven’t seen before? Well you sound like a Ruger Hawkeye pistol man.

What in the world is the .256?

Introduced in 1960 after some wildcat development by Winchester (with some input from Bill Ruger’s people), the .256 Winchester Magnum round took Elmer Keith’s vaunted .357 S&W Magnum, which typically fired a 120-150 grain bullet at about 1,400 feet per second generating about 500 ft./lbs. of energy downrange, and necked it down to make something altogether different. By loading a 60-grain .257-caliber bullet over the same load of powder, the round almost doubled the velocity to a truly amazing 2,350 feet per second, which in turn gave over 700 ft./lbs. of energy imparted.

Zoom!

Best yet, the round still hummed enough out to 200-yards to take varmints or medium sized game, therefore making it a perfect choice for the new (in the 1960s) handgun hunter market. As such, Bill Ruger was the first to market a pistol chambered from the factory for this beast– and it was a hand cannon.

Enter the Hawkeye:

Read the rest in my column at Ruger Talk