laststandonzombieisland

In a world filled with super-high capacity ‘wondernines‘, Smith and Wesson found a remarkable level of success in the 1990s with a design that kept it old school. Let’s kick it for a minute with the Smith and Wesson 4500 series.

In 1984 there were three choices in police handguns. The go-to guns of that time were the wondernines: double-stacked pistols such as the Glock 17, Ruger P-85, Beretta 92, S&W 5906, and others. Also popular were the slower to reload, but no less accurate six-shoot revolvers like the Colt Python and Ruger GP100. You could also choose the old fashioned Colt 1911 single stack .45ACP if you wanted more firepower, but this single-action gun, and when carried ‘cocked and locked’ was not popular with administrators.

Smith and Wesson, the first US company to mass-produce a 9mm in the country, had been looking to capitalize on a larger-framed automatic that used the same styling and action of its popular 5906 pistol. Since the 10mm Auto chambered Model 1006 would not reach maturity until 1990, the .45ACP seemed to be the next best thing.  At the same time, they were developing the Model 4006, which used their new .40S&W round–itself a weakly loaded 10mm Auto. Needing a modern combat handgun right away, that didn’t fire the ‘underpowered’ 9mm or the unproven 10mm/.40S&W; they developed their first .45ACP autoloader.

Read the rest in my column at Guns.com