I got the 2″ snub nose version, M 206. Same gun, shorter barrel. Rock Island Armory is all over the map with their revolvers. Once I figured out why the cylinder was binding up, and took about 1/32nd of an inch off the lower portion of the cylinder latch, poof! Works like magic. $228 out the door (it was a display model they took 10% off the $239 sticker price). If I’d want to pay about $400 for the Charter Arms next to it, I wouldn’t have had to do the file job.

That’s guns in the real world. Stores don’t stand behind what they’re selling. If you have a problem you have to go through the hassle of shipping a firearm back to the manufacturer and waiting weeks and months to get something back you literally just got, or you fix it yourself. Or pay 2 to 3 times as much for something that works out of the box. 6 of 1 half dozen of the other. Now Rock Island does a fantastic job with their 1911’s. I understand the equipment they inherited were Colt machines, that helps.

Firearms are unique in the world of consumer goods. You don’t get to try them out before you buy. If you’re lucky you get to pull the trigger and work the action. But you pretty much never get to fire a gun before you buy it. That’s why you do a lot of research first. Your YouTube gun channels like Hickok45 and sootch00 are just sucking up to the gun makers and everything they test is just the most wonderful gun ever made. Plus the ‘test and evaluation’ guns they get sent have been looked over real well.

But after 2 days of farting around and 2 trips to the range, I got a sweet little shooter at a fantastic price. A young guy next to me at the counter at Fleet Farm buys Kimber ($1,000 each) revolvers and semi-autos. He doesn’t get the thrill of bargain hunting, he just gets firearms that work real well and look real nice. Another gun that is through the roof hot is the SIG Sauer P365. You’ll pay a minimum of $600 for the base model (by the time you are out the door), and it had problems when it first came out. So nothing is a guarantee.

[On an interesting ammo note, Scheels is still leading the pack as far as supply goes. Bass Pro 3 weeks ago suddenly got up to speed. Fleet Farm this past week did. Plus, my jaw hit the ground when I saw Fleet Farm had primers. Nobody has primers. Theisen’s comes and goes, they’re pretty good right now. Walmart about every 2 months has .22LR, .22WMR and shotgun shells. Bomgaars is pathetic. As is Sportsman’s Warehouse. I called down to Scheels to see if they had any .38 Special. He said they had ‘bird shot’! You have limited capacity on your .38 line and the one you choose to devote your limited resources to is bird shot?! I saw that a little while ago with .45 ACP bird shot and .38 blanks! What in the sam hell are they thinking?]