Smith & Wesson - Airweight .38 - Review

The Smith Airweight .38 is a little pocket revolver with a good sized punch behind it.
It holds 5 rounds of .38 special ammo which has been around for about 5,000 years.

It is an extremely light weight and easy to conceal option to consider.
It weighs almost nothing, even when loaded. It easily fits in a pocket without printing. It is a no brainer so far as the dimensions are concerned.

Also Smith and Wesson makes a terrific, long lasting, reliable pistol.
There are 60 year old models still being used regularly with not so much as a whisper of an issue. The reliability is without question.

It is also chambered in a tried and true caliber. The .38 special has been in production for, well, forever. Police have carried the .38 all the way up until the mid 20th century. It has been proven over and over again as an effective personal defense round.

I will admit that it is a little pricey to purchase, but the ammo is plentiful and can be had on the cheap!

So, it all sounds great, right? Well, on paper, sure.


Where the rubber meets the road is when you pull the trigger. The trigger pull (the amount of force required to pull the trigger and cause the hammer to fall striking the primer and firing the round.) is intense! It is heavy. It is not easy to pull back.

Also, because it is a revolver, the combustion of the powder is not completely contained within the slide like it is in a semi-auto. So there is a great deal of flash and bang when you pull the trigger. I have actually burned my knuckles due to the flash from shooting this one.

Given the ultra low weight of the revolver the .38 round will jump and it will be hard to keep on target.

Accuracy is going to be the issue also with the short barrel. The barrel is about 1.9 inches long... not a lot of time for the grooves in the barrel to have much affect on the flight path of the bullet.

So, if you practice, practice, practice, and get used to the trigger pull and the flash and noise from this pistol it can be an easily concealed and carried option.

I would suggest that you try it before you buy it though, you want to make sure that you can handle it before you spend your money on it.