OK, I kinda get it. The Taurus Judge is a revolver that shoots 410 shotshells and .45 Long Colt ammo. It’s meant for personal defense. And hell, just look at the thing! It looks big and ugly and would probably scare an attacker on looks alone.
But I just… on another level, I don’t get it. A .357 snubbie will do way more damage. I got to fire a Judge, and I wasn’t in any way impressed. It feels like a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist yet. Also, how the fuck are these NOT considered a Short Barreled Shotgun? Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s bad that the ATF won’t let you have a short shotgun without a permit. But if we’re going to regulate this shit, let’s have some integrity here.
On that note, I love SBSes. I WILL eventually get a 10″ barrel Mossberg 2+1 pump.
Actually in Commiefornia our ever so wise and benevolent masters do treat the Taurus Judge revolver the same as an illegal sawed off shotgun.
How we envy those of you across the border who live in Free America!
Hickcock45 just did a video on some recockulously short pump guns over on his youtubes page that where pretty good to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_pXTItRtkc
Come take a stroll in the Arizona desert with me, and you will discover the problem to which the Judge is a pretty good solution.
Late to replying to this, but: I did a LOT of hiking and camping in the Mojave growing up. Best way to kill a rattler in your camp? A .22 rifle. Long enough to use while keeping away from snake, just reach out with it one-handed, and point the barrel anywhere near a snake’s head – the snake will line its face up with the muzzle. Pull trigger. Use barrel to fling writhing snake out of camp. Wait for it to stop writhing. Cut off and bury head, skin snake, cut off meat and make stew.
Gotta say, I love my judge, especially for small apartments. I can fire a round of buckshot at an intruder and not have that constant worry about over-penetration that I’d have with a bigger round. And I can throw buckshot out of a pistol. I find that HIGHLY entertaining.
I’m told they’re good for snakes. And plinking. And being a dick with stupid shotloads. And not much else, unless you load .45s or .454s. I also hear that accuracy suffers, but only at ranges well past “self defense”, unless you’re are self-defensing against long guns. Then you’ve got other problems of the Rule # 6 variety, where you should have brought a longgun, and a friend with a longgun and more friends with longguns…
Oh, mind if I drop one of your comics (with a link of course) on the weapons board at 4chan? Because the /k/ board needs to be reading this.
Feel free to link this all you like! However, I do believe a few people already tried posting it to /k/ and the threads were deleted every time.
The judge found a loophole in that as long it has so much rifling in it, it’s not considered a shotgun.
Is this a silly way to define guns? Yes.
Then again, take a look at the people writing these. I’m pretty sure that if this is the silliest bit of gun law we have at the national level, then we’re doing fairly good.
IIRC,the Judge has a rifled barrel, making it not-a-shotgun.
‘Zackly. Some of the trick shooters in the late 19th – early 20th century used shotshells in revolvers that were smoothbored out to the last couple inches, then rifled right before the muzzle in order to get around that.
So if I chop a 20 ga rifled slug barrel down to 8″, that’s legit?
It would either be considered a short barreled shotgun or a destructive device, depending on whether the ATF determined that it had a sporting purpose. The reason is that the bore is greater than .500″ (20ga is .614″, IIRC). You can’t get around that .500 maximum bore without the “sporting purpose” exemption.
Goddamn it. OK, so I can at least chop a rifled .410 down to… oh, fuck it, I’d just buy a Judge.
Turns out I’m (partially) wrong and there is another way around it. You know how you can create a pistol from a virgin AR lower, but you can’t convert an AR rifle into a pistol? Turns out that the ATF’s definition of “Shotgun” requires “fired from the shoulder”. So, if you can get a virgin shotgun receiver and don’t install a shoulder stock, that weapon is not a shotgun or a weapon made from a shotgun. It’s a smoothbore pistol. Since it doesn’t fit into any other category; it’s an AOW. Which is $200 to manufacture, but only $5 to transfer. (instead of $200 each for SBS)
Search for the Serbu Super Shorty, a 3-round pump-gun built off your choice of an 870 or 500 receiver, with a pistol grip, shortened barrel, shortened mag tube.
Getting closer. AOWs can be built on a reciever that came with a pistol grip from the factory. This is only a $5 transfer tax. There is no $200 tax involved. I had a 12 inch Mossberg 500. You really need to put a Hogue pistol grip on it as it beats the hell out of the webbing between your thumb and trigger finger. But it is a fun and awesome looking firearm.
So it’s about the rifling? I just assumed it worked like an Ar pistol, i.e. manufactured as a pistol and never converted to a rifle, so it’s a pistol. Just assumed the same would work regardless of rifling or cartridge type.
But then again, I never understood how building an AR pistol from a lower I had used in a rifle made it somehow extremely dangerous or evil, but one built with new parts is ok. We really do have some dumb ass gun laws in our country.
snakedriver761,
It’s the rifling AND the fact that it started life as a pistol.
I’m clearly doing something wrong if you’ve put a gangsta duck into your comic before one made its way into mine…
Ducks are socialists?
Ah, the .45 Colt. It’s not fast. It’s not fancy. It just puts big holes in things. 🙂
I bought a Circuit Judge just to have an inexpensive .45 Colt carbine. Think I’ve put just five .410 through it. The rest have all been factory or handloaded .45 Colt. Not a bad little rifle, accurate with the right loads out to at least fifty yards.
However, I bought some all-brass .410 shells and will experiment with reloading those. If nothing else, showing someone what appears to be a cartridge three inches long (including bullet or exposed slug) and half an inch wide should produce interesting reactions.
Have you ever seen a duck planting a lawn, or only eating off of it?
And here I was expecting an explicit callback to this…
Hehe.
Being a cool idea is its own justification. 🙂
I agree the whole self defense aspect of the heavy, bulky judge & governor pistols is a bit of a hard sell, and the gangsta duck makes more sense than any I’ve heard of before for the personal defense use of .410 birdshot. Although living in the desert of Arizona, hiking, hunting, and even a little prospecting I’m with Henry Brown above, I’ve killed over half a dozen buzz-tails around the house with mine. It is great for that use, two of them were sidewinders that I was nearly standing on and the were dead instantly, something that my other revolver with a .357/38spc birdshot load has failed to do repeatedly in the past for me.
I can say though the PDX .410 rounds may be good for two legged snakes at close range, but for big green mean mohave rattlers they ain’t worth a plugged nickel! Took three well aimed shots to kill what normally takes one .410 shot-shell.
Quack Quack mothafucka- now right up there with “you feel lucky punk?”
Love the comics.. keep it goin!
It wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t hear different people at different ranges extolling the virtues of the Judge over the past couple of years in almost the same way, minor variations on “Oh it’s so powerful/it’ll clear out a room/make peoples’ heads explode/you don’t even have to aim” the most egregious of these being some seriously morbidly obese Canadian guy at a range (clues as to his Canadian-ness, his accent, his constant references to “back in Canada”, his pitted, fraying, sweat-stained size XXXXXXXXL t-shirt with the Joint Task Force 2 emblem on the front) gassing on about how the Judge was sooooo powerful and versatile “shotgun pistol”; why, you could shoot birds with bird shot, you could take out small game with buckshot, and deer with slugs and if you wanted “sniper level accuracy” you could shoot .45 LC out of it. Plus it was so powerful they were illegal “back up in Canada”, and the US Army was considering adding the Judge to their arsenal.
My guess was the .410 was basically a larger version of snake-shot. If you’re six feet away and you don’t want to fire a slug into the ground for fear of richochets, then you break out the .410.