637-2 has spoiled me - so easy to carry

[Grimjaws]

I have a few j frames - a 60 and 36. But they are no dash and in great shape. I wanted something I could carry without worrying about scratching and could be replaced easily.

A few months ago, I asked my local FFL enabler to keep an eye out. He had a NIB 637-2 come in. It was a replacement gun for a cracked frame 37 that the recipient turned down, so he sold it to me as used - $400 out the door. Unfortunately, it had to go back to the factory as the handspring broke. According to the gunsmith at the factory it had been tampered with and was all scratched up inside. I waited about 2 months for them to send me an estimate for a repair when surprise surprise they sent it back to me repaired at no charge. Nice!


A week later he got a raffle winner who didn't want a M&P Shield 2.0 in 9mm. I thought maybe it was time to carry something a little flatter and had more rounds. I got that for $360.

Both guns have lifetime warranties and can be replaced, if need be, so I took them to the range. They both did great at 7-10 yards and at the steel targets if I took my time.

I was able to pocket carry the M&P a few times and IWB. It has not had one failure to feed, and I picked up some extra magazines too. It shoots better than I can and acts like it is full sized. I was pretty happy with my new carry gun.

A about three weeks ago I had to spend a day shopping at a few different stores and went into the safe and decided to grab the 637-2 and some speed strip reloads. Into the pocket it went and off I go to the stores. It sure was comforting holding onto that little snub at the gas station in my pocket and when walking back to the car knowing I could fire it from inside my jacket pocket if necessary.

Fast forward to today and I am still carrying that 637-2. I have two speed strips in my other pocket and a speedloader in my winter coat pocket.

I have always carried a steel framed snub or heavier. Last summer I carried my 66-1 2.5" doing one trip to the corner store with that in my windbreaker pocket but that drooped a little too low.

I cannot believe how easy this 637-2 is to carry. I barely know it is there. So light and easy it disappears in my pocket. I had my brother look at my jean pockets with the 637-2, LCP II .22 and M&P - all in nylon pocket holsters. He said the 637-2 looked the least like a gun as the shape was "lumpy" versus the squared off grips of the two semi autos. Of course, he had to look really hard to spot the LCP but he thinks the j frame shape was the hardest to tell.

Looks like the M&P will be relegated to bedside duty while I carry the 637-2. My FFL even put a dab of orange paint on the front sight which helps my older eyes immensely.

I finally get the appeal of the lightweight j frames.

 

[haywood]

Love my lightweight J-Frames. One of them is always in my pocket no matter what I carry on the waist. I even carry one in my bath robe pocket.

 

[Old cop]

I’ve been carrying a lightweight J Frame since 1968 & my current EDC is a no-lock 340PD loaded w/+P. All J Frames have a heavy trigger so plenty of dry fire backed up by frequent range trips is the order of the day.

 

[cmansguns]

I went the exact opposite way

All my EDC life it was Model 36, then Model 60, then Model 637-2 when they came out as I wanted the +P rating. Always strong side OWB in quality leather on stiff quality gunbelt. Extra speed strips with SD ammo.

Always practice with the cheapest 38 Spl I could find and felt very comfortable after practicing and learning Masad's speed strip reload under pressure technique.

Then came the big ammo shortages (at least around here) and a good deal came along on a S&W Compact 2.0. In 9mm at least I can buy ammo and practice again with Covid restrictions gone in this area. Got right comfortable with that little lightweight double stack 9 and my spare ammo is on board ready to go if need be.

Now days...the pockets that held speed strips can now accommodate large rolls of Benjamins...IF I truly had any

 

[Grimjaws]

All my EDC life it was Model 36, then Model 60, then Model 637-2 when they came out as I wanted the +P rating…… a good deal came along on a S&W Compact 2.0 in 9mm

HEY how the heck did you get into my safe

I have EXACTLY the same guns
a 36, a 60, a 637-2 AND an M&P shield 2.0 in 9mm

you have good taste in handguns

 

[deputydon]

My EDC is a 642 with CT. I have carried it so much it has lost a lot of the finish & is really kind of ugly but still gets the job done. I keep 5 rounds 135gr +p hollow points in a speed strip with 5 in the gun. So light I sometimes leave it in jacket pockets in the closet. When I was younger I carried a 3" Ultra Carry Kimber that eventually became too heavy. Now only bring that out if I have to go down in the hood.


-don

 

[Bill Lear]

It's hard to beat the compact, 14.5oz weight of a J-frame. Easy to carry, no "condition" levels, easy to see loaded, always safe, etc. Capacity is the only downside and it's not at all difficult to carry TWO J-frames

 

[Fastbolt]

I came to Airweights a bit late, meaning at the end of the 90's, when the 642-1 was rated for a diet of +P ammo. I ordered one with an armorer's discount certificate that was burning a hole in my pocket. It immediately replaced the steel J's I'd always carried, although it took a couple or more cases of +P ammo to acclimate myself to the increased recoil.

That Airweight 642 became my common off-duty weapon, and whenever I was attending meetings and teaching at seminars and conferences, wearing shirt sleeves.

Nowadays I own a pair of 642-1's, a pair of M&P 340's (with & without the lock) and a nifty 37DAO (part of that canceled overseas police order in the mid 2000's, built on the older Airweight 37-2 frame). I carry one or another of those lightweights much more often than the steel frame J's I still own.

 

[Bill Lear]

I've been shooting for a lot of years. Decades in fact. I grew up when ammo was to expensive to waste just busting holes in nothing much. In those days when you had occasion to shoot something live you made it count - weren't no do-overs, or reelin' in the target to critique the foot-wide "pattern" of shots.
We handled guns a lot. We carried them a lot more. We never went into the woods without a gun, we used them so much they were an integral part of our lifestyle.
The thing is, you tell somebody 50 years ago they need to bang away hundreds and thousands of expensive rounds at paper targets and steel poppers to achieve and maintain "proficiency" you'd have been laughed clean out of the county! That sort of thinking arrived with the 9mm craze - with handguns that can barely group inside 3-4 "honest" inches versus what they replaced - revolvers, ALWAYS fired single-action when it mattered, that were expected to go inside 2" at 25, and "YOU" the shooter was expected to deliver that standard. Whether you had the extra ammo waste or not, when the time came, that was the expectation.

Another thing nobody did back then...they didn't abuse their guns. They didn't deliberately blast out 1000s of full bore 357 magnum from a Model 19 because they KNEW it would damage the gun. Everyone "knew' you shot magnum loads for magnum reasons and 38 loads for all else. You didn't NEED to waste magnum loads and abuse your gun because you'd shot "enough" know where they'd hit - and quite frankly, at 25 yards, they should all hit "purty darn close" even for city-slickers. Even now, someone buys a thousand dollar gun and let's some self-ascribed expert tell him he needs to shoot it to pieces or he's just pecking around the edges. Yeah?

Well, tell that to the United States Army. The first thing I learned in the Army was that before I got to "shot the first," I had disassembled my M16 about a zillion times. I had worked the action, done safety checks, practiced aiming and trigger squeeze. Viewed all the teaching materials on post and aperture sight alignment for battlesight zero. EVENTUALLY comes the day when we got to sight in. Did the Army roll out crates of fresh ammo and say, "blast away recruits!" No they did not! They went over fundamentals, then they issued you ONE mag with 3 round! "Lock and load!" You fired your 3-shots and you made them count because you DID NOT have 27 more behind them to waste! Generally speaking, most were zeroed on the first round of 3-shots, but those who needed more got one more mag and increased Drill Sergeant attention to boot until they battlesight zeroed.

Contrary to popular mythology and self-styled experts who claim to know, when it came time to go to the range for live fire qualification, there wasn't any period where we all got to load up and go full auto. EVERY single shot was accounted for and magazines were loaded for each qualification stage. As they say today, "The Army didn't play!" There was no such thing as teaching "spray and pray," and anyone who says otherwise is a bald-faced liar.

But out of it all we managed to qualify with very few rounds, while being expert at handling, breakdown, and all other aspects of our assigned weapons.

When I was in training to be a mortar gunner they didn't let us just pop off rounds for fun, or to verify the tube wasn't going to explode in 5,000 rounds...it was 99% going through the motions and very little, but very precise, controlled live fire!

Same when I qualified expert with the 1911.
Same when I qualified expert with the M2.
Same when I qualified expert with the M60.
Same when I qualified expert with the S&W .38 Spl

Later when I became an Attack helicopter pilot, did the Army just load my aircraft up with eight TOW missiles and say, "Go have fun!" No They did not!
The Army never once loaded my aircraft with more 2.75" FFAR, nor 7.62 for the minigun, or 40mm, nor later 20mm for the M197 rotating cannon that was needed for the mission at hand.

You see the common thread here.

Is it necessary to blast off thousands of rounds to be "good" at shooting at other humans? NOBODY in history ever had such gross of training and yet today, what we see for all this are people shot (at) over 40 times and more. I watched one shooting (on TV of course) and it was like a Conga line as the officers all walked up and got ready for when the crazed maniac was gonna "cut some peeps" with his 1" box cutter. About a hundred shots later they had disabused him of that foolish notion!

The point is, most of our response to a social situation on the street begins in our mind. It begins with thinking about it....seeing something on the news and making the effort to think about it and ask ourselves how we would respond. Nothing about self-defense is about "the gun" or it's employment. Guns don't require rocket scientists to operate, they apparently can be used to kill quite effectively by First graders, including the knowledge of how and when to conceal, to retrieve, and to shoot the teacher in the face. I highly doubt ANY 6 year old is receiving 1st-level gun-handling training.

All this brings me around to my final point. A S&W M642 is about as simple as a gun can be made. Pull it out, point it, squeeze the trigger. One need NEVER to have handled a M642 in their life to be able to employ it with deadly effect. I know my alloy J-frames weren't meant to be shot to pieces - hundreds upon thousands of round just to prove to...whom? Myself? That the action will operate a thousand times? Until a gun malfunctions the first time, it has a100% reliability rating. If you shoot a gun 100 times and it doesn't malfunction, what is the probability of it doing so during the next 100 shots? The answer is 0. There is no such thing as "additive odds" Your odds of being in a MVA on day 1,200 of driving is exactly the same as on day one, or day 18,000. The odds of your M642 Airweight somehow jamming up on trigger pull 346 is no greater or less than on trigger pull 5,468.
I've never read anything more idiotic than someone stating they "need" to shoot 5,000 rounds from a gun to ensure a part won't break...***? They've just added 5,000 rounds of wear and tear on the part and used up 5,000 rounds of it's functional life!

I have a smattering of alloy J-frames that will never see many rounds at all, because they don't NEED to be shot to pieces to validate that they work! Many people buy a M642 and never fire ANY shots, simply load it and carry it! Who will challenge that gun will fail to fire when the time comes?

It's ridiculous that people are claiming somebody is shelling out hundreds of dollars per week, thousands of dollars per month just so THEY can waste cases of ammo. Isn't it time we call BS on these sorts of claims? I can't imagine a single police department that will bankroll cases upon cases of ammunition expended by just ONE guy...
I can't imagine an officer with the cash surplus to waste on CASES of ammo each week just so he can be "ready" for the bad guy....I would think that any department becoming aware of such "training" would seek to seriously investigate and consider psychiatric counselling for the officer.

 

[Ed4032]

But more shooting is more fun.

 

[eb07]

Love the airweights!!


One for carry. One for training.

 

[Fastbolt]

Love the airweights!!


One for carry. One for training.

Nice patch.

I still have the Zippo that Michael and the old gang gave me for contributing a couple articles.