I Wanna Hate Too!

Seems a bunch of cool kids are dropping some hate on the Taurus Judge First up look at that video! Essentially Taurus came up with and answer, and then threw their marketing department with all its money at finding a question. First up I specifically want to throw up a picture I took at the NRA convention to SPECIFICALLY enumerate my dislike of the gun:

Look at the SIZE of that cylinder! My hands are NOT small, and this gun is completely freakish in proportions. Its essentially a compact revolver that Taurus stretched like a limo to accommodate the .410 shot shell.

OK let’s talk about shot shells for a second. Most people don’t realize (or think about) this, but there is no “Cumulative effect” of shot shells, they are essentially an equivalent of a burst fire from a full-auto weapon of an odd caliber. Overall the ordinance coming out of the business end of a shot gun are not impressive, but they make up for their ballistic inferiority with volume. See a #00 Buckshot pellet is only about .33 Caliber, and being a sphere doesn’t weigh much at all, but it makes up for it that fired from a standard 12 gauge load there are nine of them, so the chances of getting a single vital hit are good, and multiple vital hits are decent. The smaller the shell, the less pellets you can fit in it…with .410 you get….3 #00 in the 2.75″ shells. Add in the odd pattern created by a shot cup spinning down the rifling and you have a ballistic nightmare.

Honestly I HATE .410, and I don’t see the point of it outside of a specific tool to skirt stupid hunting laws (you know like the law that says you can’t hunt with a .30-06 rifle…but a 12 gauge with a rifled slug barrel, a scope, and shooting a .30 Caliber saboted slug) but overall I feel the .410 doesn’t accomplish much, and a shooter would be much better off shouldering a 20 gauge.

And that’s talking .410 out of a shotgun, not a snub-nosed wheel-gun that’s the size of a 5″ 1911! And to add insult to injury, the Judge can eat .45 Colt shells which is an AWESOME revolver load…but to put than monstrous cylinder on it?

So my point is if the frame and cylinder is cut down to accept .45 colt we have an interesting gun….interesting, but not GOOD if you still have that famous Taurus trigger pull that is often described using terms like “dragging a Piano” and “Down a Dirt Road”.

Such a shitty gun, and I hate them!

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0 Responses to I Wanna Hate Too!

  1. Wally says:

    You know what the judge makes me hate ? it makes me hate the stupid NRA – the world’s most annoying marketing organization.

    a company with shitty quality , shittier reliability , and even worse customer service introduces a gun that sucks at everything that it is supposed to do well. Look, it splats watermelon and the rags write it up as the best thing on earth. No, not quite. You know what it is lacking ? an MP3 player to make the sound of a shotgun racking just so the BGs can soil their drawers and run. That, and maybe a shoulder thing that goes up.

    FWIW, if my taurus goes back to miami again, it have enough frequent flier miles for a one way trip to the sun – which it so richly deserves.

    Taurus Judge, good enough to protect Icarus from space rats!

    (nice case full of once-fired tauri at cabelas today)

    • Weerd Beard says:

      What do you have for a Taurus, and why don’t you know better?

      As I said when linking the promotional video, Taurus used the money saved in production values for marketing.

      • Wally says:

        A tip-up 22. borrowed it from a friend 15 years ago and he isn’t keen on getting it back. It all comes together now…

        Buddy of mine got a large bore (45? 44?) revolver from them. The cylinder was bored short – too short to chamber any rounds :/

        • Weerd Beard says:

          I kinda want one of those tip-barrel micro guns, they just seem really fun, but not very fun if you can’t get it to work…tho I’d buy one in a heartbeat that had “Lorcin” “Jennings” or “Raven” stamped on the Zinc slide…and I’d be PISSED if it worked!

          FYI what problems is it having? I mean the gun barely has a slide, and IIRC doesn’t even HAVE an extractor….

  2. pdb says:

    Great picture Weerd. It really is hard to properly describe how bulky and unwieldy this thing is.

  3. Dragon says:

    OK…I’m going to take issue (in a friendly manner) with the statement that you’re better off shouldering a 20 ga instead of a .410 shotgun…

    As with everything gunnie, there is an application for which a particular caliber or gauge was designed.

    In the case of the .410, it was for hunting in dense brush, for ground game. The .410 excels at cutting through brush due to its very tight pattern, and is a perfect platform for rabbit, squirrel, and other small ground game, as well as for crows and other medium birds that don’t spook easily where you can get rather close to them. It makes for a light shotgun, which is nice when hunting rabbit through dense underbrush.

    Sure, if you’re using buckshot, you’re better off with a larger shotgun (16 or 12….20 is a bit on the weaker side) because, as you stated, 3 or 4 #00 balls is nothing compared to the 9 or 10 in a larger gauge. But as I stated at the outset, its all a matter of matching the tool to its intended purpose.

  4. Dragon says:

    Oh…and I totally agree that the Judge is a complete waste of a gun and a marketing budget. Its definitely a solution that is in search of a problem to justify its existence.

  5. Bob S. says:

    Man, hate to go against the tide here but I think you are missing the point.

    It sells and it sells so well it has produce spin-offs faster then Law & Order.

    We need that.

    We need guns that Mr. Grumpy at the Music Store will carry in his pocket. We need guns that Aunt Ethel will keep in the kitchen drawer to handle the rat snake on the back porch or the thug at the door.

    We need people owning guns like this and showing them off to their friends — so their friends can go “Heck, If I was to get a gun, I wouldn’t buy that — what would I buy? Let’s go to the store and I’ll show you”.

    Does it do anything well, probably not but who says guns have to be the best at one thing or anything?

    After all, I know someone who owns a cheap ass Jennings .25 just to own one.

    Isn’t it going to be a little harder to restrict our rights when half the population owns a gun ? And that is an admirable goal in itself

    • Weerd Beard says:

      Hey I got no problem with Taurus selling them, or people buying them. And certainly I can see it as a Desert Eagle kind of gun “Yeah it sucks, but its also REALLY COOL”

      Plus Taurus does offer their little ball of suck at an attractive price point for “Why not?” buying.

      I would just rather not Aunt Ethel, or Grumpy Mr. Kilwolski at the record store taking a shot at a violent attacker with one of those nasty-huge “Compact” revolvers, jerking the shitty trigger, and having those three pellets miss the attacker at every direction.

      My Jennings .22 has a better chance of effectively being used for self defense….and costs 1/3 the price!

  6. Fred says:

    Bah, I’m so cool I’ve been hating on it since August at least!

    I still think the carbine version may be cool, assuming it’s available in a smoothbore.

    • Weerd Beard says:

      If they make it smooth bore .45 Colt won’t work….so why not just buy a .410 shotgun?

      Oh BTW I read your read your review when you first wrote it. I just saw an excuse to post that picture I took.

      I will say all the chatter from fellow bloggers, plus my own knowledge of .410 shotgun ballistics was what got me to go DIRECTLY to the Judge display rack to take JUST such a picture.

  7. Fred says:

    Because the steampunk fan in me wants a giant revolving shotgun. That’s really about it.

    • Weerd Beard says:

      Heh, that’s a Damn good idea. Hey I want me a Ruger Super Redhawk Alaskan in .454 Casul, because I want a snub-nosed bear gun that’s more powerful than a .44 Magnum. Do I see a lot of bears? Nope. Are the Bears I see really of the sort that would shrug off a 230 Grain .45 ACP, or a 158 Gr. .357 Magnum? Not really, I hear their skulls are hard, but overall New England Black bears aren’t much bigger than man-sized, and most of the bears I’ve seen in the wild were young and small.

      Still that gun is fucking COOL, and I’ll toss it in my pack when I go camping just in case a BIG Bruin decides to pick a fight with me 😉

  8. Wally says:

    It’s okay for a pocket plinkster. I used it for pocket carry back in the day (rear pocket) but would always sit on the mag release button, rendering it a 1- or 0- shot; I’m not a fan of the extra complications for the mag safety either.

    Anywho, this pistol suffered a broken firing pin in 1996 or so. Taurus wouldn’t sell me a replacement pin. I was not able to ship the gun back to taurus and they wouldn’t accept just the slide for repair so it sat. Around 2006 (free state) I got the itch and sent it back to Miami. They sat on it for a few months then shipped it back, incorrectly, so it was returned back to them, then back to me. I opened the box and the blued gun was covered in rust bloom…. *sigh*

    It has seen perhaps two mags since then, and I have carried it once. There’s a state I visit that allows concealed, but not loaded concealed in public, so the tip-up feature allows it to be loaded or cleared quietly, which was advantageous in my situation. But next time, I’m taking an Iver Johnson bellygun and just popping out the cylinder……….

    As a side note – ever see one of those 22s run away full auto ? Magazine was empty before any of the brass hit the ground. Lead flying everywhere, resulting in two to the furnace, one to the door. In homage to the mozambique drill, it has become known as the insert-wallytown-name-here drill.

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