Way back last September I mentioned a new Taurus revolver that uses either the .44-40 or the .410 shotshell.  I had just read about it in the new Gun Digest and it wasn't yet on Taurus' website at the time.  The writer in the Digest had it slightly wrong, it actually shoots either the .410 or the .45 Colt, and it has since been added to the website here.

Back in June, Jim Shepherd of Shooting Wire got one of these guns and sent a review of it in his regular email.  He doesn't have a web archive for these emails yet, but I asked him today via email about this, and he said he had no problem with posting the emails, as long as credit is given.  So here is his review of the Taurus 4410, all credit due to Jim Shepherd of Shooting Wire.

Photo from Taurus website.

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Call It What You Like...

Occasionally, I take advantage of the opportunity to try out new shooting products. Not being a ballistics expert, a gunsmith, or even a high-level competitive shooter, my reviews omit the confusing tables of chronograph results, ballistic tables and powder blends. I also am totally uninterested in writing long dissertations on the history of various calibers.

In other words, I consider myself the "average guy" and look at new products in that light. If they require specialized educations, multiple lessons for accurate operation, or excessive maintenance, I'm not really interested. When it comes to firearms, I'm Frank Lloyd Wright - I believe form follows function. I appreciate the artistry of fine engraving and the beauty of fine wood firearms furniture, but I'm a nuts-and-bolts shooter.

That's why I've been waiting -impatiently- for the arrival of a new revolver from Taurus.

Bob Morrison, Taurus' CEO, has been telling me about a new revolver for both the trail or the home. Personally, I'm skeptical at the idea of a multi-purpose firearm. Afield, I'm torn between carrying a heavy-hitting revolver (big animals) or a small shotgun (snakes). Usually, I wind up carrying a .22 caliber revolver with at least two cylinders full of snake-shot and hoping I don't run across a "significant" animal.

Late last week, the gun store called to tell me my package had arrived.

What had arrived was the new Taurus Model 4410 - a revolver that accommodates either .45 Long Colt or .410 shot shells.

The .45 Long Colt cylinder is elongated in order to handle 2 1/2" .410 shotgun shells - giving it a passing resemblance to a flare gun.

Built on Taurus' compact revolver frame, the 4410 is capable of packing stopping power into a 32-ounce package. With Taurus' "ribber" grips (ribbed rubber), it has been designed to fire the .45 Long Colts or .410 slugs without administering excessive punishment to the shooter.

With that combination of user-friendly, target-unfriendly rounds, the 4410 offers the stopping power of a heavy centerfire round combined with the snake-blasting capabilities of the relatively-mild .410 shotgun load.

With that in mind, I happily headed out to the range to see just what the little revolver could do. Morrison had already told me they had achieved some "spectacular" test results on targets at car-jacking distances. Since car-jacking to me implies "up close and personal" I tried the gun at a variety of close ranges.

It didn't disappoint. As expected, the 250-grain .45 Long Colt rounds (from my cowboy action pistol) delivered good results, blithely ventilating the requisite water-filled plastic jugs with very good accuracy. With the .410 shot shells (#6 shot), the little pistol was more than capable of zapping water hose (my snake simulation) at ranges up to twenty feet. Beyond that, I didn't figure there was any need to be shooting snakes. I didn't figure any closer was worth risking a richochet of shot from the hose.

When I decided to load.410 slugs, the 4410 demonstrated awesome stopping power. At eight feet, the slugs didn't ventilate my plastic jugs, they eviscerated them. That "little .410" round in slugs roughly equivalent to three rounds of 9mm - simultaneously delivered. The .9mm pistol may be criticized for a lack of stopping power, but there's no doubt that three .36 caliber slugs deliverd simultaneously packs a serious wallop.

As promised, the 4410 is a serious option to consider if you want home defense without the considerations of over-penetration and unmanageable power. With a mix of shotshells, slugs and .45 Long Colts, it offers everything from warning capability to lethal stopping power.

The 4410 certainly isn't the only handgun offering that choice of .45/.410 rounds. One well-known option is the Bond derringer. It's a pocket cannon, but candidly, I have problems bringing it to bear accurately - that's no fault of the Bond, it's my presbyopia.

The 441-even in the 2 1/2 inch barrel length I tested, let me put the .410s on target quickly and group the .45 Long Colts respectably out to ten yards -perfectly adequate for either a personal defense weapon or a trail gun.

Taurus' website suggests taking a case of .410s out to the range and trying it on clay targets. Frankly, I think that's beyond my abilities. As a farm boy, it would certainly have been useful - and fun - when evicting rats from corn cribs.

The 4410 will need a bit more cleaning than the average revolver. Due to the long cylinder, cowboy load 45s will leave residue in the cylinder and the .410s mean the barrel needs a good cleaning on a regular basis as well.

Available in a short (2 1/2inch) or long (6 1/2 inch) barrel lengths, the 4410 offers the choice of blue or stainless finishes, and is a double/single action. The MSRP is $469 (blue) or $531 (stainless).

A note of caution: since it is a handgun capable of firing shotshells, the 4410 isn't legal in California.

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Thanks again to Jim Shepherd and Shooting Wire.

...burying hatchets in each other's heads, electrocution with a toaster, forced swallowing of explosives or flattening a face with a hot iron is just fine.

Sheesh.

He said although he was the third person to jump from the aircraft, he was the first to land.

A man in Bloemfontein (South Africa) survived falling about 1,000 meters after his parachute got tangled.  It was his first try at parachuting.

He always wanted to do parachuting, but after his narrow escape, he has said he wouldn't be trying that again.

Imagine that.

Well, I don't use Internet Explorer any more, but I just checked to see how the new colors look and now it appears that for some reason the center column isn't fitting into the screen with IE.  I'll try to fix that, but I can't promise anything.

UPDATE:  I think I fixed it, pretty much.  I just don't know why.  I've been learning to edit the CSS style sheet from scratch, mostly by trial and error.  However, up to this point, when I made a change and saw what it did, I understood why and was able to more or less extrapolate from there what would happen when I changed something else.  This one I don't understand.  One, I don't understand why it did what it did; and two, I don't understand why it changed the look in IE but doesn't seem to have had any effect on Firefox.

My resolution is set at 1024x768, which is how about 80% of the visitors have theirs set, as well.  So if yours is set at some other resolution and something looks off-kilter, I don't think there's anything I can do about it.

UPDATE UPDATE:  Nope, I had to put it back.  It screwed up the individual post pages in Firefox.

I mentioned a couple of days ago about how I read in a recently-acquired gun book of a strange gun that I had never heard of before, therefore, another excuse for a blog post.

Here we have what may be a simultaneous candidate for both the World's Ugliest Gun and the World's Dumbest Idea For a Gun That Doesn't Use Any Existing Conventional System of Loading or Ammunition.  Surpassed only, perhaps, by the Gyrojet--perhaps.

Any gun person, and probably even most non-gun persons, can tell right away that this pistol just doesn't look right.  Not a semi-auto, and not exactly a revolver, the action is a sort of weird hybrid of the two.


The special proprietary cartridge was called a tround, which I assume is short for "triangular round" because the cartridges were triangular.  The above picture, found here, shows a tround second from right.  The cartridge on its right is the more familiar .38 Special which appears to be loaded with a common lead round nose, for reference.  The cases were made of plastic.  Each pistol came with two barrels:  .38 caliber and .22 caliber.  I am also assuming that the cartridges were reloadable, because in order to shoot .22's in this gun, the entire .22 cartridge (.22 LR, I must again assume) was inserted into the tround case.  The .38s were loaded with typical primer, powder, and bullet.  The barrels were interchangeable and there is a screw in the frame that switches it to rimfire so it would shoot the .22s.  For the pistol, there were both 3-inch and 6-inch barrels available.

There were three models:  the 1100, 1500, and 2000.  Their cartridge capacities were, respectively, 11, 15, and 20.  Cartridges were fed into the gun with a stripper clip, or could be manually inserted one cartridge at a time.

The action of the gun did include a sort of revolving part, although it did not work like the cylinder we all know from our typical revolvers.  With each pull of the trigger, it rotated 120 degrees, twisting a cartridge out of the clip and into firing position, while dropping the previous spent case out of a door in the side.  A drawing of the cylindrical action can be found here.

Also available was a carbine kit that came with both calibers of barrels.


The pistol barrel was removed and the rest of the pistol was simply inserted into the "carbine frame," and the long barrel (20 inches) was attached.

Since the .38s were not simply a re-use of some previously existing .38 caliber cartridge, and since I can't find any ballistic information on it, I have no idea what kind of ballistics its .38 cartridge had.    Probably not all that hot, if the cases were supposed to have been made of plastic.

My biggest question is:  Why?

In any case, the gun(s) and ammunition were developed by David Dardick, and were produced in Hamden, Connecticut during 1959-60.  Only about 40 guns were produced.  After that, the facilities, unsold guns and existing parts were auctioned to Numrich Arms in 1960.  Numrich still sells parts and has an online-viewable schematic breakdown of the Dardick 1500.

Even non-operable (i.e., broken) Dardicks are quite collectible due to their rarity and can go for several hundred dollars.  Working guns in excellent condition, if they also include original cartridges and other original accessories, can run well into the thousands.

More info on the Dardick can be found at this old post at Castle Argghhh!

Check out this pair of photos by Oleg Volk if you haven't already, featuring model Lori and a bunch of guns.

I'm not enough of a gun-nut to name every gun pictured.  I can recognize a few brands:  Kel-Tec, Glock, Ruger, Taurus, Sig--are some of the semi-autos S&W?  Let's see...Mosin-Nagant, I think.  I don't know much of anything about the shotguns or most of the long guns, for that matter.  And of course she's holding an Uzi.

My question is:  How did that single-action six-gun get in there?  Doesn't appear to be any fluting on the cylinder, but I can't see the barrel-end clearly enough to make a ballpark guess at the caliber.  I'm guessing either a Ruger Bearcat or a Single-Six with the magnum cylinder installed.