This post is a sort of follow-up to a joke I made several days ago.  I had received a search hit for someone looking for "32 s&w concealed carry."  Maybe no one got it.  The joke was that in the original Death Wish, the gun which the Paul Kersey character is given as a gift, and which he eventually uses as his punk eliminator, is a 32 S&W Long.  If you've seen the movie, you may remember he made some incredible 75-yard (or so it seemed to me) shots with his revolver.

Syd left a comment, which I agree with, that this cartridge is obsolete and is not suitable for self defense or concealed carry.  However, one might also arguably add that it is not suitable for self defense by modern standards.  Although all of my knowledge of this round comes from books, not personal experience, it seems to me that self defense is exactly what this round was originally intended for.

The .32 S&W Long was introduced in 1903 for the Smith & Wesson First Model revolver.  This was back in the days when small guns equaled small cartridges.  Someone with more expertise than I could probably say exactly why.  I assume it was a combination of available metallurgical technology possibly coupled with a sort of cultural bias against recoil.  It was used fairly extensively by law enforcement, and indeed, the same cartridge with a flat-nosed bullet was called the 32 Colt New Police.  The 32 Long was based on the older 32 S&W, an even wimpier cartridge that was introduced in 1878 as a black powder round.

Smith & Wesson, Colt, Iver Johnson, and Harrington & Richardson all made thousands of revolvers that used this cartridge.  A great many of them are still around today.

The 32 Long earned a reputation for excellent accuracy and came to be used as a match round (sometimes called the 32-44 Target).  It became especially popular in Europe.


Here's a photo of a 32 S&W Long cartridge in between a 7.62x38R (Nagant revolver) cartridge and a common 22 Long Rifle.  The 32 Long is weaker even than the 32 ACP, and I would recommend against it being used as a self defense round unless nothing else is available.

The 32 S&W Long is still available from Old Western Scrounger and Sellier & Bellot, and maybe some other places.

Actual caption:  "This 2006 file photo shows a contestant preparing to be fired from a homemade cannon in at a Birdman Flying Contest in China."

Archie Shepp was born in Florida and raised in Philadelphia, where he studied piano, clarinet, and alto sax while he was growing up.  He went to Goddard College in New York to study drama, but was unsuccessful as an actor so he turned to music professionally, focusing on the tenor sax, piano, and vocals.

His music career began when pianist Cecil Taylor invited him to join his group in 1960.  He later went on to collaborate with saxophonist John Coltrane and other pioneering jazz musicians.

Shepp, along with Taylor, was one of the first musicians to seriously explore "free jazz."  He is also completely fluent in traditional jazz, spirituals, and the blues.


Archie Shepp currently lives in Massachusetts, where he is a professor of music history at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.