Dear Friends: The material that follows I wrote over thirty years ago. I never felt if was ready to print and subsequently, excluding a few proto-galley proof tests samples, I never printed it. I still do not believe the material is ready but I suspect a few fragments might be of some interest to one or two of my fellow snub shooting enthusiast. If this includes, I hope you will follow me as I share this material and follow up with any possible thoughts, suggestions, or corrections. I cannot guarantee that I will get a chance to respond, but I’d welcome your thoughts. Thank you. Michael de Bethencourt, June 2026
Beware the man with one gun; he may know how to use it. So goes the old saw. Good advice but nothing I ever followed. For years I changed my primary carry gun as readily as New England changes its weather. Unfortunately regularly alternating your carry handgun can lead to its own problems. So after years of reflection I concluded that I needed to settle on a single handgun. And after several years of testing and reviewing I opted for a small frame, short barreled revolver.
All handguns have their plusses and minuses. But I chose the snub because it possesses two distinct virtues. First, it is small enough that I can conceal it regardless of either the season or the social situation. Second, it is available in a caliber that most knowledgeable shooters would consider the baseline for a self-defense tool. If the snub did nothing beyond these two things it would still de-serve a place as one of the great developments in self-defense history. After having chosen my one gun, I then went in search of the training tips, manipulations and features that would help me wring out of it every self-defense advantage it had to offer. What follows is an overview of some of the information, resources and recommendations I have uncovered. I hope you enjoy the material but more importantly, I hope you find it of some value.
