The Smith & Wesson M&P 340 CT snubbie, with its tritium front sight, Crimson Trace Lasergrips, and scandium frame, is the state-of-the-art carry revolver.

Have you looked at carry guns lately? When shopping for a carry gun today, you are confronted by a bewildering array of choices.

What caliber should you opt for? Should you get a high-capacity piece, or is a slim grip more important? Which is the best frame material--carbon steel, stainless steel, aluminum, titanium, or polymer? And what about the action--single-action, traditional double-action, or double-action-only? Moreover, how will you carry the gun?

Yep, deciding on a carry gun can be a painful process.

A big tritium dot on the front sight of the S&W M&P 340 CT aids target acquisition in the low light typical of armed encounters.

Or you can simply walk into your nearest gunshop, plunk down your money for a medium-caliber snubnose revolver, and know you've probably made a pretty good decision.

The iconic short-barreled wheelgun is still a solid choice for concealed carry. Oh, it lacks some flash and panache, but those qualities are sorely overrated in a gunfight. It's certainly not without drawbacks, but its virtues are numerous. And while some of those virtues are readily apparent, others require a little examination.

Simple Is Beautiful
There is much to be said for simplicity. It comforts a shooter when he or she can more fully understand how the gun functions. Even a person with no firearms experience whatsoever can observe the functioning of a revolver and get a pretty good idea of how it works. The trigger is squeezed, the cylinder rotates, it locks into position, and then the hammer falls. Simple. Try watching a semiautomatic. It moves so fast, it might as well operate by magic.

Snubbie revolvers are easy to check, too. You can see the case rims or the noses of the bullets, even when the cylinder is closed.

Simplicity also lends itself to reliability. One shot in a revolver usually has very little to do with the previous one. Get a dud--not a squib--in a revolver, and you have only to pull the trigger again to try to improve your luck. Of course, if you get a squib that lodges the bullet in the barrel but still allows the cylinder to rotate to the next chamber, well, that can be very, very bad.

Revolvers are nowhere near as ammo-sensitive as semiautos, and this is becoming an increasingly important selling point. Because the operator--rather than the recoil or gases of the previous round--cycles the action and because each revolver round is manually placed in one of multiple chambers when the gun is loaded, several potential issues are avoided. Ammunition--with varying pressure curves, bullet profiles, weights, jacket materials, etc.--rarely affects the functioning of a revolver, but it can cause jamming in semiautos.

Experimenting with carry loads is becoming a pretty costly matter as the price of premium ammunition continues to rise. The rule of thumb was to put at least 100 rounds of your carry ammo through your personal-protection gun to be sure the gun functioned at 100-percent reliability with it. Well, with top-of-the-line carry ammunition going for as much as $23 for a box of 20 rounds, you're talking about spending $115 just to test one brand of ammunition. And what if it isn't reliable in your gun? You've got to spend another $115 on another brand and keep doing so until you achieve that 100-percent reliability.

Fortunately, both off-the-shelf semiautos and premium ammunition have never been more reliable than they are today. If you just can't afford to follow the old rule of thumb, you may get away with less than 100 rounds of testing. Still, you can usually load just about any cartridge of the correct caliber in a revolver and be sure it's going to go bang.