Smiths

 I am really digging on Tam's fall offerings reviewing S&W auto-loaders this fall.  A whole plethora.

"Do you even know what 'plethora' means, T-Bolt?"

Yes!  Why you gotta be like this?  Could it be because you are turning 40 today?

Anyway. I missed out on 3rd Generation Smiths, not yet being interested in firearms like that.  And I missed the police department turn-ins of used S&W metal auto-loaders.  Still not in the game.  Plus Maryland.  So I know very little about these, and appreciate the learning I get.  

Now Tam is a big time super-rich gun writer, (all pro gun-writers, I don't have to tell you, light their Cuban cigars with $100 bills) but stuff for publication has to be cool and antique-ey for, say, the back page of American Rifleman, or it has to be something in production, and can be purchased at Bass Pro by the reading public.  We get these free reviews, I'd wager, because a) it is cool, and b) not something that can be monetized.  So, win for us.

Had I got into guns as soon and legally able back in 1990, I'm looking at Miami Vice and Lethal Weapon examples.  It was much harder back then to learn gun stuff, without the internet.  You had to try to learn.  Instead of simply letting all the information blast you in the face via internet firehose.  And I didn't know how to get started and no one was around to guide me.  Eventually I would have figured it out, with persistence.  And I'd have one of these in my gunsafe.  At least one.  From back then.  But I also might have fallen for the Sigma.  And I was pretty poor in the 90s.