Gun Review: Taurus Defender 856 TORO Revolver

SAFEupstateFML,

If anything the 856 is probably the same size or even smaller than the Ruger SP101.

SP101 ain’t fitting in no pocket, carried one for 2 years IWB.

Frame wise it’s a little slimmer than an SP101, but the cylinder is wider due to fitting 6 instead of 5. Something like 1.41” inches and 1.345” for the SP. The Taurus would “feel” smaller because it’s lighter weight and overall less beefy than the SP. The Taurus also has the superior grip imho.

Have you seen some of the pants people wear out there?

“It would have to be an awfully large pocket with the optic mounted.”

Mark, try modern cargo pants, the ‘tactical’ ones I have has decidedly deep and roomy front pockets I could easily pocket carry a mid-sized semi-auto with *zero* difficulties. They are *massive*, compared to regular dress pants. It’s the ‘Tru Spec’ brand. The auxiliary lower front pockets are large, easily devouring a full-sized smartphone with ease, and a bunch of smaller pockets for lights or whatever :

https://www.truspec.com/24-7-series/pants

EDIT –

I just tried out pocketing my full-sized Glock 17 Polymer-80 clone in those pants, and I bet even with a red-dot optic, that pocket could handle it with *ease*.

Consider a wardrobe update… 🙂

The question I have is, and I hope someone knows the answer, if the red-dot battery in it dies, is there a slot cut in that red-dot so you can co-witness on the front sight?

I’m just weird in desiring a redundancy in sighting if a battery dies… 🙁

I’d buy another new Taurus revolver in a heartbeat. I have a Taurus M44 – 6 1/2″ 44 mag that I bought a couple of years ago to go on a hunting trip with my son. It was my first revolver and I bought it because the guy we were going with recommended it as an inexpensive option for a first timer. I’d heard all sorts of horror stories, but this thing is put together really well. I’ve put loads of (really expensive!) ammo through it and the only issue I’ve had was that the ejector felt sticky when I first got it, and that cleared up with use and cleaning. I paid about half what my son paid for his Colt anaconda and even though his is prettier, I like shooting mine better. I think the single action trigger on the Taurus is great and the factory rubber grips are comfortable. I wish it had been tapped for a scope from the factory like the Colt, but not enough to pay double.

Well I routinely carry a 7.5 inch Ruger .480 in a chest rig all summer. As long as I keep my down vest on no one has ever noticed. Although thinking about it, it may be the lime green speedo ( got to have a place for the reloads) and jungle boots that may be distracting others too.

I agree that .38 Special can be lackluster with most loads. As I stated, though, 150 grain full wadcutters and 158 grain semi-wadcutter hollowpoints are supposed to be effective/proven self-defense loads.

Nevertheless, if you really want .357 Magnum, I like your idea of the Rossi with the 3-inch barrel. It is a tiny bit larger although that gets you a six-shot cylinder. And its extra 3.8 ounces helps reduce felt recoil a bit more.

Whatever you decide, remember that pretty much all handgun platforms are weak-sauce in terms of their ability to immediately physically incapacitate an attacker. That being the case: reliability, ammunition capacity, and accuracy are typically far more important than large/Magnum calibers.

Last, but not least: with the exception of terrorists and stalkers, virtually all attackers will immediately start retreating when you produce ANY handgun (of any caliber and bullet selection) and start shooting. Thus, having any handgun of any caliber puts you WAY ahead of the curve.

Standard pressure .38 Special “service loads” with 158gr lead bullets have been claimed by the factory to do 755 ft/sec at the muzzle for 100+ years now. That was normally measured from a 6″ revolver, or occasionally a 4″, if not an unvented 4″ pressure barrel, making that figure pretty optimistic from most real-world firearms. The old 1970s “FBI load” in .38 Special, the 158gr lead hollowpoint loaded to +P pressures, was claimed on the box to do 900, give or take, depending on which company loaded them, normally from a 4″ vented pressure test barrel, and usually did 850-900-ish from a 4″ revolver in the real world. From a 2″ revolver it is very unusual for the FBI load to get even 850 and very frequently doesn’t break 800, depending on production lot, barrel-cylinder gap, chamber throat diameter, ambient temperature, and so on. From a 4″ duty revolver the bullet will usually deform somewhat in soft tissue, sometimes even through fairly heavy clothing. From a snubby, not so much. The velocity just isn’t there, not even with a bullet swaged out of pure dead-soft lead.

Is it better than a sharp stick or harsh language? Yes. I’d recommend just about any decent quality .380 over any revolver in .38 Special, though. Same power as the .38 from a snubby, more magazine capacity, faster reloads, almost always much better sights, triggers generally much more usable under stress, lower recoil, faster follow-up shots, and the semiauto is always going to be much thinner and flatter, lacking the revolver’s big fat chunky cylinder, therefore more concealable. Snub-nose DA revolvers, with their tiny, vestigial sights, tiny sight radius, and twelve pound triggers on a twelve ounce firearm are the single most difficult category of firearm to shoot accurately in a hurry under stress, bar none. Even a mushy stock Glock trigger walks all over any revolver trigger where usability is concerned. I can shoot DA fairly well in a hurry, but I’m a hobbyist, and even for me it requires significantly more effort and concentration than with any modern striker-fired service pistol.

I am, mind you, not personally a fan of the .380 cartridge. It is marginal. For the past 30 or 35 years, you have had a choice between expanding bullets that may fail to penetrate adequately, or nonexpanding bullets that make icepick wound tracks, and prior to about 1990, in .380 there was only roundnose ball, plus hollowpoints that didn’t expand a bit even when shot into blocks of dense, heavy duct sealing putty. But the same is true for .38 snubbies. With .380 the list of loads that give both 12″+ of penetration in calibrated ballistic gelatin and reliable expansion after heavy clothing is very short. The same is true of .38 Special with +P ammo, and I don’t know of even one standard-pressure .38 round that expands at all when fired from a snubby, much less expands AND reaches adequate penetration depths. If I have to pick one, and I have tested the .380 and know it runs reliably, I will go with the .380 every time with no regrets.

And there are now slim subcompact 9mm pistols only very slightly larger and thicker than the smallest .380s, so I regard both .380 and .38 Special as obsolete cartridges. A subcompact 9mm with 7+1 or 8+1 does everything much, much better than either of those. Neither .38 nor .380 brings anything to the table.

I suppose someone will say “automatics ain’t reliable,” to which I can only suggest checking a calendar. It is 2023, not 1923, and there have been improvements in the state of the art, especially if you know enough to avoid potmetal “gangbanger gats” and imports from countries that haven’t yet figured out sanitary drinking water. “Automatics are too complicated!” Learn your equipment and train to use it. “What about shooting from your coat pocket, huh? I saw a guy do it in a black-and-white gangster movie once!” To which the kindest response I can formulate is, “doesn’t that make it hard to see your front sight, friend?”