Laser-Equipped Bodyguards: S&W Bodyguard

Back when we few, we happy few, were lawfully packing handguns, the manufacturers didn’t offer much. Oh, there were designs, but the market for concealed carry was much smaller than that for duty and home-defense guns.

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Today, however, the number of citizens with a CCW in their wallet and a handgun somewhere about their person is much higher. In some locales, the number is more than 20 times as many. It recently occurred to me why the increase in CCW holders meant a huge increase in snubbies and pocket .380s being carried. It’s hot out there.

Back in 1980 there were just under 800,000 residents of Phoenix. Today the number is probably over a million and a half. Likewise for a lot of the metropolitan areas of other sunbelt states. A whole lot of people means a larger number of CCW holders. And in hot-weather areas, the attraction of a compact or ultra-compact gun is obvious; carrying a big gun is hassle enough, but doing so in hot weather is just misery.

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The CCW market is white-hot, and any manufacturer who neglects the small guns does so at its economic peril. S&W does not neglect them. But the company’s two new Bodyguards–a revolver and a pistol–are not merely smaller versions of existing models, they are new from stem to stern and built for all-the-time carry.