Quote Originally Posted by yoni View Post
I went to this thread just out of curiosity. I found that more people seem to be carrying wheel guns than I thought were.

Back in the day, when I was a deputy and we were a revolver agency I carried a stainless Cougar. When I got to street crimes unit my partner carried a N frame Smith blued and I carried my stainless gun. When we held people at gun point, after it was over many times the bad guys would comment on my stainless gun being so huge.

So I got to the point where it was clear to me stainless had a psychological impact for what ever reason it appeared bigger. When the manual got rewritten most dropped our big revolvers and went with a j frame to satisfy the manual, but we were all using semi autos as our primary gun de facto. But if we were asked we pointed to our j frame as our primary. my carry was a hard chromed Hi Power.

So my vote goes to stainless
Ayoob mentioned that factor back in the day when talking about the Nickel finish Colt Commando 1911s that had just come out at the time. And while it sounds sorta like the "just rack a shotgun and get their attention" nonsense that gets repeated way too much, there does seem to be a factor of the gun looking bigger when you are staring at the business end of it when it is bright metal that does seem to make an impression.

And if "big bore + shiny gun that looks bigger + whatever" translates into more reliable compliance then it is a consideration. Not the most important consideration but still one to think about. I've talked to a few guys from that era that were on the business end and quite a few commented on seeing rounds in the cylinder and saying stupid things like "I knew it was definitely loaded because you could see the rounds...."