In 1989, Lexus trimmed its slogan from “The Relentless Pursuit of Perfection” to “The Pursuit of Perfection.” I reckon Lexus made the change out of sheer exhaustion. Manufacturing perfection is like trying to get the last word on the Bill O’Reilly show: it’s only possible in theory. I bet the head of the japanese luxury carmaker placed his briefcase on the desk one day and said screw it. Bling out a Camry, slap a Lexus badge on it and call it good. So what happens when a manufacturer can’t aim high? Ask Charter Arms, a gunmaker producing products whose potential perfection is restricted by the prices set by Smith & Wesson. As a result, Charter Arms makes most of its money selling brightly colored .38 caliber snub-nosed revolvers for women shooters more intent on style than marksmanship. And sells a Charter Arms .357 Mag Pug. Or not.
It’s shame. A shame that Charter Arms can’t show the world what [another] storied revolver maker can do when customers demand the very best—and pay for it. A shame that a customer who buys the .357 Target Mag Pug revolver in question has to aim a foot above what he or she wants to shoot. At five yards. After said owner has adjusted the rear sight to its maximum height, the point immediately before a screw smaller than an anorexic tick files off into the ether the moment you pull the trigger.
If we operate from the basic premise that a perfect handgun would do no such thing, that it would let you hit your target exactly where the sights indicate with every crisp, clean, predictable trigger pull, the Charter Arms .357 Target Mag Pug revolver is as far from perfect as you can get without wandering into the realm of perfect imperfection. Which, strangely, I did—by not using the Target Mag Pug’s sights at all. Point and shoot. Bullseye! What are the odds?
I had high hopes for the Charter Arms .357 Target Mag Pug. It’s an American-made handgun fashioned from American parts by an American-owned company staffed by documented American workers living in America paying taxes to an American government propping-up socialist countries whose inhabitants spit on our flag and mock our way of life.
Second, the Target Mag Pug is a gorgeous gun. At the risk of sounding like an oxymoron, the revolver is distinctively generic. With a four-inch barrel and a full-sized grip, the perfectly-proportioned weapon isn’t as massive as the big-ass L-framed .357 Smiths. But it’s equally appealing. To my eyes, the Target Mag Pug’s relatively compact dimensions make the handgun dainty in a macho sort of way, like, dare I say it, a certain NRA-loving martial artist from The Lone Star State I could name (but don’t have to, now).
Lastly, the target Mag Pug is not a Smith & Wesson. Don’t get me wrong: I’m a big fan of most of Smith’s 4,564 products. I traded-in the Charter Arms Target Mag Pug for a Smith & Wesson 686 this very day. But I’d like to own a wikkid Yank-built revolver from someone other than “the” name in revolvers—just to be able to say, “Actually it isn’t a Smith & Wesson. It’s a Charter Arms. Best revolver money can buy.”
Only the Target Mag Pug is not even the best revolver that $533 can buy. Or $480. Again, not if you’re looking for a gun that can hit what you’re aiming at.
“Sharpen your shooting skills with the Target Mag Pug,” the Charter Arms website urges, implying that the longer-barreled weapon’s better in the hitting shit department than their more popular (by a factor of a thousand) snubbies. TTAG’s in receipt of a Charter Arms .38 snub-nosed testing and evaluation model. We shall see. But if this is better than that, then that, and this, suck.
I’d like to point out that it wasn’t just me who found the Target Mag Pug one of the most ironically-named revolvers extent. The name redacted gentlemen firing .38 specials in the video topping this review is a seriously proficient law enforcement professional. Wayne from American Firearms also did the honors. The combat vet’s groupings are normally tighter than an X-rated threesome. And so they were—positioned well south of center.
As far as I can tell, there’s only one way Charter could “fix” the Target Mag Pug’s mission critical sighting problem: file down the gun’s front site. Unfortunately, it’s part of the frame. And what of the trigger? A none-too-inspiring scratchy sound accompanies the Target Mag Pug’s initial pull. Then, as the trigger reaches its final destination, there’s a bit of play in the action. That’s what we gun writers call “not good.” I mean “trigger creep.”
The Target Mag Pug’s action reminded me of taking off in the Concorde. When the plane was safely off the ground, the pilots would kill the afterburners. It felt like they’d shut them off. It was such a scary sensation the trolley dollies warned you about it before take-off, in their all-too-jocular sort of way. “Don’t worry, the engines won’t have failed . . .” Once over sea, the guys in the front would light ’em up again. Bang! Like hitting a wall.
It’s an excellent way to limit political fallout from an airplane that’s so loud you can hear the air ripping to shreds from several miles away. It’s a lousy way to rig a trigger. A revolver’s bullet button should feel more like driving a car into a wall. In the nicest possible way. For the shooter, anyway.
The Target Mag Pug costs less than a Smith, and slightly more than a Taurus. Whadjya expect? Which highlights a difficult problem for gen-you-wine American-made weapons.
As many U.S. gun makers have discovered, going toe-to-toe against similar weapons made with cheaper foreign parts and labor puts them on a hiding to nowhere. A “value-priced gun” is good value—but it’s not as desirable as the best and not as affordable as the cheapest. Call it the Buick conundrum. Competitors reaching down from above (BMW) AND reaching up from below (Toyota) kick your ass. In this case, used/lower priced Smiths and less expensive Taurus are squeezing Charter Arms’ positioning until it hurts.
As I mentioned before, Charter is keeping the pain at bay with its Pink Lady, Lavender Lady and new Cougar snub-nosed .38s. But color will only take them so far; there’s nothing to stop their competitors from brightening up their revolvers (or semis). As Devo might have said, crush that niche!
Charter could avoid destitution by building a small line of American-made, top quality, price-no-object weapons. Yes but . . . they wouldn’t sell. Not for a long, long while. Thanks to several disastrous administrations (not including the current one), Charter Arms has a widespread rep for low-quality workmanship (putting it nicely.) Customers are no more likely to buy a thousand dollar Charter Arms revolver than a $106,880 Chevrolet.
And yet, what about the Corvette ZR1?
True dat: the road from hell is paved with product. Charter has to claw its way into Smith territory with guns that are better than the market leader’s, at a lower price. How Charter Arms could finance a decade-long Lexus-like product push with a brand-building campaign, without a deep-pocketed Toyota backing them? What am I, a marketing maven?
I’ll tell you something for nothing: the Charter Arms Target Mag Pug represents the pursuit of de-evolution. In today’s import-laden handgun market, a good enough revolver isn’t good enough, for either it owner or its manufacturer. Perfection comes at a price. As does its opposite.
SPECS.
Model: 73540
Finish: Stainless
Frame: Stainless steel
Grip: Full
Barrel length: 4″
Capacity: 5-shot
Caliber: .357 Mag
Hammer: Standard
Weight: 25 oz.
Sugg Retail: $533.00
RATINGS
(Out of five stars)
Style * * * * *
We’ve seen this classic a million times. And for good reason.
Ergonomics (carry)
Too big too carry. And if you wanted to, you’d have to have a holster made for it.
Ergonomics (firing)
Useless sights and trigger creep do not a pleasant experience make.
Reliability * * * * *
No hitches in 200 rounds. It probably would keep going, but I gave up.
Customize This
Nada
OVERALL RATING *
Kept firing bullets in the approximate direction at which it was aimed, but I wouldn’t bet my life on one. So . . . what’s the point?
S&W isn't the only American manufacturer of quality .357s. Don't forget:
– Colt Python – Dubbed "the best revolver in the world." Hey, if it was good enough for Elvis…
– Ruger GP 100 (my favorite)
I was thinking the same thing through the whole article. The author is so Smith-centric as far as revolvers, that it was hard to even focus on the Charter, which the article was supposedly about.
Smith never even made a single action revolver that I am aware of, an area where both Colt and Ruger have made some beauties through the years and Smith does not even exist. On the DA revolver front, Smith has some great guns, but Colt has made some even nicer ones, and no one beats Ruger reliability, durability, and value.
Smith is far from alone as far as US revolver makers.
Good points all, Robert. I'm not sure if Charter's biggest competition is Taurus or the used S&W market. As a confirmed S&W bigot, I'd say the latter but that's just me.
The used market for guns is even more devastating to the up-and-coming manufacturer than the used car market is for similarly situated cars. Cars wear out, and are constantly being improved/upgraded. A revolver, OTOH, is a revolver. Unless it's used for competition or treated carelessly, it will last a hundred years (my brother has an S&W .38 that is old enough to collect Social Security and it still shoots fine.)
Speaking of planned obsolescence, am I the only one who sees the introduction of new calibers (like the .327 Federal Mag) as a lame attempt to sell old wine in a new bottle?
Robert……Loved your writing. Anything you write, I'll read; I don't care what's it about! Thanks for your research. You saved me from making what looks like a costly mistake. Although I too think the Charter Arms .357 Pug is so good looking, had I bought it, I could have hung it on the wall as decoration. David Buckwitz,Hazel Park,Michigan,USA.
Will you read this?
No.
I’d hoped to find an informative, unbiased review. Unfortunately I found this.
For the life of me, I cannot see what the problem is here other than Robert feels some need to crucify this piece –“shoots a foot low at fifteen feet, terrible trigger, etc., etc.” My reaction was “So file the front sight down a bit.”
Robert tells us, “but the front sight is PART OF THE FRAME”.
What? I AM perplexed. I looked at the photos just like the rest of you and darned if the front sight doesn’t appear to be mounted in the usual place on the muzzle end of the barrel. Even taking into account the utter irrelevancy of this fact, why, I wonder, does this preclude filing the sight? Take a friggin’ file to it for thirty seconds and watch the groups move up to the level of the bull! Sure, this should have been done at the factory but is it really a reason to drop the gun from consideration. He says that overall, the piece looks very nice but… it shoots low, so let’s throw the baby out with the wash water for the sake of a moment’s kitchen table gunsmithing.
At an MSRP a bit over four hundred and a real-world price HALF that of a five inch, adjustable sight, .357 model 60 Smith, it’d seem worth a serious look.
We watched one shooter drop three rounds into a nice, tight cloverleaf with two others close-by — not a bad group — about two inches low and a similar number left (hardly “a foot low”). This was double-action (which most shooters find far more difficult than thumbing the hammer back first) AND in spite of a trigger that we are told is possibly the worst since the invention of the trigger. If we’re evaluating accuracy, why not shoot single action and see what this arm is really capable of? But then, clearly the point to this “review” was to trash the piece. Since this gun seems cabable of fairly decent accuracy I don’t understand the point of… Hell, I’m just wasting more time here. I already wasted enough reading this “review” in the first place.
Would you like to write your own review of the gun? ping me guntruth@me.,com
that was one of the most biased ” review ” and summation I’ve ever seen. Its a rare day that any weapon can be as bad in all aspects as you suggest. Even worse, you poison the waters so that if on the chance you simply received a bad gun. (Gee, how about returning it to the factory for repair ? And then maybe write a review based on how CS was, the repair and then write a review ? ) Your viewers will spread the word that its scrap, junk, trash don’t even think about it… when in reality it may not be the case. It almost seems that because you didn’t get a free gun to test you……………………………….. ??
And if you want a second opinion send it to me and I’ll put it through its paces. If I agree… good for you. If not would you actually print what someone else’s opinion is ?
i’m glad you addressed this review the way that you did. this author makes strong points to justify this weapon as a strong value only to trash it in the end….very unfair. I’m sure the workers in the Shelton factory really appreciate this unfair review Most reviewers of even the snub nosed versions find it acceptably accurate out of the box.
Tom
Robert was overly kind to the gun he reviewed.
I tested the 9mm and .40S&W versions of the Charter Arms Pitbull, and documented the shoddy workmanship with photos. Also have pictures of the way-too-large groups. And a video of one of them jamming up completely.
The Charter people are good people, who swapped out the first gun I tested when it experienced problems. But the replacement gun had all of the same issues. There’s nothing that being “good people” did to fix the inherent problems with the guns. If you are going to trust your life to a revolver, buy a S&W or Ruger.
http://www.yankeegunnuts.com/2015/07/03/charter-arms-pitbull-update/
Some folks like a “6 o clock’ hold”. If you have one and like it, leave it be. If you don’t like it, the file is in order. Be sure to do something to the open wound if blued steel, or rust will start there.
I was considering purchasing a pug may have to reconsider my future purchase.
Money is tight here so possibly a rossi…thanks for the review.
theres no diffrence dont believe this guy
I bought a Charter Arms Mag Pug. and it don’t shoot correctly by the sites. My Python and and my Dan Wesson are perfect. But I use my Charter Arms .357 is my carrie weapon. Having shape shooter staus. I adjust my aim and find it eazy to make the shot count. I shoot better adjusting with it than I do with my Air Weight S&W .38
What “shape” do you shoot at? I ask in case I inadvertently wander by. BTW, I am in shape. Round is a shape.
i have the mag pug not the target but the short barrel. i could not be happier with the firearm. as far as accuracy i can hit a beer bottle at 15 feet EVERY time with no effort and im not a professional shooter just a hill billy with a hobby and a desire to be safe. i have shot several diffrent makes and models of snub nosed 357 including the s&w 640 the rugar 101 and many others and have found the mag pug to fulfill my every desire in a firearm so to bash a company like charter for being an American civilian priced firearm opposed to a s&w (which i own several) which are little pricey and being no diffrent i question the shooter and hope everyone else does the same
I guess the best way to sum up charter arms is that final inspection lacks,if they would spend just a little more time on buffing out machine marks ect. The guns would not get such a bum rap.but they are not trash guns and are miles above some of the imported guns that use cheap metals and plastic………
I have a C.A. undercover 38 stratford I have shot many many rounds through it and still functions after all these years.
My next purchase will be a C.A. pug .357 I’ll take my chances with an American made before foreign firearms.I have read many good reviews on the pug.Can’t afford a smith or ruger and do not want to purchase used.
Born in the USA and gonna spend my cash on American made.
is the sight picture described in the owners manual unachievable in reality???
a gun maker (people who know how sights are supposed to work on 4″ barrels) who makes deliberaly faulty or inoperable sights??? would they really do that???
and even be a real company or just a collection of frauds????
sight adjustment of sights knowning ly desinged to fire way off of sight picture isnt a prerequisite of a lower priced revolver.
so you are either a liar yourself ( a malicious one at that…if you lied about family probelms because you were molested or something i could understand) or charter arrms is a deliberatly fraudulent company…they are liars, iow.
if for some strange reason the front sight needed to be filed could one just find a another 4″ 357 revolver (smith or ruger, etc) with adjustable rear sights and measure the height of the front sights on those revolvers and adjust the rear sight accordingly???
I shot my 500th round today from my CA .357 MAg PUG, and it hasn’t missed a lick. I’m very happy with the gun. It is my 7th revolver, and tenth hand gun. And I wouldn’t trade them for 100 Auto’s. I guess I am just old school.
Ok it a P.O.S what’s the deal with the whole car report??
I have a Mag Pug (2 1/2″), and had to machine down the front sight (on my milling machine) to get it to shoot accurately with a normal sight picture. Clearly, Charter has some problems responding to users, because this situation has existed for years. I didn’t care because I have machining skills. But others?
Gee Here in the real world….say it’s the middle of the night & you are awakened by intruders in your home, are you really gonna try to line up sights or are ya gonna point & shoot, gun a blazing?????? Point is this….. this gun gonna be a target pistol or put it all on the line & save you & your families butt gun?
I’ve carried Charter pistols since the early 70’s when as a child of 8 years old I fired my first Bulldog. Though crudely made, I’ve never stopped carrying their pistols. Each version I have purchased over the last 30 years has worked. Was it the most accurate gun I owned, not by a long shot. I will never forget the piece of mind I had traveling MARTA in Atlanta during the 80’s knowing I had a Charter .44 Pug under my waistband. Would it have worked- damn right it would have. As I got older and more advanced in my career, I bought better guns, but still carried a Charter. Let’s remember what they are…. A small, lightweight, easily concealable revolver packing a ridiculous punch. I bought a new Target Bulldog .44 in 2012. It ended up having a frame issue after 210 rounds fired. I contacted Nick Ecker at Charter. Mr. Ecker and his team stand behind their pistols. I was sent a new pistol in short order. First firearm of hundreds I have ever had to send back. I believe in Charter for what they are. I feel really safe having one next to me when I sleep, though I own choices double in value. Is it really a range gun, ummmm, probably not. Would I bet my life on it…. Yes, and have for years. I once read a quote about Charter, and perhaps it holds true for me… “carry it a lot, and shoot it a little”. I think this old man is better armed with 5 shots from my Bulldog than any modern day thug carrying a pocketful of glock magazines. All I need is 1 shot, and may God himself have mercy on the fool suffering the receiving end.
I have since replaced my CA 357 Pug with a S&W Mod 60 357mag, and for the $100.00 difference in price, there is a $1000.00 difference in product and quality, the S&W finish is excellent and the guns is dead on accurate at 20 meters, it is like day and night in comparison, the CA may go bang if you are lucky, but you would be better of taking it by the business end and using it as a blunt instrument as apposed to shooting it, this is how bad the CA is in comparison to any other product on offer out there.
I was also very fortunate to pick up two brand new unfired medium frame oldies recently, a S&W 686 6″ combat special and a Ruger GP100 6″ stainless, now if you want to know how guns should be made, take a look at these bench mark firearms, its at this point you may come to understand just how low quality standards in the USA have sunk, I guess this is the Obamanation of the Americas, freedom has approached its twilight years and just like our education system, our soon to be health care system, and our governing system, we are pretty much done, so hang on tight to your bible and your guns, its going to be a rough ride, O’h and good evening to you gents in the NSA, I hope you are having a pleasant night.
So you didn’t file the front sight. Did you try adjusting the rear sight all the way up?
I just read this article again for I do not know how many times. Excuse my lack of knowledge on the subject, I am basically new to the sport. I would also like to state that I prefer non-adjustable sights on a handgun, possibly due to this inexperience. Can someone explain the issue regarding an adjustable rear sight. If it is raised up, (higher is how I understand), when you aim, the barrel would have to be raised to be in the sight picture. If the rear sight is lowered, the barrel sight will then be lowered to be in the sight pictured. Am I just misunderstanding this.
I’m supergluing a potato to the fly of my jeans and going as a dictator
I look at this so called gun writers review from time to time. Actually whenever I buy another Charter I look this guy up. See I am a shooter, and I don’t mind tuning a handgun to my liking. I own a number of Charter’s, 357, 4 total, 1 each in 9, 40, 45 Colt, and they are all good shooters. Very light weight, the one this writer was shooting is 25oz unloaded. Wonderful trail gun, but some guys as this writer just cannot figure out how to shoot em.