Going Ten Rounds with a Smith & Wesson .500 Magnum

Through fogged glasses, the target floating seven yards down the range looked vague, almost ghostly. Muffled under bulbous blue headphones, my ears picked up shallow breath, an accelerated heartbeat and every other audible sign of my apprehension. Staring down eighteen inches of shiny stainless steel, I pulled the hammer back, the cylinder rotated 70 degrees counter-clockwise and a bullet the size of an AA battery slid under the raised firing pin.

Christ, what did I get myself into?

Smith & Wesson calls its .500 caliber handgun the "most powerful production revolver in the world."

Technically, they're right. Pfeifer, an Austrian manufacturer sells a 13-pound, .600-caliber revolver for $16,000 that fires $40 bullets, but they're not exactly cranking out those impractical behemoths on a regular basis.

Zac Trostel, an employee at Top Gun Shooting Sports in Jefferson County, assured me Smith & Wesson's monster has a purpose.

"It'll put a bear down in one shot," he said. "In Alaska, backpackers carry it as a side-arm to protect themselves from grizzlies. Smith & Wesson says it can take down an elephant."

Trostel then ran down the safety procedures before letting me walk onto the range with the hand-held Dumbo-dropper.

First off, he tells me not to put my hand in front of the cylinder. The force of escaping gas has been shown to break bones. The muzzle heats up lightning fast, so it's best not to grab hold of it. And first-time shooters like me should stagger the rounds, loading every other chamber to avoid accidentally shooting a second time when the gun kicks back (and blowing a nickel-size hole through the range's roof).