Smith & Wesson “Shield Yourself”

Smith & Wesson released a video a couple weeks ago with the slogan “shield yourself” not really telling us what the new product will be, other than that is will be released on April 12th. The video was only up for a couple days before being pulled from their website, and from YouTube. I’ve not been able to find it hosted anywhere else.

Smith & Wesson has been releasing puzzle pieces on their Facebook page at noon yesterday and today, and presumably every day until the new item is released. The pictures are only left up for a couple minutes before being deleted.

Here are the pictures so far:

April 5th

Looks to me like a pistol rear sight, slide serrations, a slide release, and a small part of the frame. Definitely a pistol.

April 6th

This looks like a M&P pistol grip, lets hope the next picture will reveal something about the width of this new pistol. I really want a super narrow single stack 9mm.

These two pictures make it clear that the new item will be a pistol, but what sort of pistol? My guess is a singlestack M&P 9c. Hopefully this pistol will be released with a trigger comparable to the regular M&P line, instead of adding a long heavy double action only trigger like so many other manufacturers have already done. A decent trigger on a small, concealable 9mm singlestack would really set S&W apart from all the others.

Stay tuned, I’ll do my best to get the puzzle pieces up every day until the new product is released.

EDIT:

April 7th
Definitely looks like a small pistol. The big question is: singlestack or doublestack?

Edit again:

This picture was found posted on a forum I frequent, and it also came up on a google search for M&P Shield:

Kind of a weird picture, with all the transparency, and it really looks just like a M&P9c with a slightly shorter barrel. I cannot really determine anything about the width from the picture, but it looks to me like it has been doctored a little, and it may be an altered image of an M&P9c that has been put out to drum up interest, I’m not entirely sure just yet.

Easter Update:

Puzzle piece #4 is up:

Looks like the typical hinged M&P trigger, so lets hope this new pistol will not have a super long/heavy DAO trigger pull. I’m very interested, and excited to the unveiling later in the week.

Puzzle Piece #5:

4/10/12 – Piece #6 is up:

4/11/12 – Piece #7 is up: