OK, so, funny story. I was on my way home from campus today (dropping off the midterm exam, spring break starts tomorrow, woohoo), and decided on a whim to stop off and browse my local sports shop. Their stuff is usually pretty pedestrian by my standards, but occasionally something interesting floats through. Didn't really see anything that tripped my radar in the handgun case or the regular rifle/shotgun racks (except for a really nice old Auto-5 shotgun that was just a little too rich for me after Other Recent Expenditures), but I was standing there by the counter chatting with Jim (who is either the Assistant Proprietor or a partner, I'm not sure how the business is set up), and while he was lamenting that he cannot at present get me a CZ 75B for love or money for some reason, my eye chanced to pass across the other rifle rack that they keep behind the counter.

I'm not sure what criteria they use there to decide what goes on that rack; it might just be the things they don't really think fit the theme of the ones out on the floor. The ARs and whatnot are usually back there, which I don't care too much about, but there was a nice antique-looking side-by-side shotgun I gave a look to, and next to it...

I waited for Jim to finish what he was saying, agreed that it was a darn shame but what can you do, then asked, "Is... that a Rossi Circuit Judge?"

Yeah. It was.

And yes, that's what they call it.

It's just what it says on the tin: a Taurus The Judge action, built into a handy little carbine by another Brazilian gun manufacturer, Amadeo Rossi. (I'm not 100% sure of the relationship between Rossi and Taurus; the latter bought the former's handgun operations a few years ago, and they obviously partnered on the Circuit Judge, but I don't think they have common ownership. It seems more like a variation on the old Winchester/Colt "look, we'll stay out of handguns if you stay out of long arms" arrangement.)

The frame has the standard Taurus markings, plus the imprint of Rossi's US importer. Meanwhile, Rossi's own logo appears in two more discreet places: the little rubber cap on the bottom of the semi-pistol-grip part of the stock, and the (oddly luxurious for a .410 shotgun) buttpad.

I'm not going to take the grip cap off, because those are probably wood screws and they don't really like being put in and taken out over and over again, but my guess is that it's hiding the bolt that holds the stock onto what would otherwise be the Judge's grip frame.

Note in the pic of the Taurus markings that the model number is (apart from the letters) the same as the pistol's, 4510—the Circuit Judge is literally a regular Judge handgun with a barrel long enough to meet NFA regs, a front handguard, and a shoulder stock instead of a grip.

Well, almost. It also has one nice little feature that addresses the major drawback all revolver carbines have had since Time Immemorial—namely, the problem of the cylinder gap. Long-time Gun of the Week readers may recall that this is a notorious danger zone in revolving firearms, which is not that much of a problem in a handgun if you hold it right; but in a carbine it's a significant hazard to the shooter's support arm. In the old days of blackpowder revolver carbines, the usual fix was to hold it right up close to the trigger guard, under the frame, which was awkward as hell and kind of obviated the advantage of making it a carbine in the first place.

Someone at either Taurus or Rossi (I'm guessing the latter, since they seem to have been responsible for all the other aspects of converting the Judge into a longarm) tackled the problem by adding little blast shields to the front.

(Sorry for the odd color and slight blur in the lefthand pic; the flash didn't go for some reason. I decided to leave it in order to show how they had to cut back the handguard on that side for the ejector rod.)

The shield on the right side is fixed; the one on the left swings out with the cylinder. They obviously don't protect anything that's right next to the upper part of the cylinder, by the forcing cone, but if you've got anything up there you're Doing It Wrong anyway.

Most of the markings are on the right side; the only one on the left is the caliber marking, up on the base of the barrel.

In that shot, you can also see the rear sight and the front of the built-in optic rail on the top of the frame. Leaving room for that rail makes the sight radius kind of short, since the rear iron sight is way out in front of everything on the barrel, but the sights themselves are quite nice. They've got little fiber-optic tubes in them, which, when viewed from the usual sighting position, make the dots show up brightly in normal light conditions—kind of a cool idea.

They're also in contrasting colors, which is nice; you can instantly tell if you've got them lined up in the wrong order. That sounds like a weird mistake to make, but if you're shooting in some haste (for instance, hunting birds), it could happen.

Unlike the handgun version, the carbine actually comes with a choice of choke (a screwed-in device out at the muzzle end of a shotgun that shapes the pattern of shot). You've got one exclusively for use with .410 shot, which makes a pattern the manual describes as suitable for turkey hunting, and another that protects the threads when you're shooting .45 LC. Mine came with the turkey choke installed, but I don't plan on doing much turkey hunting, so I'll probably swap it for the thread protector.

A little surprisingly for a used gun (people do seem to manage to lose this stuff with annoying regularity), it came with all the little fiddly bits—the second choke, the little spanner for swapping them out, a bore cleaner, even a little widget I eventually realized was a hammer extension. When I was a kid, my grandfather had one of those on an Ithaca Model 72 Saddlegun he had. The Saddlegun was a Winchester 1894 clone in .22 Rimfire Magnum, made for Ithaca by ERMA-Werke in (West) Germany in the '70s, and Gramp had put a scope on it. When you put a scope on a hammer-fired gun like a '94, the back of the scope overhangs the hammer and makes it inaccessible to the thumb, so you need to add a little sideways attachment to the hammer to make it get-attable again. I'm really surprised that my secondhand CJ's was still with it, that's the kind of thing that virtually always gets lost somewhere along the way.

So, the Circuit Judge. I sniffed around briefly for one of these after hearing that they existed, found that they were out of production, and more or less gave up, figuring that they'd be rare enough I would be unlikely to run across one used in any of the local gun shops... and then, randomly, ran across one in the shop nearest my house.* And the best part is, it basically didn't cost me anything!

Well, OK, I traded the Um, What The for it, but let's face it, I got most of my personal value from that just talking about the shock of seeing what it was after I ordered it. I'm likely to have a much better actual ownership experience with the CJ. Anyway, I think I actually got more in trade for it than I originally paid for it, which may be the only time I have ever made a (theoretical) profit on a gun deal.

--G.
* not counting the hardware store downtown, which only stocks a couple of shotguns and .22 rifles and doesn't deal in used stuff at all.
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