I know this will start a firestorm, but here is my opinion. I think the folks at Taurus got drunk and decided to design a handgun which took all the weaknesses of a shotgun and a handgun and combined them in the Judge. Let me explain. The weakness of a handgun is the generally weaker ammo it fires when compared to a rifle or shotgun. The weakness of most shotguns is the decreased range capability as compared to rifles. Due to federal laws, they were limited to a caliber of .50 or smaller, and since they were designing a handgun, the law requiring them to rifle the thing also applies, so they followed it as any of us would. Here is the problem, the only common shotgun shell they could chamber it for is .410, which is a gauge generally reserved for good shooters and even then for small game, not man size threats. Strike one. Next, the rifling. Anyone here who has fired birdshot or buckshot through a rifled shotgun knows the sorry excuse for patterns that are achieved with such a contraption. These guns require slugs to work well, not shot. So with birdshot, these guns are useless except for the snake that you almost stepped on or maybe a rat/mouse at 5-10 yds. Buckshot improves on this range, but still opens up to patterns big enough that I wouldn't trust it to stay on a human silhouette out past 5yds due to concerns of shooting innocents who may be on the other side. For a slug, well, you may as well load with a .45 Colt, right? The .45 Colt case is just over an inch, with the chambers on these guns being either 2.5" or 3", leaving us with a bullet that has to jump at least an inch before it gets to the rifling after it leaves the case, and that is assuming you have a 2.5" chambered gun which would be the better of the two options in this case at least as far as shooting .45 Colt goes IF you're interested in accuracy. Please dont get me wrong, .45 Colt is one of my favorite calibers, but only if chambered in a firearm that allows it to reach ots potential, which the Judge doesn't due to being limited to low pressure loads and the LOOOONG bullet jump in the chamber which causes it to lose more power due to the jump and blowby.
So you have a very interesting contraption which is by design inaccurate, weak powered, and too bulky to make it worthwhile for anything other than the "neat" factor. And that is before you get to the matter of almost every single one I have seen epople bring to the range locking up for some reason while the shooter was trying to shoot it after a few shots. I am hoping Taurus has addressed the locking up issue as it is a reliability problem, but I won't be buying one to find out. I figure each of us needs to decide if we want a handgun or a shotgun, or even better, buy one of each for the things that each is excellent for--but quit trying to think we will get both out of one gun. I would like to have both capabilities in one as much as anyone, but Taurus attempted to tackle an impossible project and very obviously failed as expected. To be fair, they were handicapped by several non-sense laws, but they should have been smart enough to figure out that they were going for an impossible goal and not put it out on the market where it will do more harm than good. Now if the law changes and they come out with a smoothbore version with a choke, I might be interested in it as a .410 only use gun, or even more if they were to come out with a 20ga smoothbore version, but due to the current laws, that isn't going to happen.
