The Night Guard's barrel is a two-piece affair consisting of stainless steel inner rifled tube and an alloy shroud that houses the front sight.

Another area where the Night Guards break ranks with their brethren, and tradition, are the sights. The front consists of an XS Sight Systems 24/7 Big Dot tritium night sight. The 24/7 suffix indicates that the tritium insert is surrounded by a large, white ring that make the front sight equally visible in the dark or bright daylight.

For a rear sight Smith & Wesson chose the unique Cylinder & Slide Extreme Duty, which is a fixed unit featuring a generously proportioned U notch. This setup provides a sharp, fast sight picture and alignment under a variety of light conditions, rapid target acquisition and transitioning between multiple targets. They may just be the most practical set of revolver sights that have come down the pike in a long time.

The Night Guard line includes several other recent S&W innovations: a frame-mounted, spring-loaded firing pin; smooth trigger; checkered hammer; key-operated Internal Safety Lock; and a two-component barrel consisting of a inner, rifled steel tube covered by an alloy shroud. This latter feature permits the barrel to be mounted in the frame and barrel/cylinder gap set without exerting undue stress on the frame.

Smith and Wesson	315NG	386NG	329NG
Caliber	.38 Special	.357 Mag./.38 Spl.	.44 Mag.
Capacity	6 rounds	7 rounds	6 rounds
Weight	24 oz.	24.5 oz.	29.3 oz.
Barrel Length	2.5 in.	2.5 in.	2.5 in.
Overall Length	7.0 in.	7.63 in.	7.75 in.
Height	5.5 in.	5.5 in	5.5 in
Width	1.5 in.	1.6 in.	1.7 in.
Frame (all)	scandium/ aluminum alloy
Cylinder (all)	stainless steel
Finish (all)	PVD matte black
Sights (all)	front: XS Sight 24/7 tritium insert; rear: Cylinder & Slide Extreme Duty
Grips (all)	Pachmayr Compac
Price:	$932	$1,011	$1,082

S&W provided me with three samples of the Night Guard revolvers to test for Handguns: the .38 caliber Model 315NG, a .357 Model 386NG and a .44 Magnum Model 329NG. I was especially taken with the Model 315NG as it reminded me so much of my Model 12.

While their trigger pulls were on the heavy side, backing off their mainspring adjustment screws a few turns smoothed things out considerably without compromising cartridge ignition. Fit, finish and the quality of materials were all self evident, just what I expect from Smith & Wesson.

Gathering together a selection of .38 Special, .357 Magnum, .44 Special and .44 Magnum ammunition, I called my shooting buddy Rusty Rawsen--a USPSA state revolver shooting champion--and asked him to meet me at Trigger Time Valley, a professional firearms training facility in Carthage, North Carolina.

We test fired our trio of Night Guards for accuracy from an MTM Predator rest at 50 feet. The sights proved equally adaptable to paper punching as defensive purposes, and all three guns printed close enough to point of aim to please the two of us--and that ain't always easy.

After chronographing the 10 types of ammo we proceeded to run the revolvers through a series of offhand drills on D-1 targets placed out at five and 10 yards. Safariland had kindly provided holsters suitable to these endeavors.

The 315NG proved a regular pussycat to shoot, and my opinion of it kept going up and up. At the other end of the spectrum, shooting magnums out of the 386NG proved a real trial, eventually becoming painful--so much so that Rusty and I ended up using .38+P ammo for most of the drills.

Because of this, we decided to use .44 Special ammo in the 329NG and, loaded thusly, it proved to be a fine shooting--and accurate--handgun. Regardless of the revolver or ammo we had no trouble keeping all of our rounds inside the targets' respective X and 10 rings

While all three possessed equally fine ergonomics, sights, grips and trigger pulls, I thought it best to go over each revolver individually.