Taurus? I've heard good and bad, and I have no direct experience with them, so I'll defer that to others who know better. I've got a 4" S&W 686 and I am so impressed with it that I just can't recomend them enough. It is (with 1 exception) about the best "Does It All" gun out there, except I think that it is too big and heavy for concealed carry. I got mine used for $300, and if it were me I'd go that route rather than buying a new Taurus. Also check out the Ruger GP-100's, they are good as well. As for barrel length, IMHO the 6" and 8" barrels are more for long range target and hunting use. 4" is pretty much universal, good for just about everything except concealment. 3" is "handier" and easier to conceal, but you are losing velocity at that length and the sight radius suffers.
For total Ka-Boom -- well, usually we try to avoid Ka-Booms!
Never fear, if you go with an L or N frame S&W (686 is an L) you probably won't have to worry about that, they are mighty strong. Debatably even stronger are the Ruger GP-100's, again you won't really have to worry about it if you want to run full-blast magnum ammo.
Is it hard to shoot those full blaster magnum loads? Not really in a medium/heavy frame service type revolver like mine. In a snubby that's another thing altogether.
How powerful is the .357 mag? Good question. Answer: It is good enough to hunt deer sized game with no real problems. It is good enough for field carry here in the South East, the only thing you might run up against here that the .357 wouldn't be completely adequate against is Black Bear, where the .357 is marginal. Brown Bears/Grizzlies? Nope, think again, you better have something better for those. As for self defense against varmits of the 2 legged variety, the .357 is arguably one of the best rounds there is, no matter how you measure effectiveness.
Advantages/Disadvantages of owning a .357? Let's start with the disadvantages. First, assuming that you have a quality revolver, there really aren't any disadvantages. Ok, so 9mm practice ammo is cheaper, as is .22lr. True, but you can get .38 spl ammo for pretty cheap as well. And that brings up one of the biggest advantages to having a .357 mag, and that is that .357 mags will also shoot .38 spl ammo just fine. And there's a whole gamut of ammo possibilities that opens up. It means that you can practice with very light loads that are very accurate and quite cheap to boot. There are also heavier self defense loadings in .38 spl that have less recoil, noise and flash than full power .357 mags, and are still effective -- I keep mine loaded with such ammo for home defense (Speer .38spl +P 125 gr Gold Dots). An advantage that the .357 mag revolver (or .38 spl for that matter) has in the home defense realm is the inherent reliability of the firearm. Ok, so you only have 6 (or 5 or 7 or 8, depending on what you get) rounds of ammo in the gun. Ah, but those are 6
reliable rounds, you aren't going to have any feeding failures or failures to eject, and if you have a misfire (BTW, never happened to me with my revolver), you just pull the trigger again. This comes at the expense of fast reloads, but the chances of needing to do a hot reload in most home defense scenarios is pretty remote.
