I think, at least with recent production guns, how bad the Ruger trigger pull is (or how good the S&W is) has been grossly exagerated. My last three Rugers (a 9 mm SP-101, a GP-101 and .357 SP-101) have had very good trigger pulls with the 9 mm being equal any Smith I have bought new in the last twenty years. A lot of the older blued Smiths (and particularly the N-frames) have had excellent trigger pulls--in fact, I regular outshoot my brother's Glock and my son-in-law's Gold Cup with it (double action). The newer ones as a whole, and particularly the stainless models have good trigger pulls, but not significantly better than any of the newer Rugers I have shot. In fact, the Smith's new frame mounted firing pins are not as good as the out of the box Rugers (my experience with them is limited, however). I think Ruger got a rep for a bad trigger pull (justifiable) when the Security/Speed Six was first released, but unless I have just been lucky, the trigger pull on new production guns is pretty good.