Smith & Wesson (NASDAQ: SWHC) (S&W) a manufacturer of handguns in the United States. The corporate headquarters is in Springfield, Massachusetts. Founded in 1852, Smith & Wesson's pistols and revolvers have become standard issue to police and armed forces throughout the world. They are also used by sport shooters and have been featured in numerous Hollywood movies, particularly Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry. Smith & Wesson has been known for the many types of ammunition it has introduced over the years, and many cartridges bear the company's name.

In 1852 partners Horace Smith and Daniel B. Wesson formed a company to produce a lever-action pistol nicknamed the Volcanic pistol. The company became known as the "Volcanic Repeating Arms Company"; financial difficulties caused it to come into the majority ownership of investor Oliver Winchester. Previously, in the late 1840s, Daniel Wesson's brother Edwin, of Hartford, Connecticut, had manufactured revolvers under the name of Wesson & Leavitt. After Edwin Wesson's death, that firm continued under the supervision of Thomas Warner.

Jerry Miculek is a speed shooter and competition shooting instructor. He is renowned as one of the fastest revolver shooters in the world, emptying a five-shot revolver in 0.57 seconds in a group the size of a playing card.^{[citation needed]} Miculek currently holds five world records in exhibition revolver shooting.^{[citation needed]} He is married to Kay Clark Miculek, herself an accomplished shooter, holding numerous national and world titles.

In addition, Miculek is an experienced gunsmith who tunes and adjusts his own revolvers for optimum function.

He is endorsed by Smith & Wesson, who created the S&W Model 625JM model in honor of him.

An avid shooter, Jerry holds numerous national and world shooting titles:^{[citation needed]}

Miculek also demonstrated the ability to fire five shots from a revolver on target with a S&W Model 64 ported barrel revolver in 0.57 seconds on September 25, 2003. This nearly matches the record held by Ed McGivern of 0.45 sec (first shot on 9/13/1932, reproduced 4 times on 12/8/1932). Originally recorded as "two-fifths of a second", the resolution of the timing equipment in 1932 was only 1/20th of a second, so the actual figure could have been anywhere between 0.40 and 0.45 seconds.^{[citation needed]}