.356 TSW

At the peak of the Action Shooting furor in the 80s and 90s, Smith & Wesson introduced a new automatic pistol cartridge. It was a competition-based cartridge called the .356 TSW (for Team Smith & Wesson).

After a fairly promising introduction, the round lasted a year or two and quietly faded into obscurity. Intended for a series of Performance Center raceguns, the TSW was essentially an extra-hot 9 mm that was going fast enough to make major.

Configured with a case slightly longer than the 9 mm Parabellum, but the same overall length, the TSW worked very well in the high-capacity competitive pistols for which it was designed. When they begin to tinker with the rules that established major and minor cartridge, there was no need for a special cartridge and it died.