And I do fall to it at times. Widener's blog has a lot of articles on basic 'here's what this is', one that just came out is on wadcutters.
When the (currently tapering down to some extent) ammo panic was roaring, a lot of people were pulling out anything they had and looking for food for it. Including a lady who came in with an old revolver her father had left her. It was a beautiful old S&W .32 Long, looked like he'd loaded it, set it in the nightstand, and never fired it. The action was stiff due to dried up old oil, but mechanically it was perfect. The recommendation was 'Take it to the gunsmith for a thorough clean and oil, and then practice with and keep it loaded with this.' Before we were cleaned out, we had a bunch of .32 Long wadcutters, and she got a box to start with. All we had at the time were round-nose and these, these would be a lot better if she had to use it for real, and personally I wouldn't trust any hollowpoints to reliably expand at those velocities*, or penetrate deeply enough if they did.
Personally I saw a number of similar pistols come in in similar to worn-but-working shape that needed ammo. We even sold out of the .32 Short we had for some older ones.
*In Jim Cirillo's book he mentioned using wadcutters on the stakeout squad because the performance was so much better than the issue round-nose. One day some captain(I think) saw it and asked why he was loading with that. Upon hearing the answer the guy said "That stuff is not approved!"
"Ok, take me off the squad."
Never heard another word about it.
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