» Mon Apr 05, 2010 1:59 am
Keep in mind that when the Dirty Harry movies came out, .44 Magnum /was/ the most powerful handgun round in the world. .50 Action Express had yet to be invented, the tinkerers had yet to create the hotloaded .454 Casull, and most people thought you were crazy to even /consider/ making a revolver to fire the .45-70 Government round. Anything stronger were homebrew hotloads, and not in the open market where most people had access to it.
EDIT: I did more research and found the .454 Casull has been around since 1957, /but/ no weapons were commercially chambered for it until the 80s, after the movies came out. It was a specialised tool only. So Dirty Harry was wrong, but only in the broad sense. .44 Magnum was still the most powerful commercially available handgun round in the world.