Who’da thunk it? As 2007 dawned, a poll to choose a “most likely” headline for the coming year would probably not have included “Radical Development Transforms .32 Special.” Except for wishful obituaries, headlines involving the .32 Special have been notable by their scarcity from the moment the cartridge was introduced in 1902.

But to everyone’s surprise, Hornady has done just that: The .32 Special will now be available in Hornady’s ground-breaking LeverEvolution ammunition, mating spitzer bullets with high-energy gunpowder to give lever-action rifles a whole new meaning for today’s hunters.

The .32 Special was not on Hornady’s original list for LeverEvolution ammo. It was not even in the company’s future plans. So it was a surprise--albeit a pleasant one--when Hornady announced it. Why? we asked. And our friends at the Grand Island, Nebraska, firm said there was a demand, a lot of it.

The .32 Winchester Special is one of the most underrated and even denigrated cartridges of the past century, and for no good reason. Authorities have delighted in dismissing the .32 WS (as its barrels are marked) as worthless. In 1965, in the first edition of Cartridges of the World, Frank C. Barnes said of the .32, “If there is such a thing as a most useless cartridge, the .32 Spl. would certainly cop the prize.”

Barnes made a number of erroneous statements about the .32, and since Cartridges became the standard reference, many of these claims have been repeated through the years. At the root is a basic misunderstanding of exactly why the .32 was developed and what it was intended to accomplish.

First of all, it was not introduced in 1895 with the Winchester Model 1894, as Barnes stated. As close as I can figure (the dates are vague), it arrived seven years later, in 1902. By that time, the ‘94, the .30-30 and smokeless powder itself were well on their way to acceptance and acclaim, and this is the root of the .32 Special puzzle. Why bring out such a cartridge when you already have the .30-30? After all, the .32 is nothing but the .30-30 necked up about .013 inch (from .308 to .321).

No records survive, so all we can do is try to fit together what we do know. For years, the explanation was that Winchester wanted to provide a cartridge to accommodate those who had a store of black powder to use up. The .30-30 with its 1:12 rifling would not work well, so Winchester necked it up to .32 and changed the rifling to 1:16. The cartridge was called “Special” to differentiate it from the established .32 WCF (.32-20) and the .32-40.

This explanation has been dismissed as senseless because the ‘94 was also offered in .32-40, which was right at home with black powder. And while the .32 Special was certainly more powerful than the .32-40 when loaded with smokeless, there is not really much difference when the two are loaded with black powder. Since a ‘94 in .32-40 cost about half as much as the .32 Special with its nickel-steel barrel, the idea of reloading with black powder for economy’s sake made little sense.

But consider this: In 1902, .308 caliber cartridges were new, few bullet molds were available, and reloading with smokeless powder was discouraged for a variety of reasons. For one thing, the mercuric primers then in use reacted badly with smokeless powder, destroying the brass, while with black powder, mercuric primers worked fine.