[Person of Interest]

If a Colt blew up with one round it wasn't the "power" of a factory +P because there isn't any. Not that kind. Guns are manufactured machines and sometimes they are defective as delivered. I suspect that any Colts or S&Ws blowing up with any factory ammo had problems with tempering or something to cause a catastrophic failure. Factory +P ammo is simply not hot enough to blow up a gun.

As for listening to Colt (or any gunmaker) they are listening to lawyers. Oh, that's right. You don't believe that (and I think you are the only one, BTW).*

Like I said, dude, do what you think is best.

But, yes or no, do you really think a 125 grain bullet driven at 950 FPS is a powerful load in the .38 Special?

* After posting this I asked my wife (the lawyer) to see if she could find any cases regarding ammomakers being sued for defective products. She spent about five minutes on LEXIS (a legal search engine) and found eight lawsuits starting in 1957. I looked at a couple of the cases and they were about guns blowing up. This is only a small sample and if you think Federal, Winchester et al don't have such potential litigation in mind when they are manufacturing ammo you should think again. She then searched for cases involving gunmakers and there were pages and pages that popped up. I checked out a couple and one involved a gun blowing up. I submit that lawsuits against gun and ammo companies are so numerous and well known as to be considered common knowledge and I can't imagine these companies not acting to protect themselves by advising against using ammo that is marketed as high performance (even though it really isn't).