i have been looking at getting the, smith and wesson m&p 2.0 performance center shield 45 as my concealed carry, and upgrade the barrel to the lone wolf alpha wolf threaded and fluted barrel, and upgrading it with the full apex trigger kit,

with these modifications and specs of the the gun itself, would using buffalo bore super 45 185 grain jhp's be safe to use through it or underwoods 230grain +p jhp's? or are there some modifications that i can still do to it to better handle this type of ammo?

i also plan to take it to a local gunsmith i know and have them put the thunb safety on it just for added peace of mind because i always carry one in the chamber and i use the, clip draw, with their trigger guard, for maximum concealment, and found a solid steel core shark skin carry belt from, bullhidebelts, that looks damn good and is better than those 5.11 material style belts you can get at cabelas or bass pro shop,

any information would be greatly appreciated.

Welcome! Here is the quote from the factory owner's manual about .45 ACP + P use on page 11:

https://snwcdnprod.azureedge.net/sit...19_3009898.pdf

Use of these will accelerate stress on the gun.

Given all the parts changes you are proposing, it may be better to start with a standard Shield .45 that already has the manual safety.

M&P(R)45 SHIELD M2.0™ Thumb Safety | Smith & Wesson

Good luck in your decisions.

__________________
Alan
SWCA LM 2023, SWHF 220

Welcome to the S&W Forums.
With modern bullets like Federal's HST, Speer's Gold Dot, and Winchester's Ranger T, I am not convinced that +P brings anything other that extra recoil and faster wear on the firearm. With a barrel as short as that in the S&W Shield, you may find that 45 Super is very difficult to control, will be very hard on the pistol, and much of the powder will still be burning after the bullet has exited the muzzle.

__________________
VCDL, GOA, NRA

The Shield 45 is a lightweight, short barreled, polymer 45. Can't stress enough how important it is to match the ammo to the firearm. Both my Shield 45s love 185 JHPs going about 900 fps. Far from +P but that combination is pleasant to shoot, very manageable, very accurate, reliable, and still .451 out them muzzle.

Welcome to the Forum!

I have owned a Shield 45 for over three years, and have 7,600 rounds through it. I have some comments on your questions, and I hope you will find them useful.

1. The barrel. I would advise against spending money on an aftermarket barrel until you have shot your Shield extensively with the factory barrel. I think you'll like it. A lot. I have found my Shield 45 to be not just accurate, but astonishingly so. At 15 yards, it outshoots most every other pistol I own, including my SIG P320 compact and my SIG P229. The only pistol I own that is more accurate at that distance is my FNX 45 Tactical with its 5.25" barrel. If you read through other threads about the Shield 45, you'll find many other owners in agreement. I don't know how S&W managed to build so much accuracy into such a short barrel, but they did.

2. The trigger. I found the trigger to be overly stiff initially, but it smoothed out nicely around 1,000 rounds, and is now quite good. I've never felt the need to replace it with an Apex. However, if you gotta have a better trigger asap, I can recommend the Apex DCAEK. I had one in my M&P 40c, and it smooths things out nicely, but does not lighten the pull weight (which I wouldn't recommend doing with a carry gun).

3. The ammo. This is more subjective area, because everyone is slightly different in what they can tolerate recoil-wise. What is striking to me and to many others who've commented on the Shield 45, is its manageable recoil for such a small gun. However, that's with typical target ammo. I use Federal Tactical Bonded as my self-defense ammo. It is 230g +P, rated at 950 fps muzzle velocity, 460 ft/lbs muzzle energy, and it has a noticeably stouter recoil than does target ammo. I'd suggest experimenting with self-defense rounds you are considering, and choose one that functions most reliably and accurately with your Shield. I also suggest that you shoot at least 100 rounds of your chosen self-defense ammo. It should work perfectly every time. If it doesn't, try something else.

As to +P ammo and premature wear, I have shot approximately 250 +P rounds from my Shield, and at 7,600 rounds, it shows no sign of wearing out.

4. Thumb safety. I agree with murphydog above. Get a basic model with a factory thumb safety. Unless you want a pre-milled slide for a red-dot sight or a ported barrel, there's no reason to get a PC model, especially since you're likely to get an Apex trigger anyway.

Enjoy your new Shield!

__________________
What, me worry?

Here's my 2¢ on the subject, and it comes with my personal guarantee that it's worth every penny that you paid for it...

.45 ACP is a cartridge with an almost legendary reputation as a manstopper dating all the way back to the early 1900s. The .45 ACP was designed to replicate the performance of the US Army's "M1882 Government .45 Caliber Ball" load which was essentially a .45 Schofield load with the ballastics of a light .45 Long Colt, which had served the cavalry well for decades and had a reputation for being capable of readily stopping a galloping horse dead in its tracks. Keep in mind that during WWI, horses were still widely used on the battlefield, so a round that could stop a horse was a desirable trait in a military service cartridge.
Not to be outdone by it's predecessor, the .45 ACP cartridge went on to earn its own reputation as a reliable man-stopper and faithfully served the US Army from 1910 to 1985, and is still in use within certain branches of the USMC/SOCOM. Yes, it has been largely phased out in favor of 9mm NATO, but that change, regardless of what people say, was largely for the sake of adopting a NATO standard cartridge, which was never a popular decision among soldiers. Also, it's important to note that while 9mm NATO will get the job done, it's an overpressure variant of 9mm Luger with pressures in excess of even SAAMI Spec 9mm Luger +P loads, which brings me to my next point...

+P ammunition is by definition a high pressure load which exceeds standard loads by up to 15% which increases chamber pressures substantially, but in exchange for a marginal increase in performance, so unless you're carrying a heavy duty firearm, usage of +P ammunition doesn't seem worth the trade off of decreasing the service life of the firearm or at least its parts among casual shooters. (And yes, if you're going to carry +P ammo, then you should train with +P ammo as well because your POI will generally shift considerably between Standard Pressure and +P loads.)
So in my honest opinion, if you desire better ballistics performance than what Standard Pressure loads have to offer, then you're better off switching to a more powerful cartridge, that way you'll get the increased performance that you desire with a firearm that won't wear out any faster because it's already designed to fire the cartridge it's chambered in, unlike most firearms which shoot +P ammo. (And no, "Rated for +P" does not mean "Designed to shoot +P" it merely means that it can safely shoot +P, and Owners Manuals generally reflect this.)

The S&W M&P45 Shield is without a doubt a well-made pistol, but it was designed to be a lightweight carry pistol, not a heavy duty service pistol. Yes, police might use the M&P Shield, but as a BUG. So not only will +P loads accelerate wear on the Shield, it will most likely be more difficult to shoot fast/accurately due to the increased recoil of +P loads out of such a lightweight pistol. Not to mention that out of such a short barrel, it's most likely that the benefits of +P ammo are wasted because powder doesn't have as much time to burn and that extra pressure doesn't have much time to build up behind that bullet before it escapes out the barrel.

So yeah, if you want more power than what Standard Pressure .45 ACP loads have to offer, then you're better off looking into 10mm Auto than using +P ammo, and I'm talking about real full-power 10mm Auto by Cor-Bon, Double-Tap, or Buffalo Bore, not common 10mm Auto Lite/FBI loads which are essentially just .40 S&W in a longer case. But for that, you're going to need a bigger, heaver gun than the Shield, and you're going to have to move away from Smith & Wesson since the only 10mm cartridge they care about is their own .40 S&W cartridge, which really doesn't offer much of anything over .45 ACP.

That all having been said, while the legendary man-stopping reputation of the .45 ACP cartridge may be an exaggeration, as far as handgun cartridges go against two-legged threats, it's certainly among the best there is. After .45 ACP, handgun cartridges start to beget diminishing returns, because while they travel at higher velocities and strike with more energy foot-pounds, none of them but the mightiest of magnum cartridges have the necessary mass, velocity, nor energy to generate remote wounding effects in flesh, so unless you plan on carrying a .50AE Desert Eagle, 460XVR or a M500 Magnum, .45 ACP is just about the best performance you're going to get out of a semiautomatic pistol.

You don't need to use +P ammunition either, Standard Pressure .45 ACP was long considered the gold standard for semiauto pistols, and regardless of what unilateral testing protocols conducted by the FBI/IWBA may suggest, any hunter can tell you that bigger, heavier bullets have much more dramatic effects on bone than smaller, lighter bullets do, and when the objective of self-defense is to stop the threat by incapacitation, obviously shattered bones tend to be more debilitating than cracked or broken bones with holes in them. Hit a deer in a non-vital area like the shoulder or the hip with a smaller, faster bullet and it will keep right on running until it bleeds out, leaving the hunter to track it down and finish it off. Hit a deer in a non-vital area like the shoulder or the hip with a bigger, heavier bullet and the shoulder or hip breaks, the deer goes down and can be humanely finished off on the spot. Now obviously in self-defense your next course of action after dropping a threat is to flee to a safe distance then call 911 immediately so that the police/paramedics can arrive, but you get my point... Just like a large game animal, a threat will go down if a .45 ACP smashes through a bone which is necessary for them to remain upright, whereas a smaller, lighter bullet like a 9mm might merely punch a clean hole through a bone.

__________________
Shooting Comfort is bilateral.

So if where I hike and bike in Florida has a possibility (some more probable than others) of black bear, panther, wild boar, alligator, python, two legged predators, and a 45acp Shield is my gun, what would your suggested load be even if +P is shot enough to vette it and carry. Or standard velocity load?
Or am I better off with a 5 shot m60-10 357?

The thing with +P, especially out of short barrels, is you really don't gain anything. You just get more wear and a harder to control follow up shot.

And has anyone ever noticed, watching the jello shooters on Youtube, that the +P rounds don't penetrate as far as the standard velocity rounds do? I noticed that. Regards 18DAI

__________________
7 +1 Rounds of hope & change

The 45 Shield is a great gun. You made a good choice. I agree with swsig that unless you just like changing things, a new barrel is a waste. I have an Apex Duty trigger on mine but if I had to live with the factory trigger, I'd be ok with that. As far as +P ammo, I work for a department where we have about 150 45 Shields in circulation. Our carry round is Winchester, Ranger T, 230 grain +P. Generally, we use 230 grain, FMJ for training, however we shoot the qualification with the carry round. The guns have been pretty much trouble free even with the +P. Some of our instructor guns have had several thousand rounds through them and are still going strong. Unless you are planning on shooting thousands of rounds, I don't think you will notice much extra wear with the +P. I will tell you, anecdotally of course, the several shoots we've had with this round were all one shot stops.

I would say try several different expanding bullet loads, and find the one that performs the 'best' for you - accuracy, control, recoil, reliability. For either the Shield or model 60.

__________________
Alan
SWCA LM 2023, SWHF 220

I have both the original 9mm and the first edition of the 45 Shields. I also still have, and fire in my guns, +P ammunition as issued by my former employer. Frankly, the recoil from +P doesn't feel significantly different to me. Maybe it's because we trained using +P for many years, but it just isn't a big deal.

As far as wear, neither I nor my factory-trained friends at the Pistol Range noticed any significant wear from using +P.

IMO, the legends that have grown over the years about +P and to a degree, +P+ as well are more rumor than fact. I've never seen or heard of anyone complaining that "+" ammo caused any significant wear or damage to their firearm. Seems like insufficiently lubing semi-autos causes more problems than most standard ammunition.

As for .45 Super: Why? Maybe "just because," but there really isn't anything wrong with a normal 45 round on a normal gun that needs to be addressed by juicing it up to near-magnum pressure. It's nothing more than pushing the limits of the firearm to see if you can.... not a good enough reason, IMHO. But carry on, and please let us know about your success.

I have a Shield .45 Performance Center Model that is both dependable and accurate. It's had only about 150 rounds of standard 230 grain ball ammo thru it with no issues and I think you will find the trigger pull most acceptable. A few Golden Saber Remington +P's were shot thru it and the recoil was notably stronger. On a carry gun, I would not make the modifications you are thinking of. But that's just me. If it were a competition gun, those changes would probably be ok. A hiccup on the range is acceptable but in a life or death situation, you want it to go bang every time. Good luck with your decision

For defense against wild predatory animals, especially big ones like Black Bear, I would recommend standard 230gr FMJ. Penetration is paramount when dealing with large predatory animals because their dense bones can cause JHPs to fragment, deform/deflect, or outright stop before they've reached vitals.
Some will say Hardcast bullets are better, but they don't feed as reliably in semiautomatic pistols as FMJ. Others will insist that .45 ACP isn't enough and you need at least 10mm Auto if not .44 Magnum if you want to stop a bear with a handgun, but these are Black Bear we're talking about here, which can and have been dropped by 90gr .380 ACP FMJ, so obviously a 230gr .45 ACP FMJ will suffice.

That being said, the very subject of Bear Defense is one of exhaustive debate which has never resulted in any meaningful conclusion, and the mere mention of bear in a thread often opens up that whole can of worms yet again, so don't be surprised if you get bombarded with responses making suggestions ranging from assertions that 9mm is sufficient for Bear Defense all the way up to folks insisting that nothing short of a .30cal Magnum Rifle will faze a bear.

Personally, I am of the opinion that if you expect to encounter bear, then you ought to carry the biggest, most powerful firearm that you can handle.

Bella Twin dropped a Grizzly with a single shot .22 Short Rifle by hiding in some bushes then shooting directly into its ear, so even the mightiest of bears aren't the bullet proof behemoths that some folks think that they are, and a .45 ACP handgun will certainly work on Black Bear.

__________________
Shooting Comfort is bilateral.

Seems some people want to buy a Pinto and turn it into a Mustang buy changing parts and fuel............Would be cheaper and safer just to buy the Mustang to start with.

In other words if you want a more powerful gun. Buy a more powerful gun.

__________________
S&W Accumulator

Winchester white box ball

__________________
Forum consigliere

It's interesting that this zombie thread has been revived after a year. I wonder what the OP decided to do. I guess we'll never know since he hasn't posted since. One and done. Oh, well...

__________________
What, me worry?

Yikes....! I didn't even look at the date! Never mind.