How tough are the M&P pistols

[Don~Z~]

Ok so my edc is a shield 45, I also own a shield 9 and an M&P BG380, one thing I have never really heard anyone talk about is what kind of life a pistol has... meaning, can a pistol shoot 20,000 rounds before catastrophic failure especially if well maintained? Or 100,000? I know that each pistol is made of different materials and different tolerances, so this question might be kind of hard to answer... I mainly want to know about the M&P line.


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[zymurgeist]

Properly maintained with good ammunition it should never have a catastrophic failure. It will eventually wear to the point repairing it isn't economically a good idea. You should easily get in excess of 100,000 rounds out of it.

 

[Arik]

Can't speak for the Shield but there is plenty of evidence of the M&P duty guns lasting a long time. There's a member here who ran his M&P into the tens of thousands of rounds, he had a general list of what he changed and when.

http://smith-wessonforum.com/smith-wesson-m-p-pistols/488693-moving.html

The only one I know of that even makes that claim is HK. Their P30 has gone in excess of 90k rounds without any serious parts breakages.

The BG isn't meant for high volume of shooting and I doubt it will go 20k rounds without a lot of changes.

Most people don't shoot enough to ever wear out their guns.


If you want to get a good idea of how well M&P hold up I recommend you sign up on Pistol-training forum and read. This is the place where most of your high volume shooters post. There's guys that have run over 50k rounds of 45 in a couple months. Others have guns with over a 100k rounds. However, fair warning....it's more of a serious group. No one is going to care for painted letters or how cool accessories look.


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[Khaot1c]

How about fail to feed and jams with the round buried into the feed ramp. How's that for reliable......

 

[RobzGuns]

Mine crossed over the 20K mark a few Months ago without a hiccup (that wasn't either shooter or ammo related).

I've heard that there might be a brand or two of JHP that might bind on the feed ramp, but that's why one should run a few hundred rounds of any carry ammo they want to use in their pistols before actually carrying it.

 

[exdetsgt]

Case in point: Last summer I bought one of those little single stack .380 Glocks. Because it was so diminutive I held it gently and had nothing but FTE's.

So I returned it to the lgs, saying something's wrong with this pistol and the owner handed it to the resident gunsmith who promptly retired back into his shop. After a moment I heard "Fire in the hold" and a rapid fire until the Glock was emptied. At once I realized my mistake: I had been limp-wristing. However, I still didn't fully trust it and traded it for an SP-101. In retrospect I realize there was nothing at all wrong with the little Glock.

 

[swsig]

My M&P 40c has been trouble-free for 7500 rounds. It shows no signs of wear anywhere. When it reached 6000 rounds, I called S&W customer service and asked if it was time to get a new recoil spring assembly. They said if your gun is working well, (it was), you probably don't need one, but we'll send you a free new one anyway. The combination of a high-quality product and a company that stands behind it has made me an M&P 40c customer for life.

 

[Smoke]

If you want to get a good idea of how well M&P hold up I recommend you sign up on Pistol-training forum and read. This is the place where most of your high volume shooters post. There's guys that have run over 50k rounds of 45 in a couple months. Others have guns with over a 100k rounds. However, fair warning....it's more of a serious group. No one is going to care for painted letters or how cool accessories look.

Pistol-Forum.com is a good resource. If you choose to post there bear in mind that the majority of contributors over there are people that are in the industry (Tamara Keel, Massad Ayoob, Larry Corriea) who really are subject matter experts.

I read a lot but I almost never post over there unless I'm asking a question.