M&P 40 Magazines

[Road Rat]

I have a new S&W M&P 40 S&W pistol with the 6 and 7 round magazines.

BOTH are impossible to load with 6 and 7 rounds. Is there any good reason a magazine spring should be this difficult?? I have been shooting bottom feeders since 1975 and never found one that I couldn't load.

It took my 26 year old, 250 pound, grandson to finally get the last round in. NOT A GOOD THING.

 

[mckenney99]

The Shield magazines have a well deserved reputation for being extremely difficult to fully load when new. A Mag-Lula or other magazine loading device will be your friend for a short period of time. They will loosen up. LOAD-FIRE-REPEAT as needed.

 

[galena]

Pick up an UP LULA magazine loader. They are a great assist with hard to load magazines both single and double stack. Most gun stores carry them as do the online gun accessory outlets. I am pretty sure Dillon Precision lists them in their catalog.

 

[Road Rat]

Thanks for the info. But, you missed my point! I have been shooting magazine fed handguns for a long time: 22, 38, 45, etc., and none have ever been this hard to load. Is there any good reason S&W designed these this way OR just poor engineering?? A man could get himself killed while attempting to reload one of these magazines!!

 

[sandog]

A stiff magazine spring and a stiff recoil spring help ensure reliability in these small pistols. Seeing all the issues many new owners of the S&W EZ pistols, I'd rather have a harder to load, or harder to rack slide, than skimp on reliability.
They get easier to load, in the meantime get a loading tool as suggested.
All you need is a simple tool to get that last round or two in the mag, you can get a handful of the Range Tray loaders for under $20.
I bought green ones for the .45 Shield, and orange for the 9mm/40, so I can tell them apart at a glance.

 

[silverstateS&W]

you have a SHIELD model not to be confused with an M&P (full size or compact)
another suggestion is to load as many as you can and and let the mags sit.
larry

 

[Rastoff]

Have you disassembled the mags? It's possible the spring is bound up in there. That's what was wrong with mine. Once I got a new spring, they load just like any other mag.

 

[Road Rat]

Thanks to all............

 

[triaxle]

I load mine as far as I can get and let sit a while , when I think of it go back and add a round . It gets better .

 

[LVSteve]

Gen2 Remington R51 mags are the same.