Seeming Disdain for 40S&W

S&W59

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I'm not entirely certain the reasoning behind the seeming abandonment of 40S&W as a desirable caliber. It is an effective self-defense round yet before the Wu-Flu hit, the used gun counter was full of 40S&W guns of all stripe. The new 40S&W pistols weren't moving and even today, my smaller local gunshops are only able to get S&W new pistols in 40, the others are too backordered. This is funny since the local shops are flat out of 9mm parabellum but the shelves are stocked with 40S&W ammo. You'd think just the ammo situation alone would get people looking at 40's but it doesn't seem so. Why the sudden shift?
 
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FBI and law enforcement politics. What the FBI uses HAS TO BE what is best and everyone wants it, right or wrong. Personally, I think the .40 is the perfect round for anything man sized or smaller out of a handgun. The complaints that it recoils more than a 45 is total bull.
 
I'll take a stab at this... Ammo and caliber testing goes on constantly by manufacturers and high impact LEO agencies ie: (FBI) which publish and pass on their findings to other agencies and sporting enthusiasts. The nature of people is to get the most updated gun and caliber available. When the .40 because available, it was the new go to round. Revolvers were becoming out of fashion due to round capacity and mechanical failure. Quality autos were now being made and improved upon but the 9mm just didn't have the performance reputation of a 357 magnum in a revolver. The increased ammo capacity with ease of reloading equaled the field. A larger caliber (.40) was the next thing that elevated the performance of the 9mm. Now, 357 Sig, .45 and 10mm are available but with limited gun options. The testing continued and with new bullets and performance ammo, the 9mm has risen from the dead and replacing the .40 as the caliber to have. The gun shops filled up with used .40's and new .40's were selling like bricks. Keep watching and see what the future brings us. I did the research and orchestrated the testing for my agency for gun and caliber changes on three separate occasions. We went from the .357 mag to the 9mm to the .40 to the .45 and now they are back to the .40.
 
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I have 4 40s&w pistols and three of thrm van be converted to 357 Sig and 9mm. The 4th I only have conversion for 9mm.

I carry 40 S&W almost daily.

I also think it is the best all around caliber, even though I sometimes carry 45 ACP and 357 Magnums.
 
I heard that FBI testing proved 9 mm rounds glanced off the windshields of automobiles but 40 S&W rounds not only penetrated the windshield they took out the bad guy as well.

Don't laugh, didn't most if not all of us believe in Santa Claus, the tooth fairy and the Easter bunny?

I bought a Sig in 40 S&W because my son had one and I wanted to be able to shoot the same rounds he was shooting. Neither of us still have the pistols. My son went to 9 mm and I went to 44 magnum.
 
Its harder to get a 5 foot nothing politically correct recruit to qualify with a passing score using a 40, than it is with a 9mm. ;) And 9mm in the bulk that agencies purchase it is cheaper too. Glad I am retired. :)

Having worked in a gunshop for the last 5 years and thankfully no longer, new shooters disliked the recoil. They preferred the 9mm. So around two years ago, we stopped stocking 40 handguns. And wouldn't give anything for them in trades. Can't move them.

Now, being other choices are simply not available, due to the current stupidity, 40 is selling.........slightly.

I myself am not a fan. I prefer a 147 grain 9mm to a 40. And I prefer 45 to both. When I got divorced I divested myself of my 40 pistols. I just found them less pleasant to shoot than my 9s or 45s. And ballistically, the 40 was ok but 45 was easier to shoot, for me. And I like 45 ballistics just fine.

New shooters will probably not adopt 40 and LE will probably not go back to it due to costs and "other" considerations. IMO it is a round that, if not dying, is pretty bad off. The current buying craze propping it up - temporarily.
 
This is not a sudden shift. Shortest version I can toss out.

.40 arrives and they deliver successfully. Every gunmaker joins in; every ammo maker too, tons of LE, competitors too. If you wanted to detail a nearly perfect new caliber debut, the .40 S&W is your case study.

Then the AWB and 10-round mag limit. This makes .40 even better. 9mm sized gun, all limited to 10, huge edge to .40cal.

Then bullet technology improves (how much is up for debate) but we move to an era where MORE professional trainers are making a name for themselves and more folks are paying for professional courses and FAR more folks are talking about these things and the trainers have their own voice on the internet where only printed gun magazines ruled the day in decades gone by. And all those trainers are singing the praises of the 9mm, especially after the sunset of the AWB in 2004 and 9mm carry guns go back to holding 15-18 rounds. Faster follow-up shots, less muzzle rise, front sight back on target. And 9mm ammo has gotten better (they say!)

And then the LE organizations are replacing all the duty guns from the previous generation... .40 gets dropped here, gets dropped there, in favor of 9mm again. And the private sector follows.

You aren't poorly armed with a good .40cal. Are you better armed with a .40 than with a 9mm? Well, that's the kind of debate that keeps gun forums active. :D

I've never been a huge fan of .40, but the two main reasons behind that are because it had a huge role in the downtown of 10mm some 30yrs ago and because .40 isn't the finest round ever to grace my load bench. But in the past 3 years, I've added three elite .40cals to my stable and while I have no desire to carry .40, the three guns I've added are phenomenal. And two of those three were gotten for better prices being .40's than they would have been had they been chambered in 9mm.
 
Fashion, Narrow Ties and Wide Ties

None of these caliber preferences of 9 vs. 40 vs. 45 for defense purposes mean anything unless one hits the target. Better to hit with a .22 short than to miss with a 500 S&W unless you're close enough for the muzzle blast to make a difference. There have only been incremental gains made in handgun effectiveness over the last 80 years, most of them in ease and cost of manufacture, and the handguns are still shot by humans who miss under stress. Manufacturers have to make money and they don't make it on old Browning Hi Powers or S&W M&P's, but both are more than adequate, especially if you hit something. In the sage words of Jeff Quinn, "They'll generally leave you alone if you go to pokin' holes in 'em."
 
Get two milk jugs filled with water, a 124 gr. 9mm and a 180 gr. 40S&W. Shoot one with the 9mm. the other with the 40 in a comparable round. You'll see one of the reasons I still carry the 40.

And I'm only going to say this because it's infuriating when some tool comes along to tell you that he isn't gonna be attacked by milk jugs...

I have also noticed a major difference in knocking the hell out of steel plates between 9 and .40.

Not being a coroner or ballistician, I cannot tell you how much difference they make on a human attacker, but what we see on solid non-living objects can't be totally irrelevant.
 
It's a conspiracy between pistol manufacturers and the FBI.
Every decade or so, they get the FBI to come out with new
"best caliber" announcement.

Jussssssssssssssst kidding!
 
Boy I'm late to the party. I'm finally getting into the early 20th Century and accepting the concept of 45 ACP and 9mm Parabellum... I don't think I'll live long enough to start accepting those new-fangled 10mms nor yet their 40 S&W weak sisters. Mileage for you young whippersnappers might vary! Of course I haven't been threatened by any rogue water jugs lately! ;)

Froggie (just another tool!)

PS My most impressive case of a bullet killing a jug of water actually came with a 327 Fed Mag revolver. the jug shattered, water went everywhere, and the bullet, which mushroomed perfectly to double its original size, spent all of its energy in the 2 liter bottle and was left rattling around in the remnants of the shattered bottle. Give me my Project 616 and a cylinderful of Federal HSTs if I've got to battle water bottles. :D
 
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There was a time when any ammo debate almost always ended with "pick any round as long as it starts with a 4". It was determined by the "experts" that .40S&W was the min size round in an auto to reliably take down the bad guy.

As already mentioned, somewhere along the way the consensus changed to 9mm Parabellum is just fine. Added pluses to cheaper ammo, higher capacity, less recoil and maybe better bullet designs and there goes .40 S&W.

It won't die out completely, it's still a better round than 9mm, it's just gonna be a 2nd stringer.
 
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Besides my Interarms Walther PPK/S and Italian Beretta .25, my only "bigger" semi auto for the last ten years is my nickel 39-2 9MM. I got to watch it go out of fashion and sneered at as the .40 took over, and now reading this it's cool again. It's like if you still have a mullet. Someday it might be the craze haircut again.
 
I've always thought the .40 is a "tween" cartridge and doesn't really fill any requirement void. Kind of like the 10mm and .41. And numerous rifle cartridges. The firearms industry is like any other industry and needs to continuously reinvent itself to remain competitive. That all said, I enjoy my .40 Hi Power, but I'm simply posting why I believe the popularity has never been there.:D
 
Because modern 9mm Luger JHPs are capable of meeting FBI specifications, and the ammo is cheaper, simple as that.

.40 S&W still has an energy advantage over 9mm Luger, but that can be overcome with overpressure (+P+) loads, albeit at the cost of most of the advantages of choosing 9mm Luger over .40 S&W in the first place.
Amusingly enough, many Law Enforcement agencies across the United States issue 9mm Luger +P+ loads, which eliminates many of the advantages of 9mm Luger, such as the cost of ammo, longer service life, and softer recoil impulse. In fact, just about the only advantage of 9mm +P+ over .40 S&W is a couple extra rounds in the magazine, which while nice, hardly makes up for the cost of re-equipping the entire force with different firearms chambered in another cartridge in the short term.

Furthermore, it's very likely that the very same scapegoating and knee-jerk reactions which resulted in the creation/adoption of the .40 S&W cartridge will be repeated in the event in which history repeats itself and an FBI-involved shooting goes awry. The only question is, will they go back to .40 S&W or drastically alter the parameters of their testing yet again, resulting in the creation and or adoption of a new cartridge?

Personally, I'm rather grateful that .40 S&W fell out of favor because it enabled me to score tworeally sweet guns on the cheap, and it just so happens that I can shoot .40 S&W out of a relatively lightweight compact pistol like the SW40VE without any trouble, so I've fallen in love with a cartridge which I had previously avoided, and it's all thanks to the FBI as well as the lowest common denominator which mindlessly follows the lead of Law Enforcement.

As for why .40 S&W flew off the shelves during the start of the COVID-19 Pandemic, well I imagine it's roughly the same reason why Toilet Paper flew off the shelves, only less stupid. PANIC BUYING. Folks decided that they needed weapons for Self-Defense in a hurry and .40 S&W pistols were among the most plentiful options available, so that's what folks bought.
 
Instead of moving forward and embracing the new trend with the .40S&W, I went backwards and my CC firearm is in .38 Super caliber. In looking at the ballistics, the.38 Super is in the same area as the .40 S&W but my CZ .38 Super clone carries 17 rounds. I jokingly refer to it as a "9mm Magnum" handgun.
 
I stocked up on 40 guns and ammo over a decade ago when I finally got my CC permit, but I'll admit that I rarely carry it these days. Still think it's a fine round, more punch than a 9mm, better penetration than a 45, but it does have a sharper recoil out of most compact guns. Honestly, if I thought I could sell some of my 40 pistols I probably would, but at this point they're just in the collection.
 
I honestly think that the .40 S&W cartridge's reputation for "snappy" recoil actually helped me out, because I ended up overestimating the recoil by such a wide margin that by the time I finally shot my SW40VE, I was like, "That's it?" and just kept right on shooting.

Certain folks really oversell the recoil of .40 S&W though. I actively avoided the cartridge like the plague because I unfortunately only got into pistols by the time that .40 S&W was on its way out, ergo I was exposed to a lot of slanted articles and posts which were written by folks who clearly didn't like the cartridge to begin with and were basically just capitalizing on the excuse to really lay into it. As a result, I was basically lead to believe that it had down right brutal recoil, yet wasn't any more powerful than 9mm, held less ammo in the magazine, and apparently wore firearms out in short order. Over time I obviously realized that such comments were exaggerated, but I couldn't be sure to what degree without a frame of reference. I thought that at the very least it would recoil as much as a .45, but in my opinion it honestly doesn't, or at least not more than the 200gr-255gr loads that I've shot.
Another thing that folks used to say which I have not personally experienced is the asserted torque of the recoil which supposedly makes it twist in your hand.

Granted that I'm not shooting it out of the smallest, lightest pistol, but the SW40VE is a clone of the Glock 23, so It's not a big nor heavy pistol either. So maybe some of the folks who hate it so much made the mistake of shooting it in a lightweight subcompact like a Glock 27 or even worse a Kel-Tec P40 then ragequit on it altogether. Which would make sense considering that there was a trend about 10 years ago when everybody seemingly wanted the smallest, lightest, most powerful pistol they could possibly get their hands on.
 
I like .40S&W just fine, like 10mm even better. I have a Ruger SR40C and it's been an EDC for quite a while. I 've been on a 1911 kick now, went back in March to buy an EMP4 in .40, the LGS guy said Springfield had pulled all their .40s in that gun due to low sales. I ended up getting an EMP4 anyway, just in 9mm.
I think it's all a "circle of life" thing, its popularity will return some day. Look at what happened to 10mm years ago. FBI got them, so everybody else had to have one. Then they fell out of favor when FBI's limp-wristed recruits couldn't handle it, and they went to .40S&W. Now, 10mm is making a resurgence, and it seems like revolvers in some magnum calibers are also making a comeback. Whatever becomes popular again, I'm probably covered. I got .32, .38, .357, 9mm, 10mm, .40, .41 and .45 handguns and all the reloading stuff I need.
 
There's nothing new to add to this topic. Every time it comes up the discussion just devolves into people justifying their choice.


Sydney Vail, Martin Fackler and Gary Roberts all agree that there's no significant difference in the performance characteristics of the three main service calibers.


If any one of the three was clearly and consistently stopping more bad guys than the other two then every Police Department in America would be carrying it and everyone else would be buying it.


Here is a very good article that addresses this issue


Why Glock, Why 9mm? [2005] - 03DESIGNGROUP


From the article:


I thought back to the effects different pistol rounds having on animals, victim's of shootings, and Officer involved shootings that I had seen personally and read about during my career. I couldn't think of a single shooting where the person or animal was shot with a 9mm and lived, but would have died if the round would have been a .40S&W or a .45acp. And I could not think of a single shooting where a person or animal was shot with a .40S&W or a .45acp and died, but would have survived if the round would have been a 9mm


It comes down to preference. I actually like .40 but since my wife can't shoot it we buy 9mm. If .40 works for you buy .40.
 
Ask a bad guy what he was just shot with. Bet he can't tell you.

Of course he can't. After all, if he was hit by a .40 or a .45 then he's too busy being incapacitated by their awesome one-shot-stopping-power to being saying much of anything and if he was hit by a 9mm then he probably doesn't even know that he's been shot! ;)
 
I developed, cultivated and shared my seething -HATE- for the .40 S&W in/around 1994 when S&W ended production of the 10xx series of pistols. The ONLY thing that makes sense is that S&W wanted to do everything they knew how to do to push their .40cal babies, and they didn't want the 10mm to overshadow this basket with all their eggs in it.

S&W apologists will always argue this position. They will tell you it is simple. The 10xx guns "cost too much to make", "were not profitable" or "didn't sell." This has never been backed by any displayable facts, it simply gets parroted out.

Meanwhile, Glock continued to make the G20 and introduced the G29 right after S&W bowed out of the 10xx guns.

S&W apologists will stick to their guns and tell you that the 10mm was fringe in 1994 and wouldn't sell. I've heard the argument. But there is no answer when I point out that S&W continued to build and sell the 10mm chambered 610 revolver through all of it. Hmmmm.

That was the bulk of the reason that I loathed the .40cal through the entirety of it's meteoric rise and top of the heap heyday.

I found the silver lining back in the 1990's. The mere existence of the .40 S&W kept all the component bullet makers producing tons of .40cal slugs that I could use for my 10mm handloads. :D
 
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