No confusion; I've lived through one 'HydraShock and +P+ ammo make a 9 into a 45' era - it wasn't true then, as we paid to learn at the time, and we'll see this time. When there is a decade or more of satisfactory police shootings on a par with 40 or 357 using the 9 I might be swayed. Or not.
All the service calibers work the same on the street.
Nobody can prove otherwise. And there's no theoretical reason either.
Big Caliber obsession is an American thing.
The rest of the world thinks nine is fine.
Since my beloved FBI has come up several times I thought I should weigh in again.
I was an Agent and Firearms Instructor for 25 years. I was issued a 9mm (Sig 226), carried a .45 (Sig 220), and qualified a gazillion guys and gals on whatever was approved at the time. As an instructor I saw all the shooting reports (about 12 - 20 per year) and saw all the internal memos flying to and fro from the field to FBIHQ and back. I was one of ten field agents/instructors recalled to the mothership to shoot all the candidates for the contract that led to the adoption of the .40 which was recently replaced. (My pick was the USP Compact .40).
The Bu doesn’t issue ammo to outside agencies. If the Keokuk Iowa PD wants to follow our lead, that is on them. We looked at OUR shootings and tested for that.
The move from the .40 to the 9mm had NOTHING to do with ammo improvements. 9mm got better, and .40 got better.
It had NOTHING to do with wimpy girls and boys not being able to handle the wrist-breaking recoil of the mighty .40 S&W. New Agents shoot about 10,000 rounds of duty ammo at the Academy. If they can’t qualify, they don’t graduate. There wasn’t a problem with recycling Agents due to recoil issues with the .40 caliber.
In 2001 19 cretins with boxcutters changed the world, and the FBI with it. Our budget for computers and analysts to squint at them skyrocketed, while the ammo budget stayed the same. It was the same when I retired in 2016.
9mm is cheaper than .40 S&W. 13,000 Agents shooting 1,000 rounds per year is 13 MILLION rounds just to stay qualified. Add in Quantico, SWAT, and HRT and you are well over 20 million rounds a year. Even a few bucks a case adds up quick.
I like the .40 cal. I like the 9mm. Mostly I carry a .32 Colt because I don’t think caliber matters at all.
The 40 came along because the 10 was a little too much for all the FBI people to master.
The new 10 was a heck of a package with full recoil.
The FBI needed a round with a little less recoil so the agents could
hit the targets !!
That was when the 40 came out and passed the FBI's needs.
A good load for LE and it has done well over the years.
Just hard to get a LOT of rounds to fit inside a pistol handle.....
and a light weight frame can be uncomfortable to shoot, to many.
I had a murder warrant for a guy who stabbed another guy to death during some Fourth of July festivities. The tribal cops caught up with him later that night and stopped him with their cars facing each other on a dirt road about 15 feet apart. He had upgraded to a Marlin 30/30 and cut loose first, missing the cop on the passenger side. He had levered in another round when the driver cop, a tough younger female, let fly with her Glock 22. The cars were offset, so that bullet had two angles working against it - side to side and the usual backwards tilt of the windshield. It powered through, took an almost .40 caliber bite out of the steering wheel, ruined a perfectly good XXL Insane Clown Posse t-shirt, then did a farewell tour of a sternum and some ventricles and such stuff, and parked itself neatly against his baby back ribs. No more silliness from him. She let fly a couple more since he stayed propped up in the crack of the door, but that first one did the deed.
Would my beloved .32 ACP have done the same? Nope.
Would a quality bonded 9mm have worked? Maybe. Maybe not.
But that .40 did.
The problem with looking at wound tracks and autopsy reports and not being at the scene while a guy assumes ambient temperature is it ignores what the bullet had to do to get there. The doc could have looked at that poor beat-to-hell .40 and said, Yup - no different than a 9mm.
I remember when the party line was “a 9mm works half the time, a .45 ACP works 19 out of 20 times” thanks to Col Cooper. That wasn’t true even then but people accepted it as fact. Now its “they’re all the same” and people accept that, until they don’t. Which will happen soon enough.
I don’t shoot at people in cars anymore, so my elegant Colt Pocket Hammerless is fine for me.
That’s the Marlin in the picture, next to baby Randy who ran out of gas during bring-your-dog-to-work day, an event wholly unsanctioned by the uppercase FBI. Luckily I was in the lowercase fbi, forgotten on the rez.
Great first hand account/story! The .40Cal is a viable option that punches nastily thru auto glass and sheet metal and keeps on thumpin'...
Beautiful lil' pup... Is he a Doby or a Rotty? I'm guessing a Rottweiler due to his plump and healthy size. I love both of those breeds as well as GSD's... Mine is almost 2 years old and is really "filling out" in the weight department!
"Ripley"...
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Ohhh, nice! I carry a S&W Model 6946, the DAO trigger is not hard to master if you have plenty of experience with DA revolvers.I like ‘em so much, I just bought another this very afternoon. It’s a 4046 DAO. Price was right and I just couldn’t pass it up![]()