Why the decline of S&W 40?

[38SPL HV]

Although I'm a revolver enthusiast, I'm hearing a lot that the 40 S&W is out of favor nowadays.

I thought it was the ideal police cartridge with more than adequate power and excellent platforms to shoot it in.

What are the reasons for this pistol cartridge's decline?

 

[Sevens]

The .40 became popular because the (general theory) was that the 9mm was lacking and LE organizations felt that the .40 was an upgrade. Come 1994 and the private sector was now limited to 10-round capacity and there was (seemingly) no advantage left for the 9mm over the .40.

As bullet technology improved, so did the reputation for 9mm performance, and when the AWB sunsetted in 2004, the 9mm had it's capacity advantage restored.

The .40's decline was more of a resurgence of 9mm than anything specific to the .40 itself. .40 S&W offers an energy advantage over 9mm, at the cost of capacity and controllability.

That's just a short summary of ebbs and flows in politics, money and cartridge evolution. It's difficult to make a Cliff's Notes version of something that evolved over roughly 25 years.

 

[GB]

Out of favor because of its decline as a law enforcement standard. People and Government have a tendency to float on the wind. Wonder nines were the rage in the 80s and 90s. Then poor planning (and a botched shoot out in the late 80s) by the FBI brought about the 10mm which many agents couldn't shoot well so they came up with the 40. It was everything the 9 wished it was. So the LE community sort of followed the FBI and the 40 was the new rage. With the diversity of LE and the decline in shooting ability (the 40 isn't necessarily an easy round to master, especially with the smaller lighter guns used by plain clothes and smaller stature officers) , plus with the improvement of ammo performance across the board but especially in 9mm it was easier to go to the 9 than train up to the 40. You have just read my opinion, for what it is worth. Now I will retire to the bunker (With my TP and ammo) and await the incoming.

 

[fishwishin]

I have four .40 caliber handguns in my home and three 9mm's. I see value in both offerings and the .40 is not seen as a stepchild by me. That said however, the 9 offerings of today are better than they were 30 years ago when the 9 was king! When you factor in the mag capacity the 9 may very well be the wiser choice.

 

[CH4]

Don't worry, give it a few years until the FBI decides the 9mm isn't working and the .40 will be the flavor of the month, again.

 

[biku324]

^^^^^What he said.

 

[Breakaway500]

I see the "decline" of the 40 S&W as a great buying opportunity. Kind of like what revolvers went through in the 90s. Remember that old box of wooden grips at the gun shows..$10 buys any pair? The eb and flow of demand..

 

[CH4]

I see the "decline" of the 40 S&W as a great buying opportunity. Kind of like what revolvers went through in the 90s. Remember that old box of wooden grips at the gun shows..$10 buys any pair? The eb and flow of demand..

Yeah, remember during the 80s the first thing we did when we got our new Smiths home was to throw the wood combats, targets and magnas in a box or drawer and throw on a set of pachmayrs.

 

[ejr10mm]

I like the 40. Carried it for many years on the job. Put a lot of animals down with one shot. Plenty of oomf. I think that it was a generational thing that lead to its decrease in popularity. The 9mm is much easier for the smaller stature LEO to qualify with now days. I am 6 ft tall, not super tall and when I was the new guy 13 yrs ago, I was average height amongst the more seasoned guys. Fast forward to today. Im the seasoned guy and I feel like a giant compared to all the little guys they have hired recently. We use to carry Sig P229's which are really nice guns and now we have Glocks. The Glocks aren't bad and serve us well but they aren't like my old 229. None of the newer guys bought their 229's when we switched. They all prefer tactical Tupperware. Lastly they all get a laugh out of me carrying my M69 off duty until they take one of my 44 rounds and hold it against their 9mm.

 

[sheppard]

The fact is that for many folks the .40 is not a pleasant caliber to shoot, especially .40 cal loads with bullets less than 180 grains. The end results of shootings with 9mm, .40cal and .45 cal are equivalent.

 

[alwslate]

There are two reasons for the decline of the .40 S&W. One is the 9mm
and the other is the .45 ACP.

 

[sodacan]

There are two reasons for the decline of the .40 S&W. One is the 9mm
and the other is the .45 ACP.

I agree. The 40 S&W would be the Choice of Goldilocks if there was porridge, a bed and a gun in The Three Bears. Personally, I've never bought into the "compromise" calibers, which is what I consider the 40 and the 41magnum, for instance. I'm a huge fan of 45acp, and I always liked the 9mm. Shoot what you like and like what you shoot.

 

[stansdds]

9mm ammo is cheaper than 40 S&W ammo and that is a major driving factor in federal, state, and local LEO agencies dumping the 40 in favor of the 9.

Other factors would include better bullet technology, less recoil with the 9, and less battering of pistols with the 9. Most 40 S&W pistols are based on 9mm pistols and the increased recoil shortens the lifespan of at least some of these pistols.

 

[mckenney99]

While I agree with "GB", and generally I am not a big conspiracy theorist, consider the following. When did the PUSH for LE to change over-back to new 9mm guns and ammo occur? Look at the timing. After the 2016 Presidential election the slump in firearms sales began and the market became saturated with firearms at bargain prices. How could the firearms manufactures and ammo manufacturers create a new market? Convince the heads of LE that their current firearms and ammo were "not effective enough and too expensive". Convince the powers that be, they need to "upgrade" to new more effective ammo and by the way you can't use the new "more effective & cheaper" ammo in your current firearms. Wallah new sales in-coming. Never under estimate a well thought out sales program.

 

[ContinentalOp]

I'm neutral on the .40S&W. It's definitely a good cartridge and a good choice for those who like it. I had a Glock 23 briefly. While it was snappy, I wouldn't call it uncontrollable.

For me, the availability of good 9mm JHP makes it a better choice. Probably the least expensive service caliber around. Easily controlled in all but the smallest of subcompacts. In actual shootings any difference between service calibers is insignificant. So the 9mm is my choice for a SD caliber. And I'm sure those are some factors used by LE agencies in switching to 9mm from .40S&W and .357Sig. And the LE switch influences the market.

less battering of pistols with the 9. Most 40 S&W pistols are based on 9mm pistols and the increased recoil shortens the lifespan of at least some of these pistols.

While I agree, for the most part, I do think that, on a practical level, reduction in service life is likely to be neglible, at least in good quality guns.

Just my opinion.

 

[LoboGunLeather]

I see the "decline" of the 40 S&W as a great buying opportunity. Kind of like what revolvers went through in the 90s. Remember that old box of wooden grips at the gun shows..$10 buys any pair? The eb and flow of demand..

Yup. About 16 months ago I purchased a Sig Factory Certified Pre-Owned (Red Box) P229, DA-SA-Decocker, .40S&W, condition as new in the box with manual and two extra magazines. Price was under $400. These are law enforcement trade-ins that Sig runs through the shop, replaces any worn parts, reconditions to like new, sends out with a one-year factory warranty.

At that time Sig's website showed the MSRP at $1087 for a new P229.

Several of the large dealers have good inventories of LE trade-ins by Sig, Glock, S&W and others at bargain basement prices, and I expect this situation to continue for a couple of years while the lemings in government offices (and the younger crowd who believe too much of what the "experts" are saying) follow the national trend. The reasons I especially like the Sig CPO guns are complete factory servicing to new standards and the manufacturer's warranty.

For those who argue that the .40S&W is dead and ammunition will become unavailable, all I can say is that there are tens of millions of .40's and most of them will still be in use for decades to come.

 

[LPD256]

The FBI tests ammo and guns and to some their results and recommendations are the "gold standard". The FBI likes 10mm, you need to like 10mm. The FBI likes .40 S&W, you need to like .40 S&W. Then the admin staff, smaller women, infrequent shooters, and others have to "qualify" to carry a gun. Not surprisingly, some people can't shoot a 10mm effectively. Or a .40 either. The rounds are hotter. The recoil is bigger. And failure rates went up. The "new" 9mm rounds are more effective than "old" 9mm rounds. According to the FBI. And fails to qualify numbers went down. There you have it. In my opinion. It is a compromise designed to allow qualifications. The .40 round is a good round, and you can buy a gun dirt cheap.

 

[CDR_Glock]

Honestly, I see the service calibers to be quite close in ballistics.

Some people cannot handle 40 S&W and 45 ACP.

I personally shoot all three service calibers to maintain my skills. Mainly, because of the ebb and flow of supply lines of available ammunition. I'm sure with the virus scare, supply lines of the 9 mm are dropping. I saw that back in 2008-2009. But! 40 S&W was plentiful.

If you adopt one caliber, and the supply of ammunition is low, you'll have a disadvantage.

I have stockpiles of all three to make sure I'm set.

The beauty of 45 ACP and 40 S&W is that they're naturally subsonic, which suppress very well.

9 mm suppresses only with 147 and 158 gr bullet weights.

I find none of the service calibers to be snappy. I have not adopted the 10 mm or 357 Sig because if I want Magnum power, I have revolvers to take care of that.

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[Engineer1911]

I harvested an abundance of 40 short & weak when it was popular. One bullet mold, one bucket of brass, and 2 semi-autos. I am ready. Some of my brass is even reloaded a third time.

When the training classes left the range, I generously offered to sweep the floor for the instructor. Smiled all the way to the reloading bench.

 

[The_Truth]

10mm > 10mm short

P229 .40 was my first pistol. Absolutely loved that pistol. Traded it plus cash for a 1076 and never looked back. Now I own 10mm semi autos exclusively except my G43 which doesn't count

I do still own a 4053, but I had BMCM convert it to 10mm for me

 

[rockquarry]

I've never had a .40 caliber anything nor have I had an interest in the S&W cartridge. It always seemed to me to be the theorists' "improved" version of something we already had but, as it turned out, really wasn't significantly better than what we already had.

Does it offer any real advantage over the 9mm or .45 ACP or something else? Probably little, if anything in the hands of a skilled shooter using "good" ammunition and that ammo may not be the latest YouTube, FBI, or IACP recommendation. What about comparatively heavier recoil and greater muzzle blast (and maybe flash)?

Still a good idea for folks to shoot what they shoot best and if that happens to be a .40 S&W handgun, I'll not argue as I think they would be well armed. Yet, how this cartridge really offers anything more than a textbook superiority over something else that's been around a while, that just doesn't make good sense.

 

[Farmer17]

The Glock is the handgun of most law enforcement and the Glock .40 came out very quickly without a lot of R&D and probably had the most problems of any Glock pistol. They got the problems ironed out but the guns really needed a heavier slide and different recoil spring(which they later changed) but they kicked more than some .40 handguns but I never thought the recoil was bad at all. Even the small Glocks in .40 didn't kick bad to me but a lot of shooters liked the 9m/m light recoil and the ammo was about 20-25% cheaper so that was the main reason. If I was a cop I'd probably prefer a .40 because I like a little extra power and hard barrier penetration and most full size guns still carry 16 rounds or so.

 

[LostintheOzone]

Although I'm a revolver enthusiast, I'm hearing a lot that the 40 S&W is out of favor nowadays.

I thought it was the ideal police cartridge with more than adequate power and excellent platforms to shoot it in.

What are the reasons for this pistol cartridge's decline?

S&W 32 Long used to be a police cartridge also. Police are just fickle. In a few years they'll be back to using 38's.

 

[Echo40]

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?

10mm > 10mm short

P229 .40 was my first pistol. Absolutely loved that pistol. Traded it plus cash for a 1076 and never looked back. Now I own 10mm semi autos exclusively except my G43 which doesn't count

I do still own a 4053, but I had BMCM convert it to 10mm for me

Just make sure that you're actually shooting full-power 10mm loads, otherwise you're just shooting .40 S&W out of a longer case and paying substantially more to do so.

I know that you probably already know this, (or at least I hope so) but you'd be surprised at how many folks brag about how they shoot 10mm not ".40 Short & Wimpy" only to embarrass themselves by posting a picture of their 10mm pistol sitting amongst boxes of ammo marked "10mm FBI" or otherwise with stats printed on them which show they're either equal or just marginally more powerful than .40 S&W.

Basically, if the ammo you're shooting is pushing a 180gr bullet at 1050fps, then that's 10mm FBI, which is essentially just .40 S&W in a longer case, sold at a substantially higher price. Full-power 10mm loads will push a 200gr bullet at 1200fps or a 180gr bullet at 1300fps.

 

[shawn mccarver]

Any decline is due to the same reason it became popular in the first place.

History: After the infamous Miami Shootout, the FBI adopted the 10mm Auto. The pistol proved too heavy, and the original Jeff Cooper load proved too hot for the agents. The Bureau monkeyed with the formula and came up with a 10mm load that fired a 180 grain JHP at 950 fps, as opposed to the real 10mm Norma load (200 grain JTC at 1,200 fps).

S&W and Winchester figured out that the ballistics of the FBI 10mm load could be duplicated in a shortened case that could be fit into the slide travel of a 9mm, thus allowing, in theory, any 9mm to be converted with minor adjustments to the breach face, the barrel, and the recoil system. (This turned out to be somewhat optimistic, but that is another thread.)

Bottom line is that the same year the FBI ammounced its adoption of the 10mm, S&W and Winchester shocked the world at the SHOT Show (1990, I think) by announcing their joint project, the Winchester .40 S&W and the S&W pistol to fire it, the Model 4006.

Ultimately, the FBI adopted the .40 S&W cartridge, albeit in a Glock 22/23 pistol, and everyone followed suit.

Fast forward to 3 or 4 years ago, and the FBI had ammo trials, declared the 9mm now acceptable due to advances in bullet (projectile design), and once the ammo was selected, the FBI put out a RFP (Request for Proposal) for a pistol that met a list of features specified for such a pistol.

That led to the FBI adopting the 9mm Glock 17M and 19M, supposedly the 19M for agents and the 17M for HRT and SWAT , etc. Whatever. Once the FBI said it was good enough, everyone else followed. The fact that regular citizens, as opposed to law enforcement officers, could get standard capacity magazines again (as opposed to reduced capacity magazines) everyone flocked to the 9mm again.

Here is my take. Even if you buy the hipe that the 9mm is better than it was in 1986 when the Miami Shootout happened (I do), the .45 ACP and the .40 S&W did not get worse. The .40 was discovered, in high volume use, to be REALLY hard on guns (lots of broken locking blocks, and other major issues with nearly every brand, but this problem was not noticed as much by ordinary folks who just don't shoot that much), and it is really hard on shooters too. Yes, I know all the "real men" would never admit it, but there are others using these guns also.

Bottom line, the .40 is still a fine choice with the right ammo, and the .45 is still the king of the hill. Remember, all calibers want to be as good as the .45, not vice versa. I will say this - the 9mm outshines the other two in pocket pistols due to the number of rounds that can be squeezed into a magazine. For belt carry, it hardly matters.

Use what you like, and if you make good hits, no one feels better after getting popped with any of the popular calibers.

 

[CH4]

Realistically, there is truly not a large enough difference in energy between defensive handgun cartridges and their respective projectiles to be meaningful; they're all designed to poke holes in things. It's more about one's ability to poke those holes in the right place than what they use to poke the holes. At the end of the day it's more important that you carry "a" gun and you can shoot that gun and bullet combination well.

 

[Warren Sear]

Although I'm a revolver enthusiast, I'm hearing a lot that the 40 S&W is out of favor nowadays.

I thought it was the ideal police cartridge with more than adequate power and excellent platforms to shoot it in.

What are the reasons for this pistol cartridge's decline?

This can easily explained with the same reasoning for the hording of .22 ammo and toilet paper; people are crazy.

 

[URIT]

Most folks can't handle the .40S&W and struggle with the 9mm.

 

[sigp220.45]

I was in the FBI when we switched from 9mm to .40, and I was still in the FBI when we switched from .40 to 9mm.

You are all missing one little thing: On a sunny day in September of 2001 (almost exactly the ten year mark in my career) 19 scumbags with boxcutters changed the world.

After that our ammo budget stayed exactly the same while the Bu spent gazillions of dollars on computers and analysts to squint at them. By exactly the same, I don't mean the same percentage of the budget. The same dollar amount. Ammo costs continued to rise, though.

Gone were the days when I could grab a Thompson ( yes, we still have some), a few cases of .45 ball, and go forth and make friends in PDs and SOs in my territory.

Soon, the days of grabbing ammo for shooting on your own were gone.

Then the days of shooting up your carry ammo at every qual were gone. Download your good stuff and save it.

Finally they were handing out just enough to qualify. No more marksmanship drills.

One day some bright boy realized in the great scheme of things guns were cheap compared to ammo costs. They budgeted 1000 rounds per agent per year. 12000 agents means 12 million rounds a year, not counting SWAT, HRT, the National Academy and New Agent training. (New agents burn about 10-12,000 rounds each in training). Guns are chump change, especially when Glock wants the contract really, really bad.

They hung their hat on the bullet technology thing, but it was absolutely a monetary decision. Nothing to do with smaller agents, recoil, the phases of the moon, or anything else.

The Bureau does not issue ammo to other agencies. Everyone is free to continue to shoot .40s, .45s, .32/20s, or Red Ryder BB guns.

 

[Mike SC Hunter]

Yeah, remember during the 80s the first thing we did when we got our new Smiths home was to throw the wood combats, targets and magnas in a box or drawer and throw on a set of pachmayrs.

Not me. I hated(still do) those big ugly Pachs. ALL my Smith revolver wear WOOD grips. Most of them factory.