Why does .40 S&W suck?

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I did my best to not make this personal but...

I'm not doing your homework for you
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No homework needed. You made the claim YOU provide the proof. It's simple.

SO, why don't YOU find ME a situation where someone actually had to use a CCW sidearm to defend himself at 300 yards from an attacker?
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it wasn't me who brought up 300 yards.

LOL... Who is this guy?
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Ask around.
Several members here know me in real life.

I don't come on the internet to try to impress people with my training regiment, my aim, my stories or a buncha exaggerated BS stories about shooting a 6" target at 75 feet either.
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It's not exaggerated BS if another THR member was there and also shot just as well.

You've earned yourself an invitation to Columbus, Ohio to find that out
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No thanks. Been there a bunch of times. Nothing worth going there for since Farrell's closed.

Here's hoping that you never have to use your training.
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Thanks for the hope but too late. My training is the reason I am still here to type this.
And also because of my training I've never shot a mirror in my home.

I also like how you reached back about 3 posts to pick a fight with ME, out of nowhere.
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I was only responding to a comment you made earlier not to you personally. I believe someone else called you on it first. Forgive me for not responding immediately but I do have a life.

Why not just be happy to be yourself?
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I am perfectly happy with who I am. The Elmer Keith comment you quoted was not posted by me. Are you having a problem keeping up?

I'm talking to a man who calls himself BluesBear... I guess I shouldn't have expected any different.
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The fact that the nickname was given to me buy someone who I (and many other people) in the business highly respect isn't important. But the fact that you use it as a cheap shot in a feeble attempt to insult me instead my logic shows us what to expect from you.


In addition to the Colonel's Four Rules you obviously have trouble comprehending THR Rule #4.
So with little regret I am hereby required to place you on my ignore list.
The playground is all yours now.


I do sincerly appologize to everyone else for this lowroad thread drift.
 
it wasn't me who brought up 300 yards.
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It was you who commented on my post. Refute my claim, if you have the information you pretend to have.

Ask around.
Several members here know me in real life.
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And I care, why? Remind me, please.

No thanks. Been there a bunch of times. Nothing worth going there for since Farrell's closed.
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I really thought that's what you'd say. What the HELL is Farrell's, anyway? Never heard of it... Is this another lie?

Thanks for the hope but too late. My training is the reason I am still here to type this.
And also because of my training I've never shot a mirror in my home.
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Ahhh, the low blow... My ND - I wondered when this was going to come up, because I'm the only person in the world who has ever had one. And I'm the person attacking the poster and not the post? Nice... :D So I guess you can tell me what kind of training I've had, because I admitted to having a ND... And I'm sure you were trained by someone better at a better institute. By the way, I had the guts to post about my ND. No one would ever know had I not spoken up and decided to share. I suspect there are lots of people who have had ND's and don't post them - how are we to know you are not one of them?

By the way, I wasn't talking to you. But I'm sure you're a certified tough guy from a super-cool agency, who has filled graveyards in his spare time and never lost a minute of sleep.

Forgive me for not responding immediately but I do have a life.
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I can tell you have so much of a life, because you were here to respond no more than 30 minutes after I posted this.. :D

This is a pathetic excuse if I ever heard one. You wanted to pick a fight, and you got one. Sorry, but sometimes things happen that way. Explain WHY, don't try to back out now that you got what you asked for.

I am perfectly happy with who I am. The Elmer Keith comment you quoted was not posted by me. Are you having a problem keeping up?
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No, but you must be... Once again, I was NOT talking to you.

In addition to the Colonel's Four Rules you obviously have trouble comprehending THR Rule #4.
So with little regret I am hereby required to place you on my ignore list.
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If I broke a rule, you broke the same rule.

As for your ignore list, thank God for small favors. :D



Originally posted by Cosmoline:
Where are you getting this dren? Yardage ain't the test. And a man shooting a firearm at you poses an imminent threat of deadly harm or serious bodily injury from five yards or fifty.
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Let me just say that I do not intend to argue... BUT

I was not talking about shooting someone who is already shooting at you. I didn't necessarily feel the need to be that particular about that statement, but apparently I was wrong. If someone is shooting at you from any distance, they are obviously a threat and should be engaged if possible.

Under what other circumstances could a civilian legally shoot someone 25 yards away for? I don't want to hear about hostage situations (or other types of fantasy), because IMHO, if you take a shot -with a pistol- at someone using a person for cover from 75 feet away, you are out of your mind. If you shoot a guy with (let's say) a knife... 75 feet away from you? I would tend to think you might have to answer some pretty serious questions about just how immediate that threat was. And good luck convincing a jury of 12 "reasonable" people to see it your way. I've never been a LEO, but I have several in my family, and have seen lots of videos of shootings where LEO's were involved. Of the more-than-several instances where I've seen VIDEO of LEO's shooting a suspect armed with a knife, the suspect was either VERY close, and very menacing... or charging the officers. Further away, and even sometimes at distances I found surprisingly close - the officers tried (a hell of a lot more than I would have) to talk the person into surrendering, or tried to subdue them without shooting at all.

I've also shared enough conversation with several LEO's I know personally to come under the impression that's somewhat of a policy. They only shoot when they have to. In CCW class, one of the first things we were told is that we weren't going to be shooting at 25 yards, because if we shot someone that far away, and claimed self-defense... we were going to jail!

Forgive me for quoting off the cuff.
It'll probably happen again though.

Edited to address a post I missed.
 
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Cousin Mike - I was there. I won't state distances since I didn't pace them off, but BluesBear was doing some damn fine shooting with those snubbies, at serious use-your-sights ranges.

And BluesBear never claims to be something but what he is. His style on this board is his business but he is as real as it gets and with his reloading experience I feel he is worth listening to.

Farrells Ice Cream Emporium. It was a sad day when the local West.WA one closed. Can't say what it did to Columbus but where else can you get a sundae so big they call it a Pig's Trough or something like that.

Bart Noir
Who now wants ice cream.
 
Mr. Bart Noir,

First, I'd like to say that now I want some ice cream. :D And don't let Farrell's closing keep you out of Ohio buddy - I've never sampled Farrell's but Graeter's is king around these parts nowadays, and I must admit no matter where I go, I always miss Graeter's Ice Cream.

It truly was not my intention to pursue an argument with BluesBear, and I'm sure he is a knowledgeable person - I've agreed with him many times when reading his posts. I also have no doubt that he is a fine shooter.

However, he went WAY past the point of criticizing my post, and he seems to have done it for no reason that I can understand. Maybe I didn't respond in the best way possible, but he was awfully condescending in that first post of his, and I didn't appreciate it.

I'm sure he is a nice guy in person, but it seems he had his mind made up that he wanted to start something with someone, and for whatever reason he seems to have chosen me.

Apologies to other posters for having to witness such foolishness.

The .40 is a great round. :D
 
full of piss & vinegar
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Mmmmmm, piss & vinegar, my favorite salad dressing!

This has been an interesting discussion.

I like the .40 round personally because it's more powerful than the 9mm but fits in a smaller gun than the .45 (which means more capacity that will fit in my hand). My second gun was a Browning Hi-Power in .40 and I found that to be very controllable and accurate, and I was comfortable with the level of power in my carry gun. My wife then picked out a Glock 27 which weighs about 1/10th of the Hi-Power and has about 10 times the recoil. I can't handle the .40 from such a small gun, but I wanted a lighter CCW piece. I ended up with a Glock 19 and I can do ridiculously fast double-taps and I feel comfortable with 147 grain +P at 1150 fps.

I like the idea of the compromise between power, capacity, and recoil, but I just can't handle it in such a small gun. My wife though calls me a "girly-man" because of my choice... could be, I'm an office-bound graduate researcher while she unloads trucks at a hardware store and carries around 200 lb water heaters and boxes of nails.
 
ALLEN268 said:
So in my case please inform me why the .40S&W sucks? If one caliber fit all we wouldn’t even be talking about this.
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It's like the new Jeep grand cherokee, you can pay an extra 10 grand for a Hemi buts it's top speed gonverned so you can't enjoy or get the most out of what you just paid for.
It's alomst un-American it's in our nature to want the biggest, the best, the most powerful of anything.

Most of all the 40 was a fix for something that was not broken. Facts are facts in my first posting I have a link to an interview with a FBI official citing that fact it was pure politics that killed the 10mm in the FBI and these same politics created the enviroment and the whole being of the 40S&W.

Also it is a short and weak version of the 10mm
 
Most of all the 40 was a fix for something that was not broken. Facts are facts in my first posting I have a link to an interview with a FBI official citing that fact it was pure politics that killed the 10mm in the FBI and these same politics created the enviroment and the whole being of the 40S&W.
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The 10mm hasn’t been "killed", its still available, consumer demand drives the market place so don’t blame the .40 for the 10s decrease in popularity, I personally like it and will soon be picking up a 10mm EAA Witness, I don’t have to hate one to like the other. If enough people were going for guns in the 10mm platform then firearm and ammo manufactures would adjust to meet the consumer demand. I hear the same being said about the 357Sig by many who swear by 9mm (a fix for a problem that don’t exists), I personally think theirs a place for each of them and obviously consumer demand proves me correct, same as with the .40
 
When I say i it was killed I mean in the agency. There is no argument about the boost a round or in that matter any firearm gets when adopted by a large government agency or even used on TV (PS90) or movies . Model 29's had been around for awhile gathering dust in dealer display case's. Then along comes
Detective Harry Callahan and over night they triple in price and no one can live without one:)
 
I know I'm a bit late on this one - but the 40s that the rappers are referring to are 40 oz bottles of MALT LIQUOR (8ball/Bull/Magnum/King Cobra)....Not .40cal bullets! LOL

Here in Florida, beer/malt liquor comes in 32oz bottles, but in California, they come in 40oz bottles...
 
Isn't it amazing how attractive misinformation spreads? The FBI did not water down the 10mm auto because their operatives could not handle it. They were looking for a better cartridge and had set up a test program to score performance. How effective or real to life it was does not matter. They were using .38sp, 9mm and .45acp as yard sticks. They had already decided that the recoil of the .45acp was an upper limit and one of the test team, who was a 10mm fan, hand loaded 10mms with lighter than .45 auto bullets at higher than .45auto velocities. These handloads had the highest scores by a considerable margin. This performance level was set by their specification and was the performance level of the later .40S&W. It was not a very ambitious test program and things like the .357SIG were not thought of at the time, but what became the .40S&W was designed to be an optimum, not a compromise. By these tests, it performed better than either the 9mm or the .45acp. Of course they didn't shoot real people or even animals but they did shoot through car doors and windscreens. Who knows how valid it all was.

When it became obvious that the full size of the case for the 10mm was not needed for the FBI specification, S&W had the wits to get it produced it in a shorter more convenient length. Well, good for them.

Then we have the question of unpleasantly snappy recoil. The .45acp is somewhere between 10 and 20% slower than the .40S&W but it still gets out of the barrel in a very short time. In both cases the slide has hardly moved by the time the bullet has left the barrel. Any recoil impulse that the acceleration of the bullet up the barrel is going to give to the gun is finished by the time the bullet has left. Everything that remains to be felt by the shooter is related to the design and weight of the gun. The cartridge has nothing to do with it beyond the fact of the bullet's mass times its velocity. In this initial phase of recoil the hand can experience little more than the force of the recoil spring. There is then a jolt as the barrel is brought to a sudden stop. Then there is increasing force as the recoil spring is compressed further. Then there is a bigger jolt as the slide hits its stop and it too is brought to a sudden stop. Our nervous system is not fast enough to distinguish these different effects but it is the final jolt that is felt as snappiness.

So why are .40S&W GUNS more snappy than .45acp GUNS if their recoil impulses are virtually the same. It's because most .40S&W guns are lighter and smaller than most .45acp guns and on top of that the slides of the original .40S&Ws were only slightly modified 9mm slides and were too light and had too high a slide velocity. If you fire a 12oz .357 magnum snubby its recoil is a lot nastier than if you fire a 44oz .357 magnum N frame. If you chooser a lighter weight for easier carrying you have to accept the price of nastier recoil. The .40S&W's reputation for inaccuracy probably comes from the same source. In revolvers like the S&W 610 is is notably accurate.

The 10mm is obviously superior to the .40S&W since it can fire heavier bullets of the same calibre faster. You pay with more recoil which you can accept as a fair price or not. The .40S&W was clearly better in the FBI tests than the .45acp and is probably better in real life actions where real people are really shot. I don't know of unambiguously clear evidence to support or deny this quite gentle claim.

So the .40S&W is a perfectly good cartridge which was designed to fit a specification rather than a heartless enfeeblement of a nobler forebear. Like all handgun cartridges it is a compromise. Some compromises are better than others and the .40S&W is at the better end of the scale. It does not suck!

English1
 
Good points, English 1, especially about slide velocity. Seeing as how the .40 has a greater case pressure and moves faster, it does increase slide velocity. With heavier slides, lower bore axis, and other design differences, you can get a pretty decent shooting .40 handgun. I've shot the Sigpro 2340 in .40 side-by-side with a glock 23. The Sigpro is a better platform in my opinion when it comes to perceived recoil. But, like I said, design factors are the difference. With these two weapons, you have bore axis vs. slide weight. I think the .40 is a fine round although people claim it's a solution to a non-existent problem. Rather, it is a different take or a choice. What's wrong with more choices, especially if there are features to be had that weren't there before?

As far as the 10mm goes, I've handled and shot more than one weapon chambered in this cartridge. It's a wonderful cartridge and has a wide range of loadings, as has been mentioned before. I won't say anything bad about other guns chambered in 10mm, but to me nothing handles it better in auto-loader form than the glocks 20 and 29. But it will never be as popular as the .40, which by the way is one of the most widely carried cartridges in the law enforcement community. I'd say that is enough evidence that it doesn't suck. It's a perfectly viable defense round for pistols, but it performs better overall from the right platforms. Somebody else said it right about taking a 9mm model and shoving a .40 into it. That's not the way to do it, the way to do it is to build the gun around the cartridge itself.

As far as distance shooting with pistols goes, I don't feel that it's a superhuman feat. While not taking away from guys like Elmer Keith, I've seen people who don't shoot so well normally manage to do it now and again. Some days you're good, some days you're not so good. The funny thing about it is you can get a feel for where a bullet is going to hit. If not, you can aim carefully and then see where you're hitting and re-aim accordingly. It's fun, to see what you can do with a pistol at longer distances than what's normally practiced for self defense. I did it for the sake of seeing if I can. Then to see if I could do it consistently. Just my own curiosity. And usually it's anywhere from 50 to 100 yds. What the heck, ya know? Tell you what, though. It's really fun if you're using .357 sig or 10mm. They are much flatter shooting than the other auto-loader cartridges. Amazingly, though .45, despite it's weight and slower velocity, does quite well at distance. .40 ain't bad either...
 
Why does .40 S&W suck?
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It sucks alright, so i will take every .40 caliber pistol you have and all the ammo to go with it and disspose of it properlly, i won't even charge you for shipping or a dissposal fee! I will take them off your hands!:)
 
personally, the .40 works for me. more capacity than a .45. a little bigger bullet, and more powerful than a 9mm. recoil is not unmanageable for me in the Sig P226 i shoot from. with all of that said, the 9mm, .40, and .45 are all effective defensive rounds if you hit the right place. if you can manage a 9mm or .45 better than the .40, then the .40 isn't right for you. Use what you shoot the best with.
 
I think the .40 S&W is a good choice if one can shoot it well. Personally, I think the recoil is a tad much!


- It has high capacity like a 9mm

- Diameter close to a .45

- Energy that is similar to .357 Mag.

- Heavier bullets than 9mm.

- Large selection of hollow-points thanks to heavy LE use.
 
I challenge you to find a single state where they prescribe a distance limit for self defense.
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There isn't one. It's complete hogwash. A man with a rifle pointed at you can for example present an imminent and unlawful threat of deadly harm at 100 or more yards. If this is news to you, you need to go take a look at how far out the target stands are at the rifle range. The law does not set a distance limit. It all depends on the facts and circumstances.
 
Get's me

I have never understood why so many people are anti-.40 S&W! It doesn't make sense. That round possesses a balance of weight and velocity which nets good power and penetration. The Glock that I rented in .40 S&W was accurate and the recoil was only moderately more than my Glock 17, and far less than my 1911 in .45 ACP. I am thinking that it is mere personal preference. Just as some hate Glocks, others love them. I stay with the 9MM simply because it is more cost-effective, adds a few more rounds, and has moderately less recoil. But I do not believe that the .40 S&W is inferior in any way, shape or form to any other round.

Doc2005
 
.40 is a great round!

I guess we better tell LE they went off the deep end? This caliber is THE most popular with law enforcement, and has a great street record. I happen to love both the .40 and .45----but my Taurus 24/7 with a total of 16 shots is what sits on my night stand. [the Taurus is a .40 of course]
 
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