Would you say that 40 S&W is "an inherently inaccurate" round?
Not this old saw again ... the .40 got a bad rap for accuracy from a handful of opinionated gunwriters back in the early '90s before there was even a variety of factory loads and before reloaders had a chance to work with the round ... For some reason, in some circles, the .40 still has a reputation for less than stellar accuracy. It's simply not true.
Posted this before, feel the need to do it again. Is the .40 an "accurate" cartridge compared to its peers?
Now? Yes.
In the early 1990s? No. No, it wasn't.
You want proof, though, so go find some early .40 autopistols. I suggest a Ruger P91 (if you can find one), an early S&W 4000-series, an early Glock 22 or other such model. There were left-hand twists. There were 1-in-10 inch twists. There were all manner of abominations since the manufacturers wanted to have a .40 caliber something to sell, and they wanted it now. The product can be 'improved' or 'upgraded' later.
I had an early P91DC (complete with 11-round magazines, so I'm pretty sure I got ahold of this one before 1994). I had an early .40 Browning MkIII. They were noticably less accurate than my 9mms and .45s. Much later, I had a 3rd gen Glock 22C. That one shot fine. Of course I don't imply that all P91s/MkIIIs were horribly inaccurate. But my first-hand experience-- which is admittedly a litttle fuzzy-- is that the ".40s are inaccurate" phenomenon wasn't just due to gunwriters wanting to sell copy.
These problems were fixed over time. The thing is, they were fixed after some of us paid good money for pistols that were, now how did the gun rags put it, "combat accurate." Meaning, they could hit a 12" steel plate. At 25 yards. From a machine rest. With ammo they liked.
Reputation is a funny thing in the gun world.
A good reputation can get blown out of proportion and make an ordinary service pistol into something almost mythical. For example, take the Glock. It's a damn good pistol, but these days people seem to forget that the torture tests it was exposed to were nothing new. Ruger reps used to toss their Six Series revolvers across a parking lot like a frisbee to prove how durable they were. Mention that now and people stare at you dumbfounded. Everyone just knows that a revolver would break or the "timing would get messed up" if you did that. The Browning P35 had the sand test. If you think ice slush in the internals is a pistol is harsh, try sand. What's old is new again, except a lot of people seem to have forgotten about the old part.
Likewise, a bad reputation can get blown out of proportion and make an otherwise servicable pistol cartridge into an inaccurate, heavy-recoiling, wrist-twisting terror. For example, take the .40 S&W. Early guns were inaccurate, sometimes comically so. If my memory hasn't failed me completely, I also seem to recall that before the 180/1000 load was standardized, there were some variations in practice ammunition. Some, IIRC, were hotter than 180/1000. There may have been some 200-grain loads. Propellants were used with too slow a burn rate for the 4" service barrel (worked fine in the 5" 10mms with a large pistol primer). This caused too much powder being burned outside the barrel, resulting in a spectacular flash we hadn't seen since earlier vintage (remember Red Box Federal?) 125-grain .357 magnum loads.
Now, today this is just a fuzzy memory for those of us who watched this whole thing come and go. For the rest of you, it's just another internet rumor...and today you're correct. Practice ammo isn't any worse than any other service pistol. The pistols themselves seem to have stablized on a 1-in-16 (or 1-in-16.25) inch twist. They're fine, accurate and servicable. Just because that's the way it is, though, doesn't mean that the way it always was.
