Why has the 40S&W fallen out of favor as of late?

[ABlaster]

I think there are still an unacceptable amount of failures to expand in the smaller calibers shot in short barrels.

I’ve seen testing of .380 and some .38 Special SD ammo that basically were expensive FMJ. That being said, Hornady consistently performed well in those tests no matter the caliber. They have their act together over there.

 

[ABlaster]

The next argument is snappyness. Although this is true that there more felt recoil, it is not as much as people portray in my opinion. .

My experience as a long-time instructor is most people don’t hold their handguns properly or with enough force, which makes all recoil feel worse and makes the gun return inconsistently. Lower caliber mitigate that without having to address the errors so it’s a huge benefit to agencies trying to get the masses qualified.

 

[TackleberryMCS]

the great caliber debate is over. ALL handgun calibers are pretty bad but .40 has a much snappier recoil impulse. as usual when the FBI switched over to 9mm, so did most police departments. when that happens, civilians seem to think the fed bois and LEOs are some kind of experts and they tend to follow trends. 9mm is cheaper usually, widely available, guns generally hold more boolits and the recoil is less. just my 2 cents tho as i'm no expert either... i'l wait for @Rebel_Rider1969 to start with the .45acp is better, 2 world wars comments any second...

I would tend to agree. Personally, I have nothing against the .40S&W round and own several pistols chambered in such. Over the years, I have read ballistic reports comparing the 9mm, .40S&W, and .45ACP. The .40S&W round has a viable purpose as an intermediate round between the attributes of the 9mm and .45ACP rounds. I think that the reason that many are now shying away from it is that the 9mm is much more popular and plentiful. This may be why most law enforcement agencies have switched over to 9mm. As was also pointed out, .40S&W is a snappier round than the 9mm and that may turned away some shooters, but not me. Heck, I have picked up four .40S&W pistols over the past year and a half with two of those four acquired in the past two months.

 

[Brockskennedy]

I would tend to agree. Personally, I have nothing against the .40S&W round and own several pistols chambered in such. Over the years, I have read ballistic reports comparing the 9mm, .40S&W, and .45ACP. The .40S&W round has a viable purpose as an intermediate round between the attributes of the 9mm and .45ACP rounds. I think that the reason that many are now shying away from it is that the 9mm is much more popular and plentiful. This may be why most law enforcement agencies have switched over to 9mm. As was also pointed out, .40S&W is a snappier round than the 9mm and that may turned away some shooters, but not me. Heck, I have picked up four .40S&W pistols over the past year and a half with two of those four acquired in the past two months.

I believe the snappyness is overstated. There were multiple reasons for the change. Shoot ability was one, but the inability to hit the target in qualifications is also tied to the lack of training. Most 40 calibers were built on 9mm frames with little changes to the structure of the gun if any which lead to a faster wear rate. The biggest reason was cost of ammunition. Some will claim that the 9mm became more viable because of the better technology in bullet manufacturing. Any t chnological advancements would be applied to 40 as well and still give it the edge.

I say this and I don’t own a 40. My reasoning is that I trade a lot and no one wants them. Gun shops tend to let 40’s go for some times as little as half the cost of a 9mm.

 

[5lima30ret]

Not entirely true. I am a Glock armorer and used to be a serious USPSA competitor. My first Glock 35 lasted over 100,000 rounds before the slide cracked and I'm closing in on 65,000 rounds on the second one. These are a lot newer than 2005, so maybe the generational differences fixed the weak spots. Not saying .40 isn't hard on guns, though. On my Staccato .40 I snap the front sight off about every 10K rounds. The slide has been replaced on that Staccato twice, but the frame easily has 250,000 rounds on it.

I worked for a place that issued a Beretta 96D and some very spicy ammo to go with it. We were required to turn the gun in every 5,000 rounds for inspection because of issues with the gun/ammo combo.

^^^Agreed^^^ I was a Glock Armorer and don't recall any issues with .40 S&W slides cracking. One issue the .40 did commonly have was malfunctions due to WML. Quite a few agencies had problems with WML on Glock .40 never a problem on .45 or 9mm.

 

[ABlaster]

The WML problem was pretty well documented on the third gen guns, for sure! My 35 slide cracked in two places from the firing pin/striker hole on either side of the stripper that picks up the next round from the mag.

 

[FrommerStop]

I have both. Like both. Bought glock and m&p in .40, and got 9mm conversion barrels. Also m&p midsized .40 and got a 9mm slide assembly from a member here.
Also have 9 and 40 Banshees and S2K

Besides what others have mentioned, I will say the .40 is king on a steel range. While I don't recall using much sd ammo on a steel range, the .40 puts the target down with authority! The 9 would sometimes require 2 shots.

Just sayin'...

None of my conversion barrels worked with 9mm in a glock 22 or a glock 33. But I was shooting steel cased ammo and maybe that was my problem.
The problem was failure to eject that lead to a double feed. The fired case would remain gripped by the extractor to lodge wedged next to the ejector while held by the ejector and a second live round being pushed to the feed ramp resulting in a double feed jam.

 

[ChrisC]

In a nutshell, 9mm is easier to make the quals. Box checked, go to work/deployment. Management likes to see qualified employees. Rest are just noise. Bullet technology yada yada.

 

[Bodhi]

I think there are still an unacceptable amount of failures to expand in the smaller calibers shot in short barrels.

I’ve seen testing of .380 and some .38 Special SD ammo that basically were expensive FMJ. That being said, Hornady consistently performed well in those tests no matter the caliber. They have their act together over there.

Hornady (like Federal) has large gub'ment contracts which translates to (some amount of) R&D.

Hollow points are in interesting phenomenon unto themselves. Are they effective at stopping threats? The jury may still be out on that .... Perhaps a better question is, are they better than non-hollow points at stopping threats? Only the shooter can decide that. I have been known on occasion to skip HPs in my carry gun of choice. YMMV, of course.

 

[FrommerStop]

I think there are still an unacceptable amount of failures to expand in the smaller calibers shot in short barrels.

I’ve seen testing of .380 and some .38 Special SD ammo that basically were expensive FMJ. That being said, Hornady consistently performed well in those tests no matter the caliber. They have their act together over there.

I am not in favor of hollow points for .380. If they expand, then penetration will likely be not enough. Penetration is the most basic requirement regardless of the handgun caliber. Some of these phillip screw driver bullets that do not expand will penetrate deeply and do destroy more tissue than a FMJ.

 

[ABlaster]

None of my conversion barrels worked with 9mm in a glock 22 or a glock 33. But I was shooting steel cased ammo and maybe that was my problem.
The problem was failure to eject that lead to a double feed. The fired case would remain gripped by the extractor to lodge wedged next to the ejector while held by the ejector and a second live round being pushed to the feed ramp resulting in a double feed jam.

It may be the fact that the ejector is different for the .40 and the 9mm even though the frame is the same. The 9mm comes over further to the center more to eject the smaller diameter brass. It's not a big difference, but you can easily see it when they are side-by-side and when I screwed it up the .40 ejector wasn't engaging the back of the 9mm brass.

 

[FrommerStop]

It may be the fact that the ejector is different for the .40 and the 9mm even though the frame is the same. The 9mm comes over further to the center more to eject the smaller diameter brass. It's not a big difference, but you can easily see it when they are side-by-side and when I screwed it up the .40 ejector wasn't engaging the back of the 9mm brass.

For gen 3 guns
That is the crucial problem and but they are advertised as straight drop in and no mention is made of changing the trigger housing that has the ejector.
#22 is the ejector and #24 is the housing. It is said to be dangerous to use the 9mm ejector with the 40 caliber ammunition. something about the 9 mm ejector hitting the primer on the 40.

 

[ducks]

40s became popular because 9mm bullets at the time didn’t expand all that reliably. As bullet tech improved, 9mm bullets can now reliably expand and penetrate, so the 9 can do what the 40 and 45 do, but in a lighter,smaller pistol with less recoil.

 

[Bodhi]

40s became popular because 9mm bullets at the time didn’t expand all that reliably. As bullet tech improved, 9mm bullets can now reliably expand and penetrate, so the 9 can do what the 40 and 45 do, but in a lighter,smaller pistol with less recoil.

A 9mm can expand, but a 40 and 45 won’t shrink.

I don’t dis-like the 9mm - to me it’s like the 38 Special of the semi-automatic pistol world - but I like my chances of stopping and neutralizing a threat with a 40 and/or 45 mo-betta.

 

[ABlaster]

40s became popular because 9mm bullets at the time didn’t expand all that reliably. As bullet tech improved, 9mm bullets can now reliably expand and penetrate, so the 9 can do what the 40 and 45 do, but in a lighter, smaller pistol with less recoil.

The .40 still beat the 9mm in the latest FBI testing, with higher muzzle energy, roughly equivalent penetration (9mm wins that one), and larger final expanded diameter. Remember that as 9mm technology was getting better, so was .40 technology. Somehow in the gun world "close" became "close enough" and eventually became "equal to." I suppose it could be argued that within margins all of the legit SD handgun rounds perform roughly equivalently, but if we're looking at hard numbers the .40 beats the 9mm. That really matters to some folks and others not so much.

 

[.22 cents]

40 can’t blow the lungs out of the body..just sayin

 

[Longtooth]

40 can’t blow the lungs out of the body..just sayin

Im going along, reading all these well thought out opinions and get to this. lol

Had a good chuckle.

 

[ducks]

The .40 still beat the 9mm in the latest FBI testing, with higher muzzle energy, roughly equivalent penetration (9mm wins that one), and larger final expanded diameter. Remember that as 9mm technology was getting better, so was .40 technology. Somehow in the gun world "close" became "close enough" and eventually became "equal to." I suppose it could be argued that within margins all of the legit SD handgun rounds perform roughly equivalently, but if we're looking at hard numbers the .40 beats the 9mm. That really matters to some folks and others not so much.

I pretty much agree with you.

Hard numbers don’t really matter to the .gov. . Minimums do however. The FBI went looking for something bigger than 9mm after the 86 Miami shootout and ultimately went 40. Bullet technology made the 9mm good enough (and in some ways better since most folks shoot the 9 better than a 40.)

It will take another high profile perceived failure of 9mm before .gov dumps the 9mm.

 

[850guns]

None of my conversion barrels worked with 9mm in a glock 22 or a glock 33. But I was shooting steel cased ammo and maybe that was my problem.
The problem was failure to eject that lead to a double feed. The fired case would remain gripped by the extractor to lodge wedged next to the ejector while held by the ejector and a second live round being pushed to the feed ramp resulting in a double feed jam.

What company made the conversion barrels?
I'm trying to remember who I used.
I think Lone Wolf for the glock.
And maybe Storm Lake for the M&P, which has made a permanent home for home defense. Mainly because I have the Performance Center and the .40 barrel is ported. And I don't want that for inside shooting.
I also seem to recall they quit making the conversion barrel. Which I was thrilled to pick up a midsize, 2.0 complete 9mm slide assembly from a member here.

Never had a problem with the conversion barrels.

 

[lil'skeet]

I have to wonder why the 40S&W has fallen out of favor to most folks? I see them for sale with little to no interest and just bump bump bump.
I have a sig 226 in .40 and really like it, I admit I'm not much of a numbers and research person, so I ask why no interest? Ammo cost? it's not too bad, Mag capacity? not too different than a 9mm. Power? or a combination of everything?
I'd like to hear your theory or reasons. Thanks

I know the last ammo "shortage" made people rethink their calibers. .40 cal was hard to get and expensive. 9mm was expensive and easy to get. I may be wrong but my sales and talks back then had a lot of people prioritize calibers & availability.