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It never ceases to amuse me when folks immediately display their ignorance by stating that .40 S&W is just a watered down 10mm Auto when in reality the FBI's .40 S&W load is actually pretty close to the performance of Colonel Jeff Cooper's original specifications for the 10mm Auto cartridge. Norma decided that Cooper's load wasn't powerful enough from a marketing standpoint and thus made the unauthorized executive decision to amp up the load, which is the "full-power" load everyone erroneously attributes to Jeff Cooper.
So yeah, all of you folks who walk around calling .40 S&W; "fordy short n' wimpy" only to turn around and praise Jeff Cooper for his amazing 10mm Auto cartridge have no idea what you're talking about.
Jeff Cooper designed the 10mm Auto to be the ultimate law enforcement cartridge, and his original load specified a 200gr bullet traveling at 1000fps out of a 5" barrel, Norma decided that wasn't enough and ampted it up to 1200fps, the FBI's 10mm Load was a 180gr bullet traveling at 980fps out of a 5" barrel, and the FBI's .40 S&W load ended up being a 180gr bullet traveling at 1050fps out of a 5" barrel. So yeah, the "short n' wimpy" load used by the FBI is actually much closer to Jeff Cooper's specs that the 10mm Normal loads everyone seems to think that Jeff Cooper came up with.
In other words, the FBI didn't really "water down" the 10mm load all that much from it's original specs. Also, as much as folks like to say that the FBI reduced the load solely because agents had trouble with the recoil, it was also because Norma's 10mm load can penetrate deeper than 18" in ballistics gel, which supposedly equates to overpenetration with risk of collateral damage.
There's a reason why full-house, Norma-spec 10mm loads are used by many for self-defense against Polar Bears rather than humans.
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