40S&W…Have you seen the deals?

[The Verminator]

Originally Posted by JustJake

Is this a “bear gun” thread? Or are you trying to suggest the 10mm is useful only for bear “protection”?


Well, maybe you should do some research.

The 10mm’s been in resurgence since the early 2000s. So like, 20+years.

My question, I guess, would be........how can the 10mm have a RE-surgence when it never had a "surgence" in the first place?

But you don't have to start a new thread.

There's one been done already. It was closed when nobody could show a resurgence and the thread devolved into a few fan-boys shouting about the wonders of the 10mm.

https://thefiringline.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=603988

So it goes. Some things never change.

[Pumpkin]

Your not in the habit of just walking past fire ant mounds are you.

[JohnKSa]

If you look at the performance envelope of the 10mm, it's a very good match for the .357Mag. It has remained on the market but has never gained tremendous popularity for the same reasons that the .357Mag has remained on the market but never topped the charts. With the added disadvantage, I suppose, that shooting .40S&W in a 10mm autopistol with the manufacturer's blessing requires the added expense of a conversion barrel unlike a .357Mag revolver that can take .38Spl just as it is.

I like 10mm and own a couple of them, but it's never going to enjoy the popularity that the .40S&W did or the 9mm does.

[The Verminator]

Originally Posted by Pumpkin

Your not in the habit of just walking past fire ant mounds are you.

The ants in that mound have moved on........it's now empty.

On to the next one.

[The Verminator]

Lest anyone should conclude that I'm a hater of the .40 S&W or its big brother 10mm.......I regard the .40 as an excellent cartridge.

In point of fact--the first handgun I ever shot was from another brother of the .40 family......the good old 38-40 Winchester.

The ballistic twin of the .40 S&W.

When I was five my dad put a Colt Single Action Army in my little hands and drew the hammer back and said, "Now hang tight to it when you shoot."

I tried, but he was ready and caught it just above my forehead as it almost escaped my grasp. The blast started me on a lifetime of hearing loss that continues to this day.

"I want to shoot it again," I said immediately.

However, he declined. He did, however, give me the empty 38-40 shell casing and said, "Keep that to remember this day."

I still have that old bottle-necked empty.

I did get to shoot it again, but that was a few years later.

So I have a sentimental attachment to the .40 caliber.

[Ruger45LC]

I'm a big fan of the .40 and have been since I bought my first one back in the early 2000's. I looked on the website of my local gun shop recently and they had listed a new S&W M&P Shield 2.0 in .40 for a good price and went the next day and bought it, got it for $325 and it came with night sights and 3 mags, apparently it's a discontinued model. It shoots great!

I've picked up other .40's (and 10mm's) recently as well, including a Beretta 96A1 and a CZ TS2 Orange...although that one was quite a bit more pricey. Really wishing they release the DWX in .40, which was initially going to happen, but I've seen nothing come of it.

I never really understood the dislike for the .40, but I've come to the conclusion that people by and large defend what they're invested in. The 9mm is cheap and a lot of people have them, they're probably not going to admit another caliber is better, just the way it is. Mindset plays a role too, many think that all handguns are equally ineffective, so caliber matters not to them, which is a poor mindset but even still, people think this way. Bullet tech has helped the 9mm for sure, but it needed the most help. People who think the 9mm is better always claim that it's easier to shoot, that it's more user friendly, and there is truth to this. But on the other hand, other calibers are more effective at actually stopping the threat. Which one is the correct reasoning?

[Red Devil]

Deleted

Winchester Ranger T Series: .40 Smith and Wesson

Facts are irrelevant.




Red

[Mike Irwin]

"Facts are irrelevant."

Given that many of the "facts" that you've provided in this thread have been, well, to put it politely... NON-facts, I'd really have to ask if you'd recognize and actual fact it if bit you.

[The Verminator]

Originally Posted by Ruger45LC

People who think the 9mm is better always claim that it's easier to shoot, that it's more user friendly, and there is truth to this. But on the other hand, other calibers are more effective at actually stopping the threat. Which one is the correct reasoning?

The FBI concluded that the 9mm is correct reasoning.

Why?

Because the "One Shot Stop" is a myth.

The FBI used science instead of popular wisdom and thus concluded that stopping a man was usually a matter of several shots no matter what handgun.

That is simply a fact based on the intrinsic weakness of the handgun.

Thus faster repeat shots were essential and the 9mm was seen as the best compromise.

[JohnKSa]

Once there were 9mm loadings that passed their testing protocol, there were several reasons they might want to choose 9mm as an issue cartridge.

1. Gun longevity.
2. Ammo cost.
3. Lighter recoil. (Which also speaks to the rapidity and accuracy of follow-up shots.)

They may have focused on one of those, or, more likely, taken all of them into account in their decision.

[rc]

How about categorical funding and the need to spend it or lose money for the next year. A lot of times we sell off perfectly good equipment or in some cases give it away......

[1972RedNeck]

How can anything compare to the 9mm lung blower?

"A 9mm bullet blows the lung out of the body."

I'm an avid .40 fan but even my best .40 (or 454 for that matter) can't "blow the lung out of the body".

[Webleymkv]

Originally posted by The Verminator
The FBI concluded that the 9mm is correct reasoning.

Why?

Because the "One Shot Stop" is a myth.

The FBI used science instead of popular wisdom and thus concluded that stopping a man was usually a matter of several shots no matter what handgun.

That is simply a fact based on the intrinsic weakness of the handgun.

Thus faster repeat shots were essential and the 9mm was seen as the best compromise.

This line of reasoning has several issues. First and foremost, repeat shots is not the only or even primary consideration of the FBI in choosing a handgun caliber or ammunition. The FBI's standards call for a minimum degree of expansion and penetration to be deemed acceptable for duty use. If ease of follow-up shots was the only criteria for the FBI, then calibers like .32 ACP and .380 ACP should be preferred as they offer less recoil than 9mm, equal or greater capacity in similar guns, and, if loaded with FMJ, still offer adequate penetration. Even when penetration and expansion are factored into the equation, if getting more rounds on target were the FBI's primary consideration then they should be falling all over themselves for .30 Super Carry as it offers near 9mm terminal performance with the same or less recoil and higher capacity.

Secondly, do not assume that everyone agrees with the FBI's criteria as to what makes an effective handgun cartridge. "One shot stops" are certainly not a "myth" as there have been many, many people who were stopped by a single shot for a variety of reasons. The FBI has chosen to believe that the only important characteristics in handgun wounding are penetration and bullet diameter and eschews factors such as kinetic energy and temporary stretch cavity as irrelevant or non-contributory. This is based heavily on the work of Dr. Martin Fackler, which is itself imperfect, but grossly oversimplified from even Dr. Fackler's findings.

The genesis of the FBI's current ideas on handgun effectiveness lies in the 1986 Miami-Dade Shootout and the perceived "failure" of a single round of 9mm 115 gr Winchester Silvertip to adequately penetrate. The notion that that one bullet could have dramatically improved the outcome of such a complicated situation, in which many, many mistakes were made, is to put it politely extremely optimistic. Instead, I personally think that the FBI chose to focus in on the ammunition at least in part to divert attention away from the many failures of tactics, training, preparedness, judgement, and marksmanship that contributed to what took place in that particular incident.

As I've said before, I personally find the notion that the FBI is an authority on pretty much anything to to with gunfighting to be, at best, ironic. The FBI has, historically, made several very, very bad decisions regarding firearms and ammunition so I really don't see why their current choices should be accepted without due skepticism. The 115 gr Silvertip that "failed" so famously in 1986 actually penetrated and expanded exactly as designed and advertised, so apparently the FBI either didn't know what they needed or paid no attention to the performance of the ammunition they were buying. After the '86 Miami incident, the FBI adopted the Winchester 147 gr subsonic 9mm JHP which, while apparently good in their laboratory testing, quickly gained a reputation for failing to expand when used in the field.

Next, they adopted the S&W 1076 in 10mm which was famously a debacle in and of itself as rather than the 1006 and 1066 which used the well proven slide-mounted decocker/safety that S&W had been producing since the Model 39 in the late 40's (as well as the 469's the FBI had previously issued), the FBI insisted on a new Sig-style frame-mounted decocker which took a while to work the bugs out of. Also the FBI insisted on special palm-swell grips that, if dropped on the butt, could break and tie up the mainspring (the standard straight-back and curved-back S&W grips didn't have this issue). The biggest problem with the 1076, however, was that it was a big, heavy gun that, when combined with the issued holsters and 1 1/4" dress belts worn by many agents was cumbersome to carry and thus disliked by many field agents accustomed to smaller, lighter weapons like the previously issued S&W 469 or Model 13. I have heard and read many anecdotes from retired FBI agents about some of their colleagues who held on to their revolvers and 9mm's for as long as they could, carried their 1076 in their briefcase, or went unarmed entirely due to the 1076 being so cumbersome to carry in their normal attire.

After briefly returning to 9mm, the FBI ultimately adopted the .40 S&W in the Glock 22 and 23 pistols as it offered roughly the same terminal performance as the 10mm "FBI Lite" loadings without the big, heavy, cumbersome gun that the 10mm required. What's curious, however, is that the FBI chose to stick with .40 S&W for many years even after "modern" bullets which supposedly make the 9mm so much better became available. If we look as when just a few of the "modern" JHP designs became available, we find that Speer introduced the Gold Dot in 1991, Winchester introduced the Black Talon in 1991, it's updated LE-only successor the T-Series in 2007 and their bonded PDX1 in 2009 (the PDX1 was the last .40 S&W loading adopted by the FBI). Even the Federal HST, which many consider to be the state-of-the-art JHP bullet design, has been available to law enforcement since 2002. Despite all of this, the FBI chose to stay with the, in their own opinion, too-difficult to shoot .40 S&W until 2017.

When these numerous questionable decisions are combined with the fact that the FBI isn't the largest LE agency in the country (that's NYPD), the oldest Federal LE agency (that's the U.S. Marshalls), or the one which experiences the most shootings (that's the Border Patrol), I fail to understand why their opinion on defensive handguns is so revered.

[Pumpkin]

Best post on this topic yet!

[dogtown tom]

Webleymkv

......When these numerous questionable decisions are combined with the fact that the FBI isn't the largest LE agency in the country (that's NYPD), the oldest Federal LE agency (that's the U.S. Marshalls), or the one which experiences the most shootings (that's the Border Patrol), I fail to understand why their opinion on defensive handguns is so revered.

I asked a good friend who is Secret Service why they went with the FBI results. He said because the FBI has the technical staff at the FBI Laboratory and most importantly is budgeted to perform such testing.

He loved the .357 Sig cartridge and his 229, but wasn't upset in the least with the decision to switch to the Glock 19.

And for what its worth, DHS believes its the largest LE agency in the country

[Mike Irwin]

"I fail to understand why their opinion on defensive handguns is so revered. "

I can answer that...

Because in response to the Miami fiasco, the FBI bared its guts for the entire world to see in a way that no other agency ever has, both in dissecting the Miami gunfight but also in the effort to choose a new duty weapon and cartridge that would have somehow made up for the failures of Miami...

The pervasive failures in tactics, training, planning, and execution....

And made it all about the gun and the cartridge.

[The Verminator]

Originally Posted by Mike Irwin

"I fail to understand why their opinion on defensive handguns is so revered. "

I can answer that...

Because in response to the Miami fiasco, the FBI bared its guts for the entire world to see in a way that no other agency ever has, both in dissecting the Miami gunfight but also in the effort to choose a new duty weapon and cartridge that would have somehow made up for the failures of Miami...

The pervasive failures in tactics, training, planning, and execution....

And made it all about the gun and the cartridge.

I don't think the FBI really did so bad if you consider all the facts.

There was one key thing about the whole crazy episode.

There was a unique adversary--an amazingly determined guy.......a tough and aggressive guy who was armed with a highly superior weapon.

[The Verminator]

Originally Posted by Webleymkv

"One shot stops" are certainly not a "myth" as there have been many, many people who were stopped by a single shot for a variety of reasons.

And MANY, MANY who were not.

That's why the "One Shot Stop" is a myth........and it happens for, as you say, a variety of reasons........and these reasons are hardly ever due to the power of the handgun.

The FBI found that no handgun could be trusted to stop with one shot--therefore they went with the best compromise--the 9mm.

It offered sufficient power and fast repeat shots.

That's the formula for success.

Science of the FBI Labs rules.

[The Verminator]

One thing you don't hear about the Miami FBI shootout is that early on in the fight.......

An agent had the perps dead to rights in the sights of his 12 gauge..........pump.

At that moment a .223 round hit his left arm.

It stopped him at that moment from taking them out. With his left arm disabled he couldn't operate the pump shotgun.

It he had been using a semi-auto instead of a pump.......the fight would have ended there because he could have just continued pressing the trigger instead of needing to rack the slide.

Later in the fight he got back into action and operated the shotgun with just his right arm.......which was still not very effective.

Semi-autos instead of pumps.......good idea.

[Sarge]

Originally Posted by The Verminator

And MANY, MANY who were not.

That's why the "One Shot Stop" is a myth........and it happens for, as you say, a variety of reasons........and these reasons are hardly ever due to the power of the handgun.

The FBI found that no handgun could be trusted to stop with one shot--therefore they went with the best compromise--the 9mm.

It offered sufficient power and fast repeat shots.

That's the formula for success.

Science of the FBI Labs rules.

LMAO

Over the past 45 years I’ve seen countless new pistol loads offered as the ne plus ultra of anti-personnel loads and I’ve seen the FBI christen ‘ideal’ service cartridges three times now- followed by a stampede of lemmings behind them. Frankly I’d rather watch Bullwinkle than suffer through another one. At least Bullwinkle was written by witty people who assumed their audience capable of conscious thought.

https://www.thesixgunjournal.net/the-modern-9mm/

[Mike Irwin]

"I don't think the FBI really did so bad if you consider all the facts."

They actually did horribly.

They had no coordinated plan for how to approach these individuals.

Even though they knew that at least one of them was armed with a rifle, they had no rifles of their own.

Mireles had a shotgun, and there was another FBI shotgun... locked in the trunk of a car. It was never employed.

Only two of the agents had body armor; it was lightweight armor, not armor that you'd take when facing someone whom you know A) is willing to use firearms, and B) uses a rifle.

One agent lost his firearm and never fired a single shot during the confrontation.

Eight agents total were involved. Two died, five of the survivors were wounded, only one agent was unscathed. That's pretty terrible overall.

The other failings of the Miami fiasco are often overlooked because the American gun press really took the "9mm failure narrative" and ran with it non-stop for several years.

At the same time the FBI was looking for a new cartridge/handgun, it was also doing a comprehensive re-evaluation of its rules of engagement, including tactics, training, planning, and equipment to hopefully prevent something like the Miami shootout from ever happening again.

[Pumpkin]

9mm = Scapegoat ?

[Mike Irwin]

"9mm = Scapegoat ? "

In a manner, yes.

What most people miss is that the Silvertip hit that the one guy (I can never remember which one) took was fatal. The bullet performed pretty much exactly as it was designed. It just wasn't fatal quickly enough.

[The Verminator]

Originally Posted by Pumpkin

9mm = Scapegoat ?

And the funny thing is that the 9mm round they were using, the old Winchester Silvertip, performed quite well.

One of today's improved 9mms wouldn't have done much more than that one did.

It penetrated the heavy muscle of an upper arm, then the rib cage, took out a lung and stopped just an inch short of the heart. That's about all the penetration and damage that one can expect.

The fact that even with a wound like that......the perp continued to aggressively press the fight and kill and disable his adversaries was simply due to his mental and physical capabilities--his physical strength and his will and determination to win the fight and--of course--his vastly superior weapon.

Blaming the 9mm was just due to some of the same ignorance that exists today.

A lot of people still don't understand the 9mm.

[Webleymkv]

Originally posted by The Verminator
I don't think the FBI really did so bad if you consider all the facts.

There was one key thing about the whole crazy episode.

There was a unique adversary--an amazingly determined guy.......a tough and aggressive guy who was armed with a highly superior weapon.

Analysis of the 1986 Miami-Dade Shootout could easily be a thread in and of itself, but here are just a few of the highlights in how the FBI did very poorly in the incident:

Had Manauzzi retained his revolver in a better manner than laying it on the passenger seat of his car, he might not have lost it in the car crash and been able to participate in the event in a more meaningful way than getting shot.

Had Grogan put a nerd strap on his glasses, he might not have lost them in the car crash and thus been able to shoot more accurately.

Between the eight agents involved, at least 78 rounds of ammunition were fired at the two suspects, yet Platt was hit 12 times and Matix 6. Had the agents managed better than the 23% hit rate they achieved, the incident might have resolved more favorably. Additionally, Platt, who did most of the damage, while shot 12 times was only shot in vital areas twice one of which was the final shot fired by Mireles which ended the fight. Had the other 10 shots that hit Platt been in vital areas rather than his periphery, he likely would have been incapacitated sooner.

Also, the notion that Platt was armed with a "highly superior weapon" is laughable when you consider that in addition to more Remington shotguns, the other six agents involved in the stakeout that didn't participate in the fight also had in their cars HK MP5 submachine guns and M16 rifles. Platt's Ruger Mini-14 was not a "highly superior weapon" but a commonly available one and arguably inferior to what the FBI had access to but didn't have the forethought to have ready and available when confronting two heavily armed suspects who were already known to have committed multiple violent felonies including armed robbery, grand theft auto, attempted murder, and murder.

The biggest, to my mind, failure of the 1986 Miami-Dade Shootout is that the agents involved were not ambushed or caught off-guard, but failed to adequately arm and prepare themselves when they knew ahead of time that they were pursuing two very nasty and very dangerous individuals.

And MANY, MANY who were not.

That's why the "One Shot Stop" is a myth........and it happens for, as you say, a variety of reasons........and these reasons are hardly ever due to the power of the handgun.

Something that is known to have happened multiple times across a wide variety of situations, by definition, cannot be a "myth". We may not be able to accurately predict what will cause a one shot stop or reliably replicate them, but we know that they do happen and can even correlate factors which make them more likely, so they're certainly not a "myth".

The FBI found that no handgun could be trusted to stop with one shot--therefore they went with the best compromise--the 9mm.

It offered sufficient power and fast repeat shots.

That's the formula for success.

Science of the FBI Labs rules.

The FBI found that no handgun that they wanted to use could be trusted to meet the one shot stop criteria they chose to adopt; there, fixed that for you. The FBI was not interested in any and all handguns, they made the conscious decision to completely abandon revolvers thus eliminating cartridges like .357 Magnum, .41 Magnum, and .44 Magnum from even being considered despite the fact that .357 Magnum in particular had an excellent reputation amongst law enforcement for one shot stops. Likewise, while the 10mm might have been capable of providing magnum revolver-like performance, the FBI instead chose to water it down to the ballistics we would eventually see with the .40 S&W because they decided in the testing phase that full-power 10mm (Norma at the time) had too much recoil.

Also, the FBI chose to take the work of Martin Fackler, who posited that permanent crush cavity was the primary and most reliable mechanism of injury in handgun rounds and grossly over-simplify it into "energy does not wound". Certain handguns in certain loadings with certain bullets can and have caused wounds and incapacitation out of proportion to their permanent crush cavities, but it's difficult to do that with the power level of cartridges that the FBI was interested in adopting with bullet designs that would work reliably in the types of guns they were interested in shooting them through.

Here's the problem with laboratory testing, while it's good at telling you how bullets react to being shot into a tissue simulant, it's not very good at telling you how a living organism will react to being shot. You cannot measure incapacitation times on a block of gelatin. The FBI's lab can tell you that, in the real world, a bullet will likely penetrate approximately x inches and expand to y diameter, but it doesn't tell you if x inches of penetration and y diameter will equal z seconds/minutes until the person/animal you've shot is incapacitated. Laboratory testing, by it's very nature, strives to be verifiable and repeatable and thus to eliminate as many uncontrolled variables as possible, but a real-world shooting is full of uncontrolled variables. This is why things like the old Winchester 147 gr Subsonic JHP's that the FBI went to immediately after the 86 Miami incident, while great in the laboratory, didn't work well in the real world.

And the funny thing is that the 9mm round they were using, the old Winchester Silvertip, performed quite well.

One of today's improved 9mms wouldn't have done much more than that one did.

It penetrated the heavy muscle of an upper arm, then the rib cage, took out a lung and stopped just an inch short of the heart. That's about all the penetration and damage that one can expect.

The fact that even with a wound like that......the perp continued to aggressively press the fight and kill and disable his adversaries was simply due to his mental and physical capabilities--his physical strength and his will and determination to win the fight and--of course--his vastly superior weapon.

Blaming the 9mm was just due to some of the same ignorance that exists today.

A lot of people still don't understand the 9mm.

And here is the crux of my problem with taking the FBI's "wisdom" as gospel: blaming the 9mm is just ignorance of today and not understanding history, it was the chosen scapegoat of the FBI all those years ago and now all these decades later they're trying to gaslight us into forgetting it. If you look at the document "10mm Notes" written by Special Agent Patrick Urey when the FBI adopted the 10mm, you find this little gem:

"The 9mm has been in existence since 1902. It is actually an older cartridge than the .45. In that time, so many variations and designs have been tried that it is hard to imagine anything new that could be attempted. (goes on to site specifics)"

http://www.w0ipl.net/FBI-10mm

Wow, good thing Urey didn't go into fortune telling

What happened, and what the FBI doesn't want to admit to is this: The 1986 Miami shooting got two agents killed and five more wounded because they underestimated their opponents, didn't adequately prepare, and weren't good enough marksmen. Rather than admit that they did something wrong, the FBI instead chose a scapegoat in one single 9mm Winchester Silvertip among dozens fired by seven agents. Unfortunately for the Bureau, the bullet they chose to scapegoat actually performed exactly as designed and advertised, so they came up with this theory that if it had penetrated just a little more it would have stopped Platt before he murdered Grogan and Dove. The problem with this theory is that a heart shot isn't guaranteed to be immediately incapacitating. There have been many people over the years shot through the heart who not only survived, but continued to fight.

Due to their theory/excuse of "if it only reached his heart" they not only adopted penetration standards that, in many cases, are probably deeper than they really need to be, but also downplayed or completely ignored several other factors in handgun wounding. Thusly due to what I will as politely as I can call "intellectual dishonesty" on the part of the FBI, many very good calibers and loadings which enjoyed decades of successful use and good reputations for stopping fights are not labeled as inadequate or sub-par. The dogmatic adherence to actual myths perpetrated by the FBI like "energy does not wound" have led to all sorts of mental gymnastics on the part of those trying to patch the holes in it. Probably half of the caliber wars we've seen on this forum and other over the last few decades can trace their roots to the opinions of the FBI; opinions born out of cherry-picking the data that supported a preconceived idea which was itself was adopted to support scapegoating one bullet in order to avoid admission of fault.

The fact that a little over 30 years after using it as a scapegoat to cover up their own shortcomings, the FBI does and about-face and says that the 9mm is "just as good" as the very cartridge that so many adopted based on the Bureau's guidance, in my opinion, simply adds insult to injury.