By statistics hand/foot/and fist kill quite a lot of people, yearly, and I'd bet cash money that it's not a bunch of UFC champions doing all of it  - doesn't mean that our preps should stop at having fists brother.
Anecdotes are a hell of a thing

I think its about cost. In the end almost everything is about cost. I think it has dawned on agencies that the whole 40 vs 9mm thing is a pointless exercise and waste of money. 9mm is without a double the most common round for a handgun. There was a period of time when every time you turned around new calibers were being invented. I think that is over as people have realized that every caliber is a compromise of some sort and every time you invent a new caliber it costs more money as everything needs to be replaced.

Once you load the Wondernines with +P+ ammo, it is effectively a .40 cal gun.  Such flawed logic.

Also, I flat out don't believe them on the wound ballistics.  More energy and more momentum = more effective.

Hint - Sometimes the government lies.

Not sometimes the govmt lies, a lot of the time ;) .

Yup, all my 9mm friends were whining about ammo.....not for my .40, i could walk into 3 local gun shops and buy what I wanted....

I picked up a M&p .40 in the panic....knowing it can go 9mm.

I mostly carry it-just because I started in the panic and hadn't switched back to the m&p 9mm

It does hit harder, and the recoil is notable, bit not unmanageable.

Can't deny I never woulda had one if it weren't for the panic though.

.40 should never have been born.  It's a solution to a non existent problem.  Bullets kill by poking holes in blood vessels.   Or by whacking the brain.  

Now, how will a 10mm 165 grain bullet do any of that measurably better than a 9mm  124 grain bullet, or a 12.7mm 230 grain bullet?


Answer:  not a bit.

Oh c'mon.....  variety is the spice of life.  If we never developed new stuff ever.....  things might get a little stagnant.  Do I think .40 is superior to either?  No.  But that doesn't mean it won't work.

I don't think anyone is saying the .40 S&W is not up to the job.

What some of us are saying is that the .40 S&W represents a compromise and that in the long run the benefits may not be worth the costs.

As for "it should never have been born", it's worth looking at how it came about, as that also addresses the issue of it solving a now non-existent problem.  

The 10mm Auto evolved from a collaboration of a couple gun writers - Whit Collins and Jeff Cooper in the early 1970s to develop a semi-auto round for the Browning Hi Power with better terminal performance than the 9mm Para.  Cooper's view was that a .40 caliber 200 grain round at about 1000 fps would do nicely.   The most immediate result was the .40 G&A, with a 180 gr bullet at 1050 fps in a Hi Power.  Not to shabby for the early1970s.

Jeff Cooper, being Jeff Cooper, was not satisfied with 180 gr / 1050 fps performance and continued developing an even better 40 caliber round that he called the .40 Super.  In 1980, working with Thomas Dornaus and Michael Dixon, the .40 Super developed into the 10mm Auto.   That led to Dornaus and Dixon producing the Bren Ten (which borrowed heavily from the CZ75) for the new round and it went into fits and starts production from 1981-83, but died a premature death as it had also been prematurely marketed before the bugs were worked out.  Still, I lusted in my heart for a Bren Ten back in the day, and I was not alone as demand was high.

After they went under Colt started producing a 10mm Auto 1911 version called the Delta Elite which kept the round alive.

The timing worked well for the 10mm as in the wake of the Miami shootout the FBI found fault with both .38 and .357 Magnum revolvers as well as with the 9mm para round in a semi-auto and the FBI consequently chose the S&W Model 1076 in 10mm Auto as their next service pistol, and the 10mm round finally got a major break. The problem was however that many agents could not effectively manage the sharp recoil of the 10mm Auto This was not exactly a surprise to many of the shooters who'd had Delta Elites as the recoil of the 10mm round in a portable handgun is a bit sporty - a lot sharper in feel than a .45 ACP in the same pistol.  

Consequently, the FBI asked Federal to load a 180 gr bullet to 950 fps, and that round became known as the 10mm FBI, which took performance back to a level that was actually lower than the .40 G&A developed almost 20 years earlier.  Smith and Wesson however saw a potential market for a shorter 10mm Auto when it realized the same load could be stuffed in a shorter case, allowing a smaller grip in a magazine fed pistol.  S&W got with Winchester, who saw an opportunity as well, and shortened the 10mm Auto case by .142? to create the .40 Smith and Wesson, resulting in a cartridge that can be fed through normal 9mm length pistols - re-inventing the .40 G&A wheel so to speak.  

The thing is however, that the 9mm Para was not exactly standing still in the wake of the Miami shootout either, experiencing some significant advances in hollow point design and performance.  


-------


Fast forward to today and what you've got is a 20 year track record of 9mm Para rounds doing a respectable job in law enforcement shoots, so the starting conditions that prompted the development of a .40 caliber semi auto round in 1972 have substantially changed.

That .40 caliber effort led to a concept  and development of a round with terminal effectiveness that could equal the .45 ACP, but with greater magazine capacity - albeit at the expense of controllability and rate of fire.  However, the 10mm Auto as an expression of that concept didn't prove all that practical as it was difficult for most officers to shoot - and what resulted was the 10mm Auto.

But in the bigger picture the .40 S&W compromises terminal effectiveness for improved shoot ability - which is not a bad thing at all, as good hits are much better than bad hits or even outright misses.  However, it still sacrifices magazine capacity compared to the 9mm Para, and the 9mm Para has become a much better terminal performer than it was in 1972 and 1986.

If 9mm para terminal performance had stayed as dismal as it was, the .40 S&W would be much more valued than it is now.  But the fact remains that you can stuff significantly more 9mm rounds in a magazine in a given pistol design and you can place those rounds on target significantly faster than with a .40 S&W, and each of those greater number of rounds on target do a very commendable job in terms of terminal ballistics.

That makes the .40 S&W a compromise cartridge developed to address a problem that no longer exists, and there's just not much it does better than the 9mm Para - at least not enough to make it a more attractive choice in most cases.

One thing that strikes me as odd about all that.  I don't have a lot of experience but a guy let me shoot his Delta Elite in 10mm once a long time ago at the range and I thought it felt lighter than 230 grain ball .45.  Maybe I was just crazy.  Or since it was a long time I'm just remembering wrong.  But I remember distinctly thinking that.  

Anyways....  I shot a .40 for the first time last fall and I didn't think it was all that bad.  It was a G23 I shot.  Yeah, it was more stiff than a 9mm, but less felt recoil than a .45, IMHO.  It just seems like another cartridge to pick that will do it's job that performs in between the two.  I don't really see how just because 9mm bullet development has progressed that it makes the .40 a bad round.  

And yeah, during the last panic I mildly wished I had a .40.  But that's also not to say if we ever do go through another panic that it might be a different caliber that stands out as more available.  Who knows.  But I think having the options of another caliber is probably a good thing.  Like someone said you can get 9mm conversion barrels and such for a lot of .40 pistols and have a switch hitter if needed.  I think that's smart.

Having said all that, I've stuck mostly with 9mm and have had my .45's and I really never felt like I NEEDED a .40.  So....   But I would imagine it would behoove police officers to have personal guns in .40 if they are issued .40.

I don't think the problem with the 10mm back in the day was recoil but rather weapon size, that was something the .40 addressed while still giving the desired ballistics.  I think the .40 fills a great role, it's the most power you can get in a 9mm sized frame and it covers a lot of ground.  From my G23 I can run a 180gr plinking load to 850 fps or a 180gr XTP to nearly 1200 fps, the 9mm can't do that, heck the .45 ACP can't do that from a 4" bbl.



The fact that the 9mm, .40 and .45 are all lethal makes it nearly impossible to definitively conclude which is best, add in that some people perceive recoil differently than others and the nearly infinite dynamics of a shooting, the water gets even muddier.  Supporters of the 9mm will tout its slightly less recoil and slightly more capacity over the .40 as being a huge advantage, which isn't entirely true, but it's not entirely untrue either, although I think it's more beneficial to inexperienced shooters.  I do think bigger is better, generally speaking, but it's not so clear cut when you compare an 8rd 1911 .45 to a 18rd Glock 17 9mm.