An M.D. Argues the 40 S&W...

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I own plenty of handguns in all three of those calibers.

I "suppose" that given similar pistols a 45acp maybe has more recoil for me than a 9mm, but in full-sized service pistols it's apparently not enough to matter. For me 45acp has never felt like a high-recoil round (though admittedly I have never owned a small handgun in that caliber). Of the three, 40 caliber feels just a little bit snappier to me, but it's still plenty comfortable. I have full-sized Tanfoglios and Ruger P-series in all three calibers. They are all nice big pistols with plenty of grip for me to hang onto. To me the difference in recoil in those three calibers in nearly identical pistols is barely noticeable and therefore unimportant.

It seems like putting bigger holes through things should logically cause more structural damage, but the 9mm pistols generally hold a few more rounds... so, again, I'm personally fine with any of the "big three".
 
pblanc said:
... And you can buy a SIG 357 barrel for them and shoot that caliber using the same magazines and recoil spring if you feel the need to scratch that itch.
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Have a LWD 5.3" .357Sig Bbl for the G23.4.

The factory 147 gr. HDY Custom XTP, which is a proprietary bullet of FP construction, at 1300 fps, make for a very effective field/trail round.

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GR
 
After jumping through all the hoops to get my NYS pistol permit, and after getting a Ruger standard .22, I had some decisions to make.

I've owned a good number of handguns living out west, so I knew what I was looking for. Had some criteria to contend with some don't factor in as much.

Cost of the weapon and ammo were part of it, but another was me. I've broken both wrists numerous times (I lived hard), and over the years I've become a bit recoil intolerant. .357 right now is my upper limit, and if I had one, she'd be throwing .38s and downloaded .357s.

There were a ton of surplus .40s where I got my Glock, some cheaper than what I paid, but ammo was notably higher than 9mm. Another was my near total unfamiliarity with the round, and the clincher was the salesman telling me .40 was 'livelier' than .45 was. My decision to go with 9mm was based on those factors, not terminal ballistics.
 
I'm in the .45 ACP camp. Large, heavy bullets with enough momentum to break bone.

I've hunted with normal velocity .45 Colt (around the same power as .45 ACP) on deer and it takes them down fast. I would not do that with 9mm. Deer are about the same weight as a small human.

The deer were taken with 255 grain Cast SWC's. The .45 Colt and .45 ACP was designed to take down a charging horse. Picture that with 9mm, it would do it ....eventually.
 
Just in case someone is kind of struggling to choose between a 9mm and 40 caliber service pistol...

I bought one of those dirt-cheap Glock 22 police turn-ins. It was about $300 OTD. I always kind of wanted a Model 17, though. Lone Wolf was having a sale, and I bought a drop-in 9mm conversion barrel and Model 17 magazine for $126 total (free shipping).

Now I can turn my Model 22 into a Model 17 in about 30 seconds. Both calibers work great. Why settle for just one, when you can have them both for just a little more money? :)
 
I've found .45 to have no less felt recoil than .40 and given how much cheaper I can buy .40 JHP for vs .45, yeah, it's an easy choice to go .40. About the only time I feel the recoil snap with .40 is in the Glock 27 and while I can't machine gun the trigger like with 9mm, I can get an accurate shot each trigger pull in less than a second.

9mm is cheap and has the lowest recoil of the three, so people like it and people are always obsessed with minimizing calibers so they don't bother with .40.

I like how @Garandimal has a tier system with calibers, because I have the same. For a small CCW gun, the 9mm in a single stack is the best. Controllable, accurate, and effective for stopping a group of Antifa thugs, but my war pistol is a full size .40. Why? It's a bigger, heavier bullet in the same size as a 9mm pistol and it holds more ammo than the .45 pistols do and costs a lot less to feed.

All the arguments people have made about .40 causing service life of pistols to drastically decrease, being snappy like it's a .357 in a snub revolver, bankrupting people due to the ammo price... it's all things that the internet has blown out of proportion, just like how 30 years ago every gun store employee, every article in a gun magazine, and everyone at gun shows said 9mm was a puny projectile meant only for European metrosexuals while the .45 is a man's caliber proven since WW1 to put any man in his grave and keep him there.
 
Tallball said:
Just in case someone is kind of struggling to choose between a 9mm and 40 caliber service pistol...

I bought one of those dirt-cheap Glock 22 police turn-ins. It was about $300 OTD. I always kind of wanted a Model 17, though. Lone Wolf was having a sale, and I bought a drop-in 9mm conversion barrel and Model 17 magazine for $126 total (free shipping).

Now I can turn my Model 22 into a Model 17 in about 30 seconds. Both calibers work great. Why settle for just one, when you can have them both for just a little more money? :)
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Because when you go to sell that gun in the future, you won't get as much as a "real" 9mm Glock.

Or so I'm told.

Cuz, ya know, when I buy my guns, resale value is always foremost in my mind.
 
The back & forth between 9mm & 40 S&W is a good question. I had the opportunity to discuss this with a LEO & he told me that police departments were getting real stingy with ammo & that they once gave unlimited practice ammo to officers but now it's all very regulated & rationed.

I don't think effectiveness or recoil have anything to do with the decision by many departments to use 9 mm. I believe economy is the reason.

The two rounds have been compared a million times & although there are opinions as to which is better there is no conclusive evidence. When you need to purchase huge quantities of ammo even a slight difference in cost per round makes a significant difference. The bean counters at City Hall probably decided that if the difference in effectiveness between the two rounds is cloudy choosing the more expensive route is unwise especially when money is needed for other important uses.

It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that money is the principal driving force behind the decision. I may be wrong but that's my take on the subject.
 
I don't believe 9x19 is equal to 11.43x23. That's BS.
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The 9X19 has always equaled, or beat, the 45 ACP and the army proved it in 1946. Contrary to popular myth the military was disappointed in both the 45 ACP and 1911 pistols at the end of WW-2. They spent a lot of time testing 45 side by side with 9mm and concluded that there was no difference in effectiveness on humans. They also showed that 9mm penetrated barriers much better. 45's were bouncing off GI helmets at ranges beyond 10 yards while 9mm was still penetrating them in excess of 100 yards They wanted to make the move to 9mm then, but warehouses full of 1911's, no war, and budget cuts delayed that until 1985.

If a bigger hole wasn't better we would all shoot 22 caliber self defense pistols.
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Even a 45 caliber hole is a SMALL hole relatively. The size of the hole hasn't been a factor since we stopped using round balls. With round balls the only way to go heavier is larger diameter. With conical bullets you can use smaller diameter bullets and make them LONGER to get penetration. A 22 doesn't have enough mass to guarantee adequate penetration. The only reason to justify larger calibers today is because you cannot get enough bullet weight in a smaller caliber. The 147 9mm bullets will match or beat 230 gr 45 bullets or 180 gr 40 caliber bullets. There are some hard cast 9mm bullets that will exceed 60" in gel.

Penetration and shot placement trump everything else. If the bullet penetrates enough to reach vitals it will do the job. Making the hole larger, or even deeper just doesn't change anything. 9mm does that just fine. And anyway you look at it 9mm pistols of the same size hold more rounds, recoil less, will be cheaper to shoot, and for most people be more accurate.

Where 40 caliber, or 10mm shine is that they shoot heavier bullets, 200-220, that will give more penetration than needed on game or predators much larger than humans. While 45's will shoot even heavier bullets, the fat bullets actually limit penetration to LESS than 9mm or 10mm.
 
vba said:
I'm in the .45 ACP camp. Large, heavy bullets with enough momentum to break bone.

I've hunted with normal velocity .45 Colt (around the same power as .45 ACP) on deer and it takes them down fast. I would not do that with 9mm. Deer are about the same weight as a small human.

The deer were taken with 255 grain Cast SWC's. The .45 Colt and .45 ACP was designed to take down a charging horse. Picture that with 9mm, it would do it ....eventually.
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Hunting's not a factor in this discussion, it's effect on the human body to stop an attacker. Breaking bones on a target and killing is irrelevant, it's stopping a threat. When shot accurately, 9mm works, any of the big 3 (9, .40, .45) will work.

I've been watching the LuckyGunner mousegun series since it started and so far what's jumped out as the best caliber for a very small, pocket sized gun is .32, not .380 or .38. Why? Because while the larger calibers are more effective, they're also more difficult to shoot and in such a small gun... you get the idea.

In a subcompact pistol like the Glock 26 or Sig P365, I can see why 9mm is favored vs the larger .40 and .45. Someone said earlier that in a full size gun it's seems irrelevant what the caliber is, they all shoot about the same, just the terminal effects are different with the sole outlier in the mainstream calibers being 10mm.
 
jmr40 said:
The 9X19 has always equaled, or beat, the 45 ACP and the army proved it in 1946. Contrary to popular myth the military was disappointed in both the 45 ACP and 1911 pistols at the end of WW-2. They spent a lot of time testing 45 side by side with 9mm and concluded that there was no difference in effectiveness on humans. They also showed that 9mm penetrated barriers much better. 45's were bouncing off GI helmets at ranges beyond 10 yards while 9mm was still penetrating them in excess of 100 yards They wanted to make the move to 9mm then, but warehouses full of 1911's, no war, and budget cuts delayed that until 1985.
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It seems a significant portion of the US had German-envy. Now I won't say that anyone envied what the Nazi's accomplished or suggest that they had even veiled admiration for anything Nazi, but rather the Germans gave both the US and Russia some brilliant innovations, including the rockets that became ICBM's and ultimately took man to the moon (today, 50 years ago). Specific to small arms, the Sturmgewehr directly inspired what became the AK-47. The S&W Model 39 was basically a copy of the Walther P-38 entered into the Service Pistol Trials of 1954. For the kind of reasons you cite, nothing became of that for some time, but the Model 59 was just a double-stack version of the P-38, and ultimately, the Army adopted the M9 which was basically a double-stack P-38 with a slide-mounted front sight.

But the Americans had already pioneered other cartridges superior to the .45 ACP -- the .38 Super and then the .357 Magnum. The problem for those adhering to current trends is the ultimate culmination of this effort, the Magnum, was made suitable for the Americans' preference for revolvers rather than automatics. Even in the Army, Generals like Patton preferred the more American revolver.

jmr40 said:
Even a 45 caliber hole is a SMALL hole relatively. The size of the hole hasn't been a factor since we stopped using round balls. With round balls the only way to go heavier is larger diameter. With conical bullets you can use smaller diameter bullets and make them LONGER to get penetration. A 22 doesn't have enough mass to guarantee adequate penetration. The only reason to justify larger calibers today is because you cannot get enough bullet weight in a smaller caliber. The 147 9mm bullets will match or beat 230 gr 45 bullets or 180 gr 40 caliber bullets. There are some hard cast 9mm bullets that will exceed 60" in gel.

Penetration and shot placement trump everything else. If the bullet penetrates enough to reach vitals it will do the job. Making the hole larger, or even deeper just doesn't change anything. 9mm does that just fine. And anyway you look at it 9mm pistols of the same size hold more rounds, recoil less, will be cheaper to shoot, and for most people be more accurate.

Where 40 caliber, or 10mm shine is that they shoot heavier bullets, 200-220, that will give more penetration than needed on game or predators much larger than humans. While 45's will shoot even heavier bullets, the fat bullets actually limit penetration to LESS than 9mm or 10mm.
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It's not so much bullet weight that results in penetration, but sectional density. If it were weight, large balls would penetrate magnificently. But great sectional density typically takes length (or tungsten or depleted uranium or some such thing). And length doesn't lend itself well to fitting inside a handgrip that's already fattened excessively by double-stacking.
 
jmr40 said:
The 9X19 has always equaled, or beat, the 45 ACP and the army proved it in 1946. Contrary to popular myth the military was disappointed in both the 45 ACP and 1911 pistols at the end of WW-2. They spent a lot of time testing 45 side by side with 9mm and concluded that there was no difference in effectiveness on humans. They also showed that 9mm penetrated barriers much better. 45's were bouncing off GI helmets at ranges beyond 10 yards while 9mm was still penetrating them in excess of 100 yards They wanted to make the move to 9mm then, but warehouses full of 1911's, no war, and budget cuts delayed that until 1985.



Even a 45 caliber hole is a SMALL hole relatively. The size of the hole hasn't been a factor since we stopped using round balls. With round balls the only way to go heavier is larger diameter. With conical bullets you can use smaller diameter bullets and make them LONGER to get penetration. A 22 doesn't have enough mass to guarantee adequate penetration. The only reason to justify larger calibers today is because you cannot get enough bullet weight in a smaller caliber. The 147 9mm bullets will match or beat 230 gr 45 bullets or 180 gr 40 caliber bullets. There are some hard cast 9mm bullets that will exceed 60" in gel.

Penetration and shot placement trump everything else. If the bullet penetrates enough to reach vitals it will do the job. Making the hole larger, or even deeper just doesn't change anything. 9mm does that just fine. And anyway you look at it 9mm pistols of the same size hold more rounds, recoil less, will be cheaper to shoot, and for most people be more accurate.

Where 40 caliber, or 10mm shine is that they shoot heavier bullets, 200-220, that will give more penetration than needed on game or predators much larger than humans. While 45's will shoot even heavier bullets, the fat bullets actually limit penetration to LESS than 9mm or 10mm.
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You state all this as fact but I don't see any references. I understood the U.S. went to 9mm to have commonality with other nations. It is a lighter round so that logistics would be easier.
 
TTv2 said:
Hunting's not a factor in this discussion, it's effect on the human body to stop an attacker. Breaking bones on a target and killing is irrelevant, it's stopping a threat. When shot accurately, 9mm works, any of the big 3 (9, .40, .45) will work.

I've been watching the LuckyGunner mousegun series since it started and so far what's jumped out as the best caliber for a very small, pocket sized gun is .32, not .380 or .38. Why? Because while the larger calibers are more effective, they're also more difficult to shoot and in such a small gun... you get the idea.

In a subcompact pistol like the Glock 26 or Sig P365, I can see why 9mm is favored vs the larger .40 and .45. Someone said earlier that in a full size gun it's seems irrelevant what the caliber is, they all shoot about the same, just the terminal effects are different with the sole outlier in the mainstream calibers being 10mm.
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Why is hunting not a factor? Humans are an animal right? Then you go on to say:

"I've been watching the LuckyGunner mousegun series since it started and so far what's jumped out as the best caliber for a very small, pocket sized gun is .32, not .380 or .38. Why? Because while the larger calibers are more effective, they're also more difficult to shoot and in such a small gun... you get the idea."

So now your saying larger calibers are more effective! Non-sequeteur.
 
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Deanimator said:
I've always found the. .45acp more pleasant to shoot, especially in a full size M1911, but even in a 3 1/2" M1911, at least compared to a Gen 2 Glock 22 with stock recoil system.

I found the Glock EXTREMELY unpleasant until I replaced the stock recoil spring and guide with a 22lb spring and stainless guide. That made it shoot like an M1911 with full power loads.
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This ^

I tried a 22 and a 23 and every time I just came thinking......why? I can’t escape certain facts.....velocity and bullet weight are not relevant. Bullet diameter and shot placement are. Bigger bullets make bigger holes, period. I have since abandoned the 40 and stick with the 9/45. YMMV.
 
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jonb32248 said:
Carry what you shoot best, if you can't handle a center fired round and .22 is your carry good. You won't stop anything if you can't hit it. Me , I carry 9mm and always will. I've shot the .40 and 45 and haven't experienced a need to go up in caliber. The 45 I shot I thought it was a 9mm but then the gun was a Wilson Combat 1911 so the sheer weight dampened down the recoil. Dead is dead whether it's a .22,9,40, or 45, 50 cal., 357,etc. Bazooka.
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To me, everything is a compromise. I feel that the 40 is all that one can reasonably squeeze out of a pistola..... sure, the 9mm is a nice compromise of bullet diameter, capacity and frame size. I just see the 40 as a solution in search of a problem....it has all the benefits and drawbacks of both the 9 and the 45, but doesn’t really offer anything either round doesn’t.
 
JR24 said:
It's because modern technology is following modern design specs for performance (FBI standard) and so all 3 calibers are being essentially designed to do the same thing, penetrate 12-18" in Gel and expand to .6" or more in gel.

Yes, .45 and .40 will penetrate and/or expand more depending on bullet design, but it's generally within 10-15% with compatible bullet design (e.g. HST) and more expansion is certainly better but it's been concluded, repeatedly, that the small extra isn't significant enough in stopping a threat to justify the drawbacks (recoil, cost, ease of training, gun size [in the .45s case])

So are the .40 and .45 also improved and arguably better? Yes. But to what degree and will it actually help you? Still hotly debated.

I have carried all 3 and would be happy with any of them but for me personally I like the 9mm for my carry purposes. I'm up to 30% faster with the same platform on the clock and, more importantly, it's easier for me to get good fast hits at any range with the 9mm. I figure should I need it I'll have a significant skill decrease due to the stress of the situation so I want the duty caliber i find easiest to shoot fast and accurate, hedge my bets.

If I was only concerned about terminal performance I would carry a 10mm
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Excellent post sir.

Funny enough, I recently traded a 45 for a 9mm.
 
Anchorite said:
To me, everything is a compromise. I feel that the 40 is all that one can reasonably squeeze out of a pistola..... sure, the 9mm is a nice compromise of bullet diameter, capacity and frame size. I just see the 40 as a solution in search of a problem....it has all the benefits and drawbacks of both the 9 and the 45, but doesn’t really offer anything either round doesn’t.
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It does tho. Tell me how much a box of .45 JHP costs vs a box of .40 JHP. Generally, .45 JHP is $36+ for 50 and isn't well known, the surplus FBI .40 is about $20 for 50 and has a proven track record, that's a big difference and it offers a larger bullet moving faster than what 9mm could propel a 180 grain bullet.

Does that mean anything in a compact single stack CCW pistol that you'll only ever use for up close and personal situations? Meh, I don't think so, it's in the full size pistols you see the difference.

The .40 was a solution to the issue of bad 9mm projectiles in the 80s and able to offer higher capacities than .45's of the time. To me, capacities aren't critical, mag reloads can be done in the blink of an eye. For me it comes down to price and real world performance. .40 beats the .45 in both, 9mm beats them both in price and is a good performer, but not superior to either in performance.

As we've seen, nothing in the FBI or other LEO switching back to 9mm states that 9mm is now the best caliber for pistols, it just passes the requirements that it previously failed decades ago, does so with reduced recoil relative to larger caliber options so women can shoot it better, and for the lowest ammo price possible.
 
I have 9mm Glocks and 1911 - 45 ACP. I ditched the 40 Glock and settled on the two former calibers. I found the 40 snappy and the 45 is mild to me. The stopping power arguments are secondary to ability to shoot with any of these three.
 
I’m thinking that for all these reasons, the .357 Sig is also pretty worthless. Interesting but pointless.

Does it do any better at penetrating cover?
 
TTv2 said:
...it just passes the requirements that it previously failed decades ago, does so with reduced recoil relative to larger caliber options so women can shoot it better, and for the lowest ammo price possible.
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and Europeans. Women and Europeans.
 
earlthegoat2 said:
I’m thinking that for all these reasons, the .357 Sig is also pretty worthless. Interesting but pointless.

Does it do any better at penetrating cover?
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I don't remember right now if he compared them for penetrating cover but Paul Harrel has a series of videos up on youtube where he compares service pistol calibers. I know there is a video where he compares .40 to 9mm, one where he compares .40 to .45 & one where he compares .40 to .357 Sig. I thought they were interesting to watch. You might too. Y'all are right about 9mm practice ammunition being cheaper than .40 practice ammunition. As one who carries a .40 I have been thinking about picking up a conversion barrel just for cheaper practice. I tend to believe the complaints about .40 wearing out guns faster & being much snappier come from .40 being shoehorned into pistols designed for 9mm. I believe it better if one is going to shoot .40 to get a pistol that was originally designed for .40.
 
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