Is the .40 dead?

[WTR]

Grundy..... Don't have a Glock. I doubt I'll ever sell my .40.

[Grundy1133]

Grundy..... Don't have a Glock. I doubt I'll ever sell my .40.

my bad i meant aaangel. tagged the wrong person.

[aaangel]

Grundy..... Don't have a Glock. I doubt I'll ever sell my .40.

my bad i meant aaangel. tagged the wrong person.

Sorry man, I admit I’ve sold and bought many guns here, Lol. But this one has been by my side since my first wallywalk. I cannot put a price tag on it. Also Glad to hear that there are still plenty of ammo online.

[SQLGeek]

The FBI going back to 9mm is cascading down to local departments all over. I'm sure, as Scott is seeing in LE orders, .40 is on the way out as a mainstream handgun cartridge.

With ballistics being neglibile these days between 9mm and .40 in defensive rounds, I'd rather have the extra capacity and reduced recoil of 9mm.

[Beiruty]

40 is not dead. 10mm is now called the "Bang Bang" thingy.
I never intended to reload or own a 40 Caliber pistol until I could not resist adopting this "feral pistol"
https://photos.app.goo.gl/CIKxs89r0zj1VBua2

[cmgee67]

I think 40 is a good caliber but I’ve always felt people who shoot 40 can’t make up their mind on if they want a 9 or a 45. I think 40 just came a little late into the game kind of like 357 sig. had these been around a long time ago we might not be having this conversation.

[flechero]

40 is not dead. 10mm is now called the "Bang Bang" thingy.
I never intended to reload or own a 40 Caliber pistol until I could not resist adopting this "feral pistol"
https://photos.app.goo.gl/CIKxs89r0zj1VBua2

Love the gun, Beiruty!

I never intended to own a .40 but ended up with one. Since I reload, I'm not concerned about ammo availability.... I believe, however, that commercial .40 cal ammo will be readily available beyond my lifetime.

[mrvmax]

Denial won’t change the fact that .40 is dying. Police departments are leaving it in droves and there is a surplus of police trade ins in .40. My firearm distributors are putting new pistols in .40 S&W on clearance, that in itself is an indicator of a lack of demand. They are not taking a loss over what they bought them at if they could sell them at their original price. The manufacturers are not going to produce pistols if there is no demand for them, it’s like finding a pistol in .357 Sig. There are better calibers and it appears that ballistic testing has proven that.

Manufacturers will produce what sells and moves and the .40 doesn’t. Deny if you want but I see no real reason why pistols in .40 will make a resurgence. Now granted Glock still make a pistol in 45 GAP and I’ve never met someone who shoots that caliber so there may be a glimmer of hope somewhere.

[NotRPB]

I really liked 41AE /41 Action Express ballistics better than the .40 S&W, but I had sveral .40 S&W pistols a while because the .41AE lost out before I purchased one

I have more cassette tapes than 8-tracks now, but I went 8-track back then ... oops
I have more Super-VHS and VHS tapes than Betamax tapes, So I was right that time ... well,for a while

Still, I bought .40 Glocks instead of 9mm for my LEO friends back when they all carried .357 wheelguns
I think if enough carbines in .40 are made like KelTec which uses the same magazines as pistols in .40 it is still a good round and I hope it sticks around, though I have gone back to only .45 and 9mm simply for ease/consistency

[The Annoyed Man]

Is it dead?

Not yet. IME 9mms are easier and cheaper to shoot, and IME the .40 has more recoil/muzzle flip than a .45 in a similar sized handgun. This may be due the .40 running at almost twice the pressure of the .45.

IMO the .40 is a good cartridge that provides optimum antipersonnel ballistics from a handgun, and you really don't hear anything about the .40 failing to work as designed with JHP ammunition and proper shot placement.

You could do a whole lot worse than the .40 as your primary handgun.

Just my .02,
LeonCarr

Not trying to be flippant, but that could just as easily be said about 9mm or .45 ACP ..... with good JHP and shot placement, they work as designed. I don’t think that .40 S&W is going to go away......but it is fading. IMHO, it will end up like .45 GAP and .357 Sig - good cartridges that have a dedicated following, but no longer capturing a large market share. What others have said is true....that .40 is a compromise cartridge, and the need for that compromise disappeared with (A) improvements in the terminal ballistics of 9mm, and (B) the sunsetting of the Clinton AWB.

My own experience with .40 ended with me selling the one .40 cal pistol I owned several years ago. It was a great pistol (HK USP Compact), but I never did shoot .40 as well as I did either .45 ACP or 9mm. I had a wonder-nine in the collection at the time (Glock 19), so I wasn’t capacity-starved, and I had several .45s, so I wasn’t caliber-starved. For me, the .40 didn’t really fit a niche. That USPc was a wonderful gun, and if I’d had the wisdom to buy it in .45 or 9mm instead of .40, I’d still own it today; but I couldn’t justify keeping it if I wasn’t going to shoot it, and selling it paid for something else (M&P45 Full Size). Since then, I have gravitated toward carrying 9mms pretty much exclusively. I still have the .45s because they are fun to shoot - especially when suppressed - but my 9mms are lighter all the way around than the .45s, have greater capacity, and are just plain easier to carry than their .45 equivalents.

Edited to add..... what I said above about .45 GAP is possibly wrong. It may actually disappear, for the simple reason that it answered a question that nobody was asking.

Carry on......

[flechero]

Denial won’t change the fact that .40 is dying. Police departments are leaving it in droves and there is a surplus of police trade ins in .40. My firearm distributors are putting new pistols in .40 S&W on clearance, that in itself is an indicator of a lack of demand. They are not taking a loss over what they bought them at if they could sell them at their original price. The manufacturers are not going to produce pistols if there is no demand for them, it’s like finding a pistol in .357 Sig. There are better calibers and it appears that ballistic testing has proven that.

Manufacturers will produce what sells and moves and the .40 doesn’t. Deny if you want but I see no real reason why pistols in .40 will make a resurgence. Now granted Glock still make a pistol in 45 GAP and I’ve never met someone who shoots that caliber so there may be a glimmer of hope somewhere.

Declining in popularity is not the same as dying.

See the .45acp... people feared extinction when Mil dropped it, and again when glock littered the world and yet again when the bulk of LEO agency's dropped it for softer shooting higher capacity guns. Ironically, [and arguably] the .45acp is as popular as ever for both target and carry. In shear numbers, fewer rounds of 45 are probably produced and shot than when Mil used it as a primary sidearm, but in the civilian world it's still going strong.

I see LEO trades all over for cheap... 9/40/45 the issue is that many are either beat up or neglected, and some are pristine... without taking one down to inspect, it can be hard to tell what you get. Calibers are also regionally popular, it seems, so you may be in a .40 free zone.

Military and LEO trends are wonderful in predicting popularity on the new side of the cycle- but NOT on the tail end of the cycle. If that weren't the case, revolvers would have been dead long before the turn of the century. And wheelguns are still a strong segment of the market.

[cyphertext]

It's like fashion... what's old is new again. We are only a magazine ban away from .40 being on top again.

It isn't going away. Manufacturers might not produce a lot of new models in .40, but there are enough of them out there that ammo will still be produced and sold. I have no plans to stop shooting mine just because it is not the en vogue caliber with law enforcement... Heck, I still have a .357 revolver that I enjoy shooting.

[Deitz83]

I buy and shot what I like, not what someone says is popular or the manufacture pushes. I have 9mm and 40. I like my 40 and shot it more often. Next on my list to buy is a 45 ACP. I changed my Glock 23 barrel to a KKM. I changed my Glock 22 barrel to a Wilson Combat. I reload, can find 40 new manufactured rounds for $11 a box of 50. All I can say is shoot, shoot shoot!!!

[The Annoyed Man]

Heck, I still have a .357 revolver that I enjoy shooting.

Well yeah! A .357 revolver is like a fine wine or well-aged bourbon.....it needs no justification. Plus, it WILL knock the bejabbers out of whatever you shoot with it.......including sometimes, your hand.

I remember a thread that I read many years ago on another firearm related forum, and the OP had asked if anyone actually knew what it was like to be shot with a .357. There were a number of answers quoting ballistics and statistics, or telling stories about other people having been shot with one; but only ONE person answered what it was like to BE shot with one. I don’t remember his exact words, but they were to the effect of: “when a .357 hit me in the stomach, it was like someone had violently yanked the rug out from under me, and I was down before I knew what hit me. It was like getting hit by a truck.” I suppose that there are other calibers can produce similar results, but the .357 is no joke.

Plus, you can shoot .38 in them if you want.

I have two of them - both snubbie J-frames, one SS, and one Scandium - and I plan to acquire a 4” GP100 some day.

.357 revolvers are forever.

[Scott B.]

I'm not saying 40 is going away, but it's done as the primary LE/Agency caliber.

I don't look back at my .40 cal guns with any fondness though. The worst was I think a 4006 I bought when I first got out of the service. It was the alloy frame version which didn't help.

As for 357, I'm looking at buying a 686 Plus 3-5-7 Magnum, 3", the one with the unfluted cylinder. It just looks good. My excuse is I need a new revolver for the instructor requals we do every few years.