40 Cal vs 45 ACP

[Bigslug]

In my auto pistols i have 9mm then my 45s. I could never find a reason to own a 40 cal auto. What can a 40 cal do that a 45 auto can not do. Can anyone give me a reason to own a 40 cal

It's pretty much a waste of brass and lead, IMO, that exists only because a few clever gunmakers were able to convince the LE community at large that they needed new guns RIGHT before the FBI published its test findings and protocols that gave guidelines on how to PROPERLY design a 9mm bullet for use in the guns they already had.

If you work in a setting where .40 ammo is free, buy one. If you want to doomsday prep by covering the common flavors, buy one. If you think yourself likely to miss more than seven times per problem-solving exercise, buy one. In terms of ballistic capability, it won't take you places you aren't capable of going already.

[Lonegun1894]

I prefer .45s, but use .40s also. I also load for my parents 9s. Loading wise, the 9 is a bit small and somewhat inconvenient due to that, but the .40 and .45 are easy. The recoil of the .40 is snappier than the recoil of the .45, but not enough that it makes a difference if you actually practice frequently. Performance wise, based of using both for hogs and then inspecting the wound channels, I would give a very slight advantage to the .45, but not enough that it makes a real big difference for hunting use. I have seen wounds in people (overseas)from both, but very few of those were from .40s, and quite a few from .45s. Maybe that is the reason for my preference for the .45, but the .40 was just as effective with good placement. In the end, and I LOVE 1911s, so may get flamed for this, but I don't think you will gain anything by getting a .40 in addition to what you already have, but would rather suggest that you get a .40 if it comes in a pistol you just like, and use the caliber as an excuse to get the gun, if you really need an excuse. Both will work great for anything the other will do, if fed with good ammo and in a gun that is comfortable for you to shoot. The gun fitting you and your ability to hit where you intend with it makes a lot more difference than the .05". And if you don't want to buy a .40, but want .40 performance out of your .45, just load it up with 185gr loads and get almost what the .45 would do with normal ammo. Your target won't know the difference.

[Lefty Red]

Beside not really liking the 40, I just don't see the need in it. Like what Bigslug stated, it was rushed into the LE scene before anyone thought to look at the tactics of the Miami Failure. And Lonegun1894 stated it well with it just being harder to control in 9mm size weapon. A 40 in anything other than a full size duty weapon just doesn't make sense for a user. Weapons will wear out quicker and shooting them is not fun.

If you wanted a 40 for Doomsday Prepping, get a G22 and several magazines. Plenty of LEOs carry them cause they are cheap for their departments. For a 40 to shoot, I like the Beretta 96FS. Actually like the Ruger SR40 too. Just a damn fine weapon in any caliber. Or the Ruger P94! a 45 size frame spitting out hot 40 rounds. Now there is a weapon! When you run out of ammo, you can club them to death with it!

As a reloader, I hate prepping brass for the 40. It gets stuck in my 45s and the 9s get stuck in it during cleaning and polishing. Much easier when its just 9s and 45s.

There are allot of 40 brass at the range. Mostly from non shooters that just buy a handgun and have to get a caliber that starts with a 4! They buy cheap and low quality facorty ammo tha t is $5-6 more than 9mm and onl about $1 cheaper than 45. I pick them up and turn them into brass credit for Extreme Bullets! I won't touch them for reloading. Brass doesn't last as long (yes, proven fact), and finicky to load. Pressures are not linear and spike quickly. 180 grain ammo is the most popular size that has had the most factory KaBooms. So you would be wise to stick to 165 grains or lower. 45s life starts at 185! Most departments I know of use 135 grain for duty ammo. So not much difference in the 124/125 grain 9mm, except for on target hits is much better with the 9mm.

I used the 40 and carried one for my department for a couple of years in the early 2000s. Damn, has it been that long ago???? Anyways. Had a SA XD40 Tactical. It was my duty weapon and I use it for IDPA and our club's weekly fun matches. Back when ammo for it was $7 a box of 50 and it was good shooting stuff from a small ammo manufacture I had the pleasure of knowing and learning from. I switched to a Glock G35 when everyone in my department just had to have a Glock. I saw two KaBooms with factory ammo within a month. My G35 came apart at an approximate round count of 5000. I was shooting just at power factor and it was factory loaded ammo. I left the 40 behind and Glocks in anything other than 9mm. Today's 40 has better ammo and its cases are much better. But nothing I would want to have in a polymer weapon.

[Fatdaddy]

The biggest reason I like the 40 is capacity compared to the same size gun in 45.
It's also in my opinion a better stopper than the 9 and close to or equal to the 45acp due to the velocity it achieves with a heavier bullet than the 9mm.
Recoil is mild and very comparable to 9mm and 45acp as well.
I've got nothing against 9mm and 45acp but my carry is a G23 bobtail (G27 with X-grip), nothing wrong with wrong with X2 the capacity in the same size platform compared to 45acp.
When folks say "What does the 40 do that the 45 doesn't?"....gives you a margin of error which could save your skin one day.

I've got all 3 and enjoy shooting them as much as the other, BTW.

[Animal]

I think I've gravitated to calibers that offer low pressure without sacrificing stopping power. I get excited about load data in 45acp that generates only 17,000CUP without sacrificing stopping power. I get even more excited about my .44 special loads that give less than 15,000CUP that deliver one-stop punches. This is the same reason I like .38special.
I've only been handloading/casting for a couple of years now, but I have greatly found favor in these cartridges. As a handloader, I feel more comfortable using mixed lots of brass for these lower pressure cartridges.
When I load for magnum or other calibers that rely on high pressures like the 9mm or 40s&w, I find it hard to relax and enjoy the process knowing that minor differences in each round can result in poorer consistency.
Now, when I couple my preference of the low pressure 45acp, .38spl, .44spl with their long proven history of being effective threat stoppers, I have a hard time justifying the 9mm, 40sw and 10mm. I'm sure they are great firearms and I hope I never find myself on the wrong end of one, this is just were my handloading journey has taken me.

[Silver Jack Hammer]

Animal: Good post.

[3leggedturtle]

I have the Ruger P-series in 9mm, 40 and 45. Figure might as well have the whole set so i dont have to think to hard about which caliber to shoot that day!

[Lefty Red]

Animal: Good post.

Ditto!

[Lefty Red]

I have the Ruger P-series in 9mm, 40 and 45. Figure might as well have the whole set so i dont have to think to hard about which caliber to shoot that day!

I wish I had all three in the P series! Working on getting them all in the SR series. Wish the magazines were as cheap as the P series!
Jerry

[garym1a2]

You can load 40 down with most guns and have a nice low recoil load. I have done over 15000 rounds this way.

I think I've gravitated to calibers that offer low pressure without sacrificing stopping power. I get excited about load data in 45acp that generates only 17,000CUP without sacrificing stopping power. I get even more excited about my .44 special loads that give less than 15,000CUP that deliver one-stop punches. This is the same reason I like .38special.
I've only been handloading/casting for a couple of years now, but I have greatly found favor in these cartridges. As a handloader, I feel more comfortable using mixed lots of brass for these lower pressure cartridges.
When I load for magnum or other calibers that rely on high pressures like the 9mm or 40s&w, I find it hard to relax and enjoy the process knowing that minor differences in each round can result in poorer consistency.
Now, when I couple my preference of the low pressure 45acp, .38spl, .44spl with their long proven history of being effective threat stoppers, I have a hard time justifying the 9mm, 40sw and 10mm. I'm sure they are great firearms and I hope I never find myself on the wrong end of one, this is just were my handloading journey has taken me.

[bouncer50]

The reason i wrote this post some of my area police department are going back to 45 acp and get rid of the 40 caliber. One cop i talk to said he likes the 45 better.

[Animal]

The reason i wrote this post some of my area police department are going back to 45 acp and get rid of the 40 caliber. One cop i talk to said he likes the 45 better.

Lots of different calibers with lots of different advantages are being used. But I think the .45 caliber wound cavity is tough to replace/ignore. Some calibers seem to make more sense under certain circumstances, but I'm not sure there is ever a time LE and Special Ops guys see the .45acp as bad idea.

[alg3205]

I love my 45's and 9mm's. Got a bunch of 1911 type pistols, a Springfield SD and a 1955 S&W. I love my nines, got a Luger, P-38, Hi-Power and CZ-75. However I found a deal on a Sig 229 in 40, I hate adding a new caliber to the reloading mix, but I didn't look back, I love my 40. I cast for all of these, the cost per box of ammo being very reasonable. Did I tell you about my revolvers? I love my revolvers. Sounds like a song I once heard. They are all fun to shoot and learn to master.

[Tackleberry41]

Its alot like the 9mm-45 debate, it is all going to come down to what you like. I never went for the debate, I had and liked both. I know people who simply dont like 40. Will a 40 do anything 9 or 45 wont do, no not really. But a 40 will throw 9mm weight bullets a bit faster than a 9 will with almost the same capacity. You cant really shoot 45 weight bullets out of a 40, but the numbers are really close on the common weights they do use. I didnt have a 40 for a long time, not because I didnt like it, just didnt buy any pistols for a while, and ones I did were odd balls like a tokarev.

I bought a mechtech upper in 40, which was where I started, a longer barrel you will get more out of a 40 than you can a 45. 45 longer barrel really doesnt do anything, 40 with the higher pressure you will get more velocity. I played with heavy 200gr going subsonic, had to mess with it, as loading manuals are all based on pistol barrels. Struggled to get cast 180gr subsonic, that barrel length really adds some velocity.

[Love Life]

I look at this great debate this way:

A) I wouldn't want to get shot by any of the calibers
B) Can't miss fast enough to win (not sure who 1st said that, but I can't take credit for it)
C) Get on the trigger and stay on the trigger until the threat is stopped
D) Holes kill stuff. Things/people tend to stop what they are doing when you start shooting them

There is no written or unwritten rule that requires you to only shoot once so the whole "One shot stop" thingy is lost on me as well.

As for the paper/target aspect of it, I shoot what is comfortable. While the 9mm and 45 loaded to the gills are quite comfortable for me to shoot in sub compacts, I do not like shooting the 40 at all.

So, what will the 40 do that the 45 won't? Nothing really. Fat and slow vs Sort of thick and sort of fast.

[BossMaverick]

This is my opinion on the subject: 9mm, .40, and .45, and most other handgun rounds are poor performers. Handguns take a ton of skill to fire accurately, even more skill to fire accurate under stress, and even if you manage to get a hit, it still depends on a relatively slow bullet to expand to cause a mediocre channel of tissue damage (compared to a rifle round or shotgun with buckshot or slugs). So which is less horrible of the round? According to ballistic gel testing and case studies *using modern high quality hollow point ammunition*, there isn't much of a difference between the three *using modern high quality hollow point ammunition*. If this was 20 years ago, there would be more a difference in the rounds due to the lackluster HP options of the day.

If you are looking for modern benefits of the .40 round, there are still some good points to be made about it. During the last ammo hoarding craze, .40 seemed to be the most commonly found round that you could find in stores. Factory .40 ammo is significantly cheaper than .45 ammo while only moderately more than 9mm. If you reload, .40 brass is extremely common and cheap. Unlike 9mm, .40 is a round that will make easily major power in competitions and it still offers more capacity and gun choices than .45's. Also, my latest concern is the lack of lead WW's to make cheap bullets, so .40 would also require less lead per bullet than .45's to help conserve my WW reserves.

The biggest downside to the .40 is that it really takes the right gun for it to be as comfortable to shoot as a 9mm or .45. It needs a gun that was first designed for the round (like the S&W 4006 and M&P40) instead of a 9mm gun that was chambered in the .40 (like the first few generations of Glock 22).

[xacex]

Over the years I have owned a couple of 40's. I bought my first one and was unimpressed with the accuracy. So, I traded it and got a colt 1911 delta elite in 10mm. I wish I still had that gun. Some years later I got a glock 22. Hated it! Same issues with accuracy I had with the first one. Went to 45 ACP, and have just let them breed in the safe. 45 works, and the brass lasts a long time. I find I an more accurate with it than 40 cal. I have added some 9mm pistols, and like them too. They shoot straight for me. I am not worried about penetration or killing power because the all work. I am more concerned about what shoots better in my hand, and that is 9mm,10mm, and 45. Most recently I have picked up o the 357 sig. I can take that 40 brass that is left on the ground and use it for lower power non-reloadable 357 sig for shooting in areas I will not get my brass back. So far it is doung well for me. Feels more like how my 10mm did, and has some impressive range. Use what works for you.

[Groo]

Groo here
I have had a "few" , only one I found accurate. [ an EAA Gold Team]
All the other 40's I have left got changed to 357sig. [ as it came later, the "bugs" were worked out]
From what I have observed , the 45 , due to the low pressure, is easier to shoot. [ a slow push]
Where as the 40's ,of the same weight/speed are of much higher pressure.[ a quick snap]
You can talk about mag numbers , weight, speed,etc but only hits count and the one you hit best with is the best choice.