Rash of Shield .40 Kabooms?

[GardoneVT]

Oh, I understand the "scope of the problem" quite well; uber-derpness, on several levels. IOW, nothing new. These guys aren't the first, and they won't be the last.

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Behold the words of the species "Homo Cleetus" :

"Incredible product. In a range full of .45s, .40s, 9mms, etc, the roar of this cartridge had people turning their heads and coming over to my port to ask what the hell I was shooting. The recoil was just the slightest bit more than standard .40 loads and the accuracy is phenomenal. For a cartridge that delivers more at the muzzle than any other auto-loader out there, you should not hesitate to try this round - thanks Underwood!"

[ST911]

Despite the hoopla, there doesn't appear to be anything in those posts that indicates there is an inherent problem in the 40 Shield. Nonetheless, I'm sure it's the next big thing for the interwebs.

Having seen a lot of 40 failures over the years, best chance to avoid issues is to shoot ammo from trusted names loading the 180gr at ~950-1000fps in new cases.

[Wolvee]

I've never really been a big S&W fan and after having 3 of my own Smiths returned with the "Meets spec" BS letter I decided that I wouldn't buy another one. (MP45 deformed dust cover, 442 out of time, performance center 627 with a crooked barrel). To be fair they did take care of my M&P9 that was having striker bounce/failure to fire and an M&P15 w/ a defective barrel.

I think they are a hit or mis company that makes "good enough" guns. I'm not sure I believe they would deny a kaboom design defect unless they had no other legal choice. I've met some pretty good guys that worked for Smith although everyone I've met in the industry says politics within the companies are just as ruthless and closed door as in national politics. Par for the course I guess. It's a tough industry.

The Shield is a good 9mm and the need for .40 is completely foreign to me. It's not my thing. I think the Hype around the Shield was part solid internal striker design and part insanely good marketing.

[Casual Friday]

"And so begins a new era of gun store derper folklore, the Shield Kaboom, formerly known as the Glock Kaboom..."

[MGW]

Completely unrelated thought but I just realized that the XDs .40 didn't come out this year. And no one noticed.

2nd unrelated thought. There is tons of .40 on the shelves of every store I've been to the sells ammo.

My buddy has a Shield in 40. It doesn't seem to have any of the weak ejection patterns that the 9mm is experiencing. It chucks brass with authority and very consistently. Felt recoil is also much higher. The only reason I can think of to carry a Shield in .40 would be to meet a policy of BUG caliber meeting service caliber. Other than that no thanks.

[ffhounddog]

I just buy 40 in 180 if I have a choice. My wife prefers the 165 grain CCI Blazer since it is a lot like the impulse of the gold dots she uses. When I buy ammo for my 40's that I have less and less of them I get 180's because I have a lot of 180 grain Rangers that I got cheap from back in the day.

Now those 135 grain Tritons those things hurt to shoot for long periods of time. Going from those back to 180 is like going from 40 to 9 in my opinion.

[Tamara]

2nd unrelated thought. There is tons of .40 on the shelves of every store I've been to the sells ammo.

That's the reason I bought the M&P357, although stocks of 9mm started to improve before I got around to ordering a .40 barrel for it...

[MGW]

That's the reason I bought the M&P357, although stocks of 9mm started to improve before I got around to ordering a .40 barrel for it...

The operator of one of the blogs I follow keeps a Glock 27 for the same reason. Has a 9mm and 357 conversion barrel for it. So make that two reasons to own a .40 that actually makes sense to me.

[ToddG]

"And so begins a new era of gun store derper folklore, the Shield Kaboom, formerly known as the Glock Kaboom..."

Anyone who thinks the Glock kB! thing was made up is crazy. I personally witnessed a stock Glock shooting factory 9mm ammo kB! because older guns could and would fire slightly out of battery under the wrong unlucky circumstances. There were a bunch of bad theories put forth and no doubt it didn't happen as often as the internet made it sound but there was a very real issue.

[TheTrevor]

Echoing what everyone had to say about "no such thing as +P 40SW"... I'm only comfortable shooting full-house (>450ft-lb) 40SW loads out of guns designed specifically for such. There have been too many issues with full-power ammo in 9mm designs converted to 40SW for it to be a coincidence.

At that, I'm not even referring to the Underwood kB specials. Certain factory high-power loads like the Win 155gr Silvertips (which I used for a long time) are in the hot zone at 500ft-lb while being within SAAMI spec. Probably by 10psi or something, but within spec, definitely hot enough that I want as much safety margin in the gun design as possible.

In a Shield or similar? Noooo thank you. These days I pay attention to ballistics and use 180gr 40SW loads which deliver proven results without beating up my wrists and causing flinch issues.