+1. When I took my M&P40 1.0 out of the nightstand last week and to the range, I was reminded how nice the gun is to shoot, even with full power 180s. If my stash of HST and reloading components wasn't so heavily weighted to 9x19, I'd be fine with carrying the M&P40 instead. My guess is that the caliber's "40 Snap and Whip" reputation comes from shooting it in platforms into which the cartridge was shoehorned.Originally Posted by KevH
That is very likely true. It did get put into a lot of guns originally designed as 9mms.
Due no doubt to the dual recoil spring. The front sights would track a crazy eight path whenever i shot the USP....The original USP mitigated recoIil quite well, but had sort of a funky slide impulse.
A pilot buddy got the USP40C LEM aircrew deal (are they still doing that?) and it was the first LEM I had ever shot. I remember enjoying shooting it and it planted the LEM seed.
I didn't care for the 40SW recoil in USPc, SIG Pro or Glocks, but it's been a bunch of years since I've shot any of them.
My buddy's M&P, on the other hand, is very pleasant.
If you forced me into a .40 gun, I'd give a hard look at the P229. I enjoyed SIGs.
David S.
An odd desire of mine is a Gen5 Glock 23 with a well done thumb safety. Why? I don’t know, but it is.
The way I remember it, my first H&K was a USPc .40 with night sights and LEM. Eventually, I picked up a USPc 9. One day, I pulled the USPc 9, the M11-A1, and a 6946 out of the safe, and made a table of measurements. Decided that the USPc was more compact than the others in a lot of ways and in the ways it was bigger, I could live with it. So it's been my focus for CC and semi training since then. Then H&K made 17-round P30/VP9 mags that fit with just an X-grip adaptor and 20-round mags that fit with a lightly modified X-grip adaptor. So I can have a 38-round loadout with one spare mag. Or stick with a standard USPc 13-round mag with the floorplate radiused to minimize printing. Ten-round mags are good, if I want to take it to a place where that matters. I enjoy the irony of the situation that I live in a free state and the pistol I choose for carry is still on the roster and available to my friends in California, only with neutered capacity. I recently sold the USPc .40 for a minor "improvement to the collection." Funds may get plowed into a backup USPc 9 at some point. I am down to one .40 launcher, and that's the USP FS.
I have done the detail strip on USPs several times now, and I don't find it to be challenging. A little fiddly, but not a big deal once you get your head around it and figure out what tools to use for what. It's basically a puzzle that has to be assembled in the correct order, which is not obvious until you've gone through the process a few times and can remember it. But IMO, the complexity of it as discussed on the web is overblown. Nothing is staked or pressed, at least in the frame. A couple roll pins in the slide, but other than that, it's basically the assembly sequence that holds it all in. Nothing else is even a press fit. Overall, vastly simpler and easier to service than a 1911. It's strange to me how people who have done 1911s a few times seem to think they're learnable, and the effort to learn them is just a badge of self respect and discipline, but USPs are too complicated. As if the fact that it's modern and polymer means it must be as simple as a Glock. The USP and derivative fire control system is complex in a way that's fully justified by the modularity it provides. Very few pistols can be configured to operate with such a variety of completely different manuals of arms anything like as easily, and the mix-and-match of features and characteristics that's possible is much greater than anything else. UNIVERSAL Self-loading Pistol.
A third-gen S&W is considerably more complex and difficult to detail strip and reassemble, but it has precious little modularity. It was produced with several different manuals of arms, but most guns are locked into just one of them without doing some machining. There are reports from someone on this site whose agency ran them that the expected service life of a 9mm third-gen frame is around 30k rounds before cracks can be expected to appear. There are reports of USP FS guns going ~300k in .45 Auto and >500k in 9mm.
A DA/SA classic Sig is simpler than an H&K and can have a much sweeter DA press. The internals do their thing in an elegant ballet dreamed up by some Swiss watch making genius. I also greatly prefer the geometry of the trigger shoe itself, as well as the overall ergonomics. But your only real variation in how it should work is a full swap over to DAK. There are SAO versions, but they involve significantly different machining of the frame, and there is no mixability between them and DA/SA or DAK. Also, the slide catch and decocker are backward from most guns, so there's a hazard beyond the usual loss of performance associated with platform switching if you try to mix training on classic Sigs and other pistols.
My hypothesis is that the craptacularity of the USP's DA press lies with the hammer axle. Logically, the shaft on which the hammer pivots, with the hammer's pivot hole having a particular ID, should be round, smooth, and sized appropriately to mate with the hammer's pivot hole. The USP hammer axle is none of these things. One of these days, I may draw up a replacement and figure out what alloy to have it machined from, and find someone with a screw machine to make a few dozen.
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Not another dime.
A LEM USPc with thumb safety is very appealing - I had no idea that was possible.
Ken
BBI: ...”you better not forget the safe word because shit's about to get weird”...
revchuck38: ...”mo' ammo is mo' betta' unless you're swimming or on fire.”
easy parts swap if you are up for doing the armorer thing on the USP's, Mrs. Fatdog's gun is the USP/c 9 with the ambi version
If I ever have a tragic boating accident and have to start over from scratch, this might be a serious contender. I shoot my LEM P2000sk much better than I ever would have expected.
Ken
BBI: ...”you better not forget the safe word because shit's about to get weird”...
revchuck38: ...”mo' ammo is mo' betta' unless you're swimming or on fire.”
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