[Levian]

I personally don’t care for the round but I never thought it was as big a deal of control as some made it out to be. Back not too long ago you could pick up used.40 pistols pretty cheap. I think some police departments still use the 40. Some older history:

An Official Journal Of The NRA | The .40 S&W

Sometimes described as a shortened 10 mm, the .40 was developed as a compromise between size and capacity.

www.americanrifleman.org

Yeah, It's a little on the snappy side and starts to get slightly unpleasant after around 150 rounds or so. But easily manageable, and still fun on range day if you're not going for high round counts. You can still find used police trade-in .40s on the cheap from time to time. My LGS seems to knock a lot off the price of .40 S&W anything, so used .40 S&W are often particularly cheap. I was kind of on the fence about the round until I fired it out of a 1911, it's a whole other animal out of a gun with a heavier slide that's hammer fired. Kind of has a push like a .45 ACP.

 

[Levian]

I never found the 40 S&W to be snappy at all. My carry guns include 10mm which I find very manageable.

I have shot a Glock G20 with Buffalo Bore 180 grain JHP and a G21 with Winchester PDX1 230 grain 45 ACP in each hand at the same time. It was very hard to tell the difference in felt recoil. I have done the same thing with my 1911s in 10mm and 45 ACP.

I also shoot 41 magnum, 44 magnum, and 454 Casull handguns.

Well, no if your base of comparison is the 44 magnum it's not snappy. But when you compare it to 9mm and .45 ACP it does have a sharper recoil than either of those 2 rounds. Particularly so in a striker fired pistol. It's a bit of an oddball in that regard because if you just set the 3 side by side you would think recoil would go 9mm > 40 S&W > 45 ACP but the trend is more 9mm > 45 ACP > 40 S&W. It kinda breaks the logical progression.

I like it for what it is, and it's my second favorite carry round. But I also acknowledge that I'm an oddball because I also like the 44 magnum (recently got one just for the fun of having a big bore magnum revolver).