About that 40 cal jager... is it me or is the 40 cal on its way out? It just doesn't seem to be the hyped super bullet it was made out to be anymore.
There is nothing wrong with the 40; it is an excellent duty/self defense round.
Everybody (or mostly everybody) has heard about the FBI shooting in the 80's that led to the adaption of the 10mm, quickly followed by stepping down to the 40 S&W. What isn't mentioned much about that shooting (aside from the fact the FBI guys sadly made some bad mistakes that men before and since them have also made) was that the FBI had already been warned by other agencies that those particular 9mm rounds were not performing as they were supposed to. Winchester had responded to concerns this bullet would over-penetrate by changing its performance so it would expand more rapidly and not overpenetrate. The end result was this was now a bullet that didn't penetrate enough. For some reason or other, despite the word going around, the FBI apparently said "Whatever..."
I am not and never have been employed by the FBI, in case somebody thinks I have the inside track. If any of the above is wrong, feel free to correct that.
Anyways... after that, everybody got really serious about bullet design and terminal ballistics. Or at least, the big players did and just about everybody else got sucked along in their prop blast. The IWBA and others got heavily into play and some serious, methodical development and testing started happening.
So they were looking at ammunition in all the service chamberings. However, while everything was getting improvements, because the majority of the police forces out there were by then carrying 9mms, the 9mm got and continues to get a disparate amount of attention and development. So terminal bullet performance in all service chamberings has dramatically improved in all calibers - but in the 9mm even more than all the rest because of the extra effort invested there.
So now we have very similar performance across all the chamberings, including through intermediate barriers. So the performance advantage that the 40 offered over the 9mm of the late '80's, 90's, etc doesn't exist anymore because... well... this ain't your Daddy's 9mm anymore.
Other factors that are important come into play. A 9mm is easier to shoot more quickly and more rapidly than a 40 S&W. All of us that have BHPs in 9 and 40 flavour can feel a difference, even if it is miniscule. When you don't shoot a lot because shooting ain't really that interesting, it's just part of your job, it becomes more obvious. So a lot of departments start seeing qualification scores improve when their members are shooting 9mms versus 40's.
Then there's the wear and tear on pistols. Apparently, 40's wear out faster than 9mms.
And of course, given a pistol of the same size, in 9mm it will hold three or four more rounds than when in 40 configuration.
There's probably other stuff as well, but that's the general background for the drift back to the 9mm. 2015 is not 1986. And why would we be surprised - almost thirty years have passed, with people being hired,having spent working careers involved in improving service ammunition, and retired.
I wouldn't leave the 40 for the 9mm except I have other reasons that don't have anything to do with terminal bullet performance and useability. In places where furry critters are also a potential problem, the 40 with specialty loads will do what the 9mm can't.
So with that in mind, if I was in a pickle and had a 38 Spl, a 9mm, a .357 Sig, a 40, a 45 ACP, etc., I wouldn't worry one iota about which one ended up in my hands. Provided, however, it was loaded with the proven service loads that are available.
