by While I was looking for another picture on Instagram this morning, I stumbled across this one which perfectly illustrates the pistol caliber wars between .45 ACP and 9mm Parabellum. It appears that poor .40 S&W in now being left out in the cold like a red headed step-child. As Michael Bane said in recent podcast, it may well end up as primarily a competition cartridge just like one of my favorites, the .38 Super.
Happy Wednesday!
H/T ENDO
And yet I carry 357 Sig. What am I doing?
I have had several IPSC (think USPSA for the rest of us) competition guns in .38 Super, but for the latest purchase I went with .38 Super Comp.
Probably not a real concern, but the "thing" at the time was stack-lock caused by the vestigial rim on .38 Super Auto on the top cartridge falling behind the rim of the round below, thus locking the gun.
Super Comp solves this "problem" by being rimless.
The cost was about the same for the gun, so the only additional expense was new brass.
As to carry – not here in Oz, but I will admit to having a Glock in .40S&W.
Any idea where the December 2016 NSSF Adjusted NICS check figure is? I can't find it anywhere.
NSSF has them in their members-only section. Looking at the chart, Dec. 2016 is much lower than Dec. 2015. Still, it was the 3rd highest December on record. These stats are sometimes published in their weekly Bullet Points Bulletin.
Strange, if you google hard enough I've always been able to find it. I reached out to membership to see which tiers include access to the Adjusted NICS numbers. Thanks for your response! PS: if you don't mind sharing, roughly how bad a y/y decline was it? 20%+?
Here's exactly what they wrote: The December 2016 NSSF-adjusted National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) figure of 1,845,847 is a decrease of 17.4 percent compared to the December 2015 NSSF-adjusted NICS figure of 2,235,560. For comparison, the unadjusted December 2016 FBI NICS figure of 2,763,115 reflects a 16.5 percent decrease from the unadjusted FBI NICS figure of 3,308,199 in December 2015.
The fourth quarter 2016 NSSF-adjusted National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) figure of 4,861,484 is a decrease of 0.4 percent over the 4,879,489 figure for fourth quarter 2015.  The 2016 annual total of 15,700,471 is a 10.2 percent increase over  the 2015 annual total of 14,244,240.
.357SIG? You are using a necked-down .40, or perhaps a necked-down, shorter 10mm, depending on how you look at it. Or maybe the modern equivalent of a 7.63×25mm Mauser, as used in the Broomhandle Mausers.
In any case, you are using the semiauto pistol moral equivalent of a .41 Magnum. Not quite retro, not quite hipster, sort of a red-headed step child.
But it makes a really loud bang at the range, so everyone there knows you're shooting something special. And it has more rounds than a .357 revolver, which it mimics in power, so that is nice, too. All in all, a fine round.