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Egad! On closer inspection, it appears that I overlooked a little bit of schmutz next to the chamber the last time I cleaned the gun. I have just rectified that, and I feel SO much better!Excaliber wrote:From your picture it does look like the H&K provides much better support near the case head than what's found on the Glock where the feed ramp meets the chamber. That may account for the fact that I have not yet come across any "kaboom" accounts involving H&K's.
Then I stand corrected. Your story is the first "first hand" one I've seen. All I've seen before was generalizations on this board, but no specifics.Excaliber wrote:There have been a great many such reports, and the issue is summarized in the following Wikipdeia article. Scroll down below the cartridge background info for an outline of the problem.
My son had a first hand experience with this in a Glock 23. He didn't enjoy the experience, which blew the magazine out of the gun and numbed his hand. The exterior portion of the slide stop was never found. Fortunately, he received only minor cuts and no permanent damage. He was using reloads at the time. I suspect but can't prove that the projectile was set back into the case mouth as the round encountered the feed ramp, which sharply increased the internal pressure when the round was fired. He doesn't use .40S&W reloads at all anymore.
Mind you, I'm not a huge supporter of the .40 (my daily carry is a .45), but I do own, and occasionally carry, a .40 cal in the form of an H&K USP Compact. Perhaps it's true that the cartridge answers a question that fewer people are asking today, but you have to remember that it was developed because A) the 9mm offerings at the time left something to be desired; B) high capacity magazines for duty weapons were still desirable; C) many found the 10mm round too difficult to handle for "non-enthusiasts;" and D) it still wasn't the "evil .45" so feared by the politically correct. In my opinion, it is a limited round because it is already loaded to near maximum pressures in the standard offerings; but that being said, it is still a very effective round, and it still bridges the gap between the 9mm and the .45 ACP quite nicely (notice that you have to load your 9mm to +P pressures to get into the .40-.45 caliber performance range).solaritx wrote:.40 caliber: a defense round with no purpose. The current 9mm equals the stopping power and this round was developed because of political correctness because some lawyers talked that the .45 was inhumane. bull, bull and more bull. I have also seen more catastrophic gun malfunctions in .40 than in any other caliber.