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I don't reload much in the Summer if I can help it because my bench is in the garage and humans will expire after 5 seconds in my garage in the Summer. Ok, not really, but it's damned hot. I try to do all my reloading for the year in the Winter and Spring.

Today is a beautiful day, sunny and mild. Thought I would start loading up some of my 40S&W gaming load since I ran out last month.

Spent last night and the early part of this morning cleaning it up, and adjusting all my dies and what not.

I went to seat the first primer, and nothing. Ok, try it again. No primer. What the heck?

The plastic piece that holds the rod that the primer "slider" uses to move back and forth is broken, so the rod is just flopping around and not letting the slider make it's full length of travel.

Damnit.

I'll be calling Hornady on Monday.

I guess it wouldn't be a bad idea to pick up a hand primer. I could have gotten a couple hundred rounds done today, and that would get me through the next match. I'm going to pick one up.

UPDATE:

Hornady came through. Part is in the mail with no charge to me.

IDPA this time.  After my last range day I wanted to just do two things: slow down and call my shots.  

I met up with Hsoi and another instructor from KR Training this morning at the range.

Hsoi has a new M&P to try out, and I just needed some trigger time in general.

I started out shooting my M&P Pro, and switched to my M&P after a while. I got to shoot the M&P at 25 yards off a rest, and it turned out to be not as accurate as I thought, roughly 6" group at 25 yards. They said I was going too fast to gauge accuracy, but the sight picture was good, and that's how I always shoot from a rest, so I think that's a pretty good representation.

Hsoi's new gun was also grouping on the order of 6", until he tried 124 grain bullets (his is a 9mm) and then it tightened up a lot. I was shooting 165 grain bullets (mine is a 40 S&W), and I'm wondering if 185 grain wouldn't do better in mine.

I got to try the FAST drill. I sucked. It didn't help any that my gun is shooting low, but I can't blame it all on that. Lot of trigger slapping, lots of rushing things. Also had a problem getting a good grip on the gun, it was wobbly at first.

I probably won't do the drill much, but it did point out that I need to be better at coming from the holster and making a precise shot. That's not something I am used to doing. At a match, I just want to come out fast. If I get a C on that shot, it's probably not a big deal and in many cases the difference between a fast C and a slow A is not that much.

There's always something to work on I guess.

You can see Karl's comparison here

I've owned all of them except the XDm, so it's interesting to me.

Personally, I think the M&P wins, but it doesn't win "out of the box" as they say. To me it definitely needs some love from Apex Tactical to cure the trigger reset.

Sure, you can get trigger jobs on all of them, and if we're just talking about which gun has the best aftermarket trigger it would probably be the Glock, but as a whole I like the M&P better.

These are all my opinions, of course, but the XD feels very blocky and the Glock is not exactly slim either. The XDm appears to add more blockiness and things to snag your shirt on. I imagine that if you got your calipers out there wouldn't be a whole of difference between all four of them, but the M&P is better where it counts

Having said all that, the gun I would recommend to someone wanting their first handgun would be a Glock 17. You can't really go wrong with any of them, but the Glock 17 is the standard by which all these pistols are judged. It's simple to operate and has a great reputation for reliability. Most people will just need to practice and clean it occasionally to have a good carry gun.

If someone is really unnerved by carrying a loaded gun with just a trigger safety, I would recommend the XD, as it adds the grip safety which is mostly unobtrusive. (Though Karl does point out some disadvantages to having one.) I did find that in 1 out of 1000 times (+/-) of practice drawing from concealment and dry firing that I would manage to not engage the grip safety properly. In all those times the fault could be remedied by squeezing harder.

So, I may have drank the M&P coolaid, but I still can see advantages to the other models. (I also want to say that both of my M&P's are well under 6" at 25 yards, but I do know that it's not uncommon to get one that suffers from inconsistent lockup and will show vertical stringing in shot groups. I imagine that Smith and Wesson would fix these for free, but that's just a guess based on how their customer service has treated me when they warrantied my Pro's barrel.)

The new striker did the trick. 200 rounds and no light primer strikes.

I swapped the shell on my MTAC holster and my new carry setup is complete.

Last week I installed Apex Tactical's DCAEK and RAM on my new M&P 40. Since I've done this once before on my 40 Pro the install was quick and easy, and I'm happy to report that the sear spring plunger did not exit the universe this time.

The trigger pull is sweet now. Smith and Wesson should buy or license these parts from Apex and make them the OEM parts. I wouldn't say the stock parts are bad, but the Apex setup is just a shitload better.

At the same time I did that I also installed the old striker spring from my M&P pro hoping that would fix my light primer strikes (it only has a couple hundred rounds on it). It did make an improvement, I went from 4 light primer strikes in a session to 1, but it's still not fixed.

So I came home from the range and ordered a new striker and extra power spring from Speed Shooter Specialties. (A brief side note: SSS doesn't know me from Adam, and I get no benefit from them for touting them here, but they have the quickest shipping hands down of any gun place I have ordered from.)

I was able to compare the two strikers and the original striker was a hair shorter than the new one I received from SSS. It looked like someone had rounded off the nub on the original striker. Given the low round count, I don't know how that happens. I'm hoping it was just an out of spec striker from the factory. (I opted not to install the extra power spring, after comparing the two strikers.)

I'm going to try and get up to the range this weekend to give it what I hope to be the final test before making it my carry gun, but I feel confident it's fixed now.

Normally I take a lot of pics of my new gun, but if you've seen one M&P 40, you've pretty much seen all of them so I won't bother.

I've been carrying my M&P 40 Pro for a while now, but I thought it would probably be better not to carry my competition gun, so I decided to get a plain ol' M&P 40.

Went up to the range this morning and shot about 150 rounds to break it in. I had 4 light primer strikes, not what I expected at all. It's a little snappier than the Pro, the pull is not as smooth (the Pro has an APEX competition kit installed) and the trigger reset is different, but other than that it shoots about the same. I know, it sounds vastly different, but it's really not.

I was hoping I could just leave it alone, but 4 light primer strikes out of 150 rounds is not going to cut it for a carry gun. Hell, it doesn't cut it for any kind of gun, but especially not for self defense purposes. In addition I short stroked the trigger rest a couple of times, so because of that APEX's duty kit will be installed.

I've probably done a 360 here, but I really liked the 3-dot sights. After a large number of IPSC matches, and a fair amount of night matches, I've found I really don't care for fiber optic sights, night sights, Big Dot sights, etc. anymore. Sometimes simple is best.

I'm about to order some parts, and will report back after they are installed.

USPSA mailed me my new classification. I'm not sure how, but I moved up to C.

First match since July I think. It's just been too damned hot to stand around in the sun for 4 hours.

It was weird. The first 2 stages were pretty good. I felt fairly competitive even. I was expecting to be a bit rusty since I haven't shot at all in 3 months. Nothing. Not even just a trip to the range.

But then came a stage with some brutal long shots covered by no shoot targets. 3 misses.

Then there was the classifier, another 3 misses. The one handed shooting was kicking my butt and that is usually something I am really good at. The rust had shown itself.

I just left after that. I felt disgusted. I showed up early to help set up, so I don't feel bad about leaving early.

So, I'm going to practice at least 3 times before the next match, and one handed shooting will be one of the things I do.