Big gun performance (in a little gun)

I am a huge fan of carrying enough gun. I have a lot of friends who went the small, single stack route for their carry needs. At my job, the Springfield Armory XDS 9mm is extremely popular. I like the XDS. I have shot just about every one that has came through our firearms program. I find them to be extremely accurate, and a pleasure to shoot with even the hotter +P+ stuff. I just never could wrap my head around carrying a gun with that capacity as a primary means of defense. The guys/gals that chose them, love them.

I’ve always leaned toward the smaller double stack “baby” guns like the Glock 26 and Smith & Wesson M&Pc. I’ve carried a G26 for a number of years, and was pretty happy with it. The thing I didn’t like about the G26 was that some of the magazine extensions, and all of the regular capacity magazines would pinch my fingers when I was shooting them. I eventually started looking at other options.

After a lot of back and forth, I traded for a M&P9c. I found that I could run the little gun almost on par with the larger M&Ps. .25 splits are pretty much the norm. Mine does not suffer from any of the accuracy issues that some of the larger ones do. It doesn’t seem to be real picky on digesting various different types of ammo. Nor is it picky about producing good groups at distance with said ammo. It handles the hotter loads without a lot of chop on the recoil impulse. And best of all … it doesn’t pinch my fingers even with the use of factory 17 rounders. What is not to like? The little guns performance instills confidence in me.

At the end of the day, a lot of these smaller guns can be shot really well. Choose what you like, and train with it. I don’t know if you can go wrong with a little experimentation on what you can get away with as well.