I was formerly a .40 hater and maybe YOU say it makes no sense but it comes off a little pompous if you have figured out everything and leave nobody to come to their own conclusions since clearly, you have made the ultimate determinations...
In days gone by, the Smith & Wesson 10xx series was a highly capable platform for the 10mm and it was purely obvious that S&W ended production of them because they saw their own 10xx pistols taking away from their project baby, a cartridge that was supposed to revolutionize the landscape and also carried their name in the .40 S&W.
Why I really didn't like the cartridge was because while the 10mm guns were large frame .45 class guns running a smaller diameter slug, leaving more barrel and more chamber and more gun frame and mass... the .40cal guns were a bigger hole in a 9mm barrel/chamber and shoehorned in to a 9mm sized gun. And what was -THE- most prevalent handloading abomination in the mid-to-late 90's? Guys blowing up .40cal guns. Mostly Glocks, plenty of others, mostly because they were sloppy, stupid handloaders but helped greatly by the .40cal round and pistols that were not "over built" like 10's... but under-built 9mm's with bigger holes and less steel around the chamber.
I quit hating the .40cal as I watched it's popularity fade and I watched Glock engineer (unspoken!) improvements in case head support. Powder and published data sources printed bold-faced warnings to reckless and careless handloaders and eventually, turkeys quit having so many catastrophes.
S&W continued to offer the 10mm on and off in REVOLVERS, so let's make no argument about the pistols "not selling well enough to keep in production..." They made over 50,000 of them and retail was approaching six bills, fat cash in 1992.
I always liked that the mere existence of the FortyCal made component bullets always in high production.
