More reason to hate the 9mm

Blackfive has a post up about personal weapon use in Iraq. It's a little graphic, so if you're easily bothered, don't read it. But one of the things that caught my eye in the post was the ineffectiveness of the military's M9 pistol (9mm).

The M9 has got to be one of the worst pistols I've ever fired, in my opinion. First of all, I don't like the 9mm round. I don't hate it with the passion of Kim du Toit, but from what I've seen, they tried to come up with a compromise between the .38 Special and the .45 ACP. They failed. In the M9, they failed horribly. It has a steel slide, but an aluminum frame, so there's no weight to counter the slide action. The 9X19mm round has a low knockdown rate when compared to other rounds. In fact, the only good thing I can say about the M9 pistol is that it's easy to disassemble and clean. Other than that, it would be the last gun I would use.

So what would I suggest? Any one of the many M1911 .45 ACP clones would work. Kimber has several good pistols in that caliber. Hell, Kimber has a .357 Mag semi-suto pistol that would be better than the 9mm. The safety officer at my place of employment carries a Glock .40. After talking with several police officers at a former job, he discovered that when perps get hit with a .40 caliber slug, they go down and don't get back up. I would limit the choices to .45, .40, and .357, just for simplicities sake. Find a gun that takes abuse, fires for days on end (something the M9 doesn't do, in my experience), and carries one hell of a punch.

Anybody have any suggestions?