Euros use 9mm as NATO standard with a few notable exceptions like 5.7mm and a few other oddball rounds. Some Euro LEO may use smaller calibers as a duty round but thats their problem IMHO. Europe has a lot of "strange" defensive ideas. But again thats a Euro thing and I cant relate. But Euro military personnel I've worked with certainly wouldnt be comfortable with sless than 9mm and the European SWAT team HRT equivilents use the same or similar bullets as the USA. After all a lot of the best pistols out there are imported from Europe. They know whats up for sure. Never considered porting. I'd just carry a different gun rather than deal with the aftermarket hassle.

>>Glocks are among my favorites actually. But I prefer their compact Glock 19 due to my hands, its big enough for open carry yet can still be easily concealed, has loads of firepower, tons of accessories and the ammo is common with a lot of my other weapons. Its almost a perfect multirole handgun right out of the box. If Glock would make a Scandium version then it would be perfect...;) << I sold my Glock 21 a while back, but I'd have to agree with you on the 19. If I were to ever pick up another Glock (not top of my gun to-do list, but could happen eventually), it would definitely be the 19.

I have the 19 already. Got the laser sight guide rod and custom trigger. The K9 Elite displaced it though and then the PM9 displaced that. Still like it a lot though. Also have the G30. I had a G26(sold regretably) and G23(sold due to damage). If I buy another Glock it will be the G34 and then G26 again. Next on the to do list though is a P220.

Geez, DA, nothing tight - ISTR a thread here or elsewhere (Kim du Toit's blog?) saying that some line of scandium frames (a S&W revolver IIRC) was rated for maybe 5000 rounds and was failing at half that. Please don't sue me, but if you are thinking hard about scandium, maybe you would want to google on reliability and failures yourself. I would now sign off and do so but I know you are entirely capable. Certainly other alloy frames in the past have had issues, it is not beyond belief, is it? For a light duty or special purpose weapon I would look into aluminum, titanium, scandium, magnesium, plastic or whatever's clever, but for mission-critical applications I would certainly tend to favor good old steel. But that's just me. And I can be convinced with data, I am not an alloy bigot-hardly. Just throwing it out there, take it for what it's worth. Googling now, I am seeing references to "early models" and to Taurus rather than S&W, but some hits on S&W too. One as follows: "S&W Scandium Revolvers - THR S&W Scandium Revolvers Handguns: Revolvers. ... and a structural failure (center pin sheared flush with the ejector star) within the first 300 rounds. ... - 52k - Cached - Similar pages" But anyone, or any mfgr., can have a bad day.

"a structural failure (center pin sheared flush with the ejector star) within the first 300 rounds. ..." Thats not a Scandium S&W if I read that post correctly. Its a Taurus Ti Revolver. Details...:(

Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to be wrong, Darth. I have sent out a feeler to an expert source to try and skim some gossip. Do you know the rated life of the 340? BTW - not Kahr that was the pint-size .45 - Kimber. D'oh! Speaking of details...

Dont know the rated life of a 340PD but the S&W stamp on a revolver goes a long way with me. I actually have a pint sized Kimber Ultra Carry. Picked it up when I was stationed at Ft Knox many moons ago. Its a nice gun BUT...its a B to field strip and take down.

What can I say, more power and all luck to you. In IT we never buy the 1.0 version, and generally after any new software release we like to wait 6-12 months to adopt it so we can read up on all the bugs and get the bugs fixed. I would certainly look to your experience in purchasing such a pistol in future; thanks for being an early adopter! Is the Kimber worse than any other ACP pattern piece? Why?

"What can I say, more power and all luck to you. In IT we never buy the 1.0 version" Well one thing is S&W History. Some manufacturers command such respect and S&W is definately one of them. "Is the Kimber worse than any other ACP pattern piece? Why?" Do you have an email addy? I'll fwd you something.

"at" earthlink "dot" net History is great, but tell Steinbrenner that! Seriously, I understand that Colt's quality control has been widely considered to be slipping for a while, and what better name than Colt? I notice everyone is talking about Springfield .45s and Glock .45s and Para-Ordnance .45s but I'm not hearing anything about Colt .45s these days. Why is that?