Smith & Wesson’s Performance Center M&P 45 Shield Part II

So far, this has been what I can only term an agricultural year. My wife and I put in a couple of raised vegetable gardens and some grow bags and we are well on our way to a harvest of potatoes, peppers, corn, onions… three kinds, carrots, beans, strawberries, and some kind of green stuff that looks like horizontal patches of porcupine quills. For the first time in years, all of the fruit trees are producing and if the wild life does not get to them first, we should have pears, peaches and plumbs. If I could only get a plant to produce a good hamburger or steak… virtually anything I am not supposed to eat. I would be lying if I said it isn’t fun; rural living, growing food for the table and wandering out back and shooting firearms when I choose.

Time was taken to shoot the Smith & Wesson Performance Center M&P 45 Shield M2.0 with both factory ammunition and handloads. All and all it did very well. No jams, no failures to fire and the slide locked open on empty even with low velocity target loads. More specifically…

The 45 Shield is a very manageable pistol. Considering its light weight, narrow form and mission, that is a big deal. It won’t make an owner flinch in anticipation of recoil in dire circumstances and it won’t cause proficiency practice avoidance when a few fifty count boxes of ammo are planned for a range session.

ARX, despite eyebrow raising velocity, had the lightest recoil. The  Remington duo, Ultimate Defense and Golden Saber are two of my favorites. They are slow, but they always expand without fragmenting and they penetrate in the 12″ to 14″ range in ballistic gel even when fired from a short barrel handgun. That said, all except the American Eagle FMJ ball ammo clone are good personal defense loads. The saving grace for the Fed ammo is low price for practice outings.

Al Green, as a matter of fact…

A hundred years and a lot of cars ago, Dick Simonek’s shop in Paterson, NJ’s Gasoline Alley used to do all of the machine work on our racing engines. Nicest people you’d want to meet. Unlike some of the other shops in the U shaped arrangement of race car related business, Simonek’s shop was clean and orderly, people were neat and articulate and there was always FM radio playing easy listening music in the background. A mellow, but very productive environment with high quality service.

FM is dead, but it has been reincarnated in the form of Sirius and Alexa. A little background music seems to be brain wave amplitude leveling and that  helps focus. The trick is to find something that has the influence, but requires no real attention to enjoy. So a little less Lee Rocker and a little more Al Green. If you begin with “Tired of Being Lonely” and end with “L-O-V-E” you’ll be able to crank out serious volumes on a progressive press and still hold an air mic while singing.

Five good bullets…

Originally, there were a couple of semi wad cutters in the group, but I did not feel they fed reliably enough to include in the group. Nothing wrong with the Smith & Wesson pistol, as it cycled 100% with everything else and 45 Automatic Match ammo, by SAAMI definition, is physically different from standard and +P 45 Automatic ammunition. Overall Match is 0.050″ shorter in both minimum and maximum cartridge overall length and I suspect the 45 SWC form was designed to hold an auto-loader’s slide partially open at the most opportune times.

Ballistic performance was good; the pistol is accurate and the 45 Automatic is a convincing round. For me, the red dot is faster tracking a moving target where there is no front and rear points to align. The red dot adjusted to varying light conditions and was not lost even in bright sunlight. The fiber optic sights grab ambient light, making them always clearly visible.

As a defensive weapon, a passive drop safety system is a big plus, as the 45 Shield requires only a deliberate trigger pull to fire. There is no fumbling around for a thumb safety, worrying above compressing a grip safety and the striker action can be safely carried with a round in the chamber… no inconvenient slide racking.

The S&W Performance Center 45 Shield M2.0 is a high performance, moderately priced handgun that will provide many years of life defending service.