Are you saying he should have just wiped it off and pretended it was a 9mm?
No, I'm saying only imbeciles think that 40's are not wanted, or that one could somehow derive the 40's undesirability from that scenario is less than intelligent. I think the reason for the disconnect in this situation was likely that the Beretta is a full-size steel 40, and I don't see many people choosing a full-size steel anything smaller than 45 very often anymore. Plastic is where it's at nowadays. Most people aren't going to want to buy a full size steel anything anymore. Thus the new Ford trucks....
The 9mm fad will dissipate again with the next "massive failure" in a law enforcement scenario, and there will again be a push to replace it with something with more umph. The best thing that Law Enforcement has done in the last few decades is make rifles and carbines pretty much standard, so that in real-life SHTF scenarios, handguns are only used until the individual can get to the rifle.
I like 9's. I think they are likely the most efficient cartridge platform that exists to handle all sorts of typical problems people face that are generally solved with a gun. That said, they are marginal for most of those typical problems. Like having an 18oz hammer but your job is framing houses. It'll work just fine, but it requires more swings than a larger hammer would, on average. That said, I think it is more about the carpenter than the hammer, always. I carried a 9 for bear defense when up gathering berries this year. I don't know whether it would have failed me, given that I had 18 chances to make it work, because I saw no aggressive bears. But I KNOW that the difference between a 147 grain 35 caliber bullet and a 205 grain 40 caliber bullet, both at 1050-1100fps, matters in that scenario.
