A friend of mine learned some new rules while at the range the other day:
- Do not let yourself get distracted while at the range
- Do not let “Range Brass” or “Found Ammo” get mixed up with the stuff you brought with you.
- Do not put 9mm into a .40 firearm.
Failure to follow these rules can lead to bad things happening, such as this:
Sorry about the cell phone picture, but I think it’s quite evident that something happened that shouldn’t have.
My friend recently took his new KelTec Sub2000 in .40 out to the range. His wife and he like to shoot, and they reload. His wife was picking up the fired 9mm brass that was scattered around their firing position from a previous shooter, and she found an unfired 9mm round. She placed it on their table, and it just so happened that it ended up next to some of their .40 ammunition.
Now, my friend is not new to shooting, and is a very conscientious kind of guy. But apparently a moment of paying attention to the guy next to them, who was shooting a .50 BMG rifle, led him to make a mistake. He was refilling a magazine for the KelTec, and that stray 9mm got mixed up with the .40. The magazine started out with a .40, then the 9mm, then filled with .40.
My friend put the magazine in the gun, put a bullet in the chamber, and proceeded to fire away. He says he noticed that one of the rounds felt weird, and the action didn’t cycle properly. He worked the action, ejecting the brass, which fell to the ground. He didn’t notice anything weird other than that. He continued to shoot, and reports that there were no issues.
It wasn’t until he was cleaning up his area before he went home that he figured out what had happened when he couldn’t find that loose 9mm. As he was sorting through the brass from the trip, he found the casing in the picture above, and the full story of what had happened came to light.
He inspected the gun when he cleaned it, and found no evident damage. The chamber looked OK, as did the bore. He’s going to take it to a gunsmith before he shoots it again.
To me, this is analogous to the admonition that we got during hunter’s safety training to not carry both 20 gauge and 12 gauge ammunition while you’re hunting. The smaller round was capable of being loaded into the larger magazine and chambered in the gun. Apparently it was even capable of being fired in the larger chamber, and luckily for my friend, it exited the muzzle without causing a catastrophic failure. At first glance, it appears that the only damage was inflicted upon the case. My friend got very lucky.
The thing is, I can visualize myself doing the same thing. When I go to the range, I have guns of different calibers on the table all the time. If I didn’t pay attention, how hard would it be for me to mistakenly put the wrong bullet in a gun and try to fire it? It’s a reminder that we have to pay attention at all times when we’re enjoying our sport.
DaddyBear’s Den 
Lazy Bike Commuter
/ October 22, 2012Iraqveteran8888 on Youtube has done some interesting tests with ammo mixing. They put a .410 shotgun through a surprising amount of punishment firing whatever would fit in the chamber–with the gun in a vice and a string around the trigger, and them FAR away from the danger area.
At one point they did drop a 20 gauge shell into a 12 gauge and then fire a 12 gauge shell behind it. If I remember correctly, it broke their vice.
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daddybear71
/ October 22, 2012I saw one of those. I guess so long as the round is smaller than the bore and goes out more or less straight, it works. My worry would be if it angled or went a bit sideways halfway down the barrel.
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Lazy Bike Commuter
/ October 22, 2012They actually did some that were far more powerful AND were larger than the bore, and it looked like the bullet was swayed down to a smaller size.
Not something I would ever try, but it is fun to watch them.
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Six
/ October 23, 2012Ouch. A good lesson/reminder there. That’s one I could absolutely see myself doing. Yikes.
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Mad Jack
/ October 23, 2012Your friend isn’t the only one who’s mixed up ammo. A good friend of mine shoots both 9mm and .40, and one way or another got his ammo and guns mixed up. Fortunately nothing blew up, but the experience shook him up so badly that he’s positively paranoid now about the caliber of ammo he’s shooting. Good thing, too.
16 gauge shotguns used to be popular back in the old days, and my father owned one for a while. 12 and 20 I can tell apart, but 12 and 16 are pretty close. I’m not sure how this happened, but when I was learning to hunt (I was about 12) I found a 16 gauge shell among my 12 gauge ammo. My supervisor confiscated the odd caliber so I wouldn’t load it by mistake.
The real danger these days is in 12 gauge ammo. You have the standard 2 3/4, then there’s 3 inch and then 3 1/2 inch. Four of us are out hunting, all using 12 gauge shotguns. My brother’s shotgun is chambered for 2 3/4, but in his blind ignorance he loaded 3 inch ammo into it. The problem is that the ammo will chamber just fine, and you won’t know until you try and eject the shell that you messed up – at least that’s when I hope you find out. My brother made this particular error three times, and on the third time I confiscated his ammunition and doled it out as he needed it.
Another problem is shotgun slugs. The choke has to be set for slug – an open choke – otherwise the slug won’t fit through the tiny end of the barrel. This will just ruin your whole day.
Thanks for bringing this topic up. This kind of thing doesn’t happen often, but it does happen and it’s dangerous.
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Evyl Robot Michael
/ October 23, 2012Yeah, Jennifer got some .40 mixed in with her .45 at pistol class. She got off two or three rounds of the stuff before we realized what the problem was. The gun was fine. The experience was interesting. At our C.O.G.S. event last spring, somebody managed to fire some 9mm through a .40 pistol. The guilty party never came forward, but the brass left behind told the story well enough. This is one of the reasons we don’t even own any .40s. When there are only 9mms and .45s in the house, this problem doesn’t occur. Similarly, I’ll probably never own a .41 Magnum, despite how cool the cartridge is.
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Greg Ellifritz
/ October 23, 2012I’ve seen it dozens of times on my police range. I have cops shooting 9mm, .40, and .45 all together and sometimes they aren’t paying as much attention as they should when they load magazines.
I’ve never seen one hurt the gun. Your friend could probably pass on getting the gun checked by the gunsmith. Speaking as an armorer on several different weapons systems, I can’t see how the gun could be damaged by firing one round this way. Check out the chamber for signs of any cracks or wear spots and it should be fine.
The real danger is when the empty case isn’t ejected and ends up getting shoved down the barrel. It lodges in there and the next round fired blows up the gun. I saw that once with a 9mm round in a .40 MP-5. It wasn’t pretty.
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daddybear71
/ October 23, 2012Thanks, I’ll pass that on.
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AltheDago
/ October 23, 2012When I was a firearms instructor for a federal agency 9mm and .40 were always separated by at least 15 feet. Nonetheless, I had more than one occasion of agents, sometimes senior agents, whom you would expect to know better, loading 9mm into a .40 S&W handgun. Never had anything catastrophic happen; for the most part, they got lots of unscheduled immediate action training.
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daddybear71
/ October 23, 2012I’m beginning to agree with Evyl and say that if I own a 9, I won’t own a .40, and vice versa.
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Charlene Sphon
/ October 23, 2012I’d like to add you can load .40 in the mag of a 9mm. I don’t know if it would chamber… DH caught me mid load…. but THAT would be BAD!
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Chris Ishmael
/ October 23, 2012In reference to Mad Jacks slug/choke comment; it is perfectly safe and acceptable (although accuracy/performance may suffer) to fire slugs through the full choked barrel of any shotgun of modern manufacture. Doing so in an ancient shotgun of questionable quality may not be advisable but then again firing anything through an ancient shotgun of questionable quality would not be advised.
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DanaSQ "The Dixie Fried Bride"
/ October 23, 2012Maybe we’re a bit OCD, but we’ve always loaded our guns from a tray (the ones the bullets come in originally) and we only ever shoot 1 caliber at a time. Brass (to be reloaded) goes into a large ziplock bag on 1 side of the range bag, if we pick up a live round, it goes into a smaller ziplock in the same pouch as the spent brass. It’s helped us to avoid this very problem, as my husband shoots .45 and I shoot .40. Don’t laugh, but after reading this, I’m strongly considering color coding the trays themselves so we never make this mistake. Glad your friend is OK.
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