DMan

A year and a half ago, I was with some friends shooting. There was new guy (an associate of my friend) there that was new to guns, and had no clue on performing safety. He could recite all the safety rules, and could demonstrate them when asked to, but couldn't put them to practice them at all.

The first mistake was when he was just looking through the ammo, comparing ammo side by side. We were very explicit telling him to make sure the ammo stays sorted and to double check the caliber as he was loading them into the magazine. (we were shooting 9mm, .40 and .45 ACP).

He loaded up a .45 magazine and waited his turn (rule was, if you want to shoot, you load your own mags!). So my friend handed him his 1911 and this guy puts the mag in and starts shooting. 3 or 4 rounds into the mag he encounters a serious failure to eject issue. The cvasing is jammed up mouth of barrel and wouldn't budge. We unload the gun, and set it aside thinking we had a gun malfunction. That evening as I was helping clean the guns, we were able to extract the casing and found it was a .40 NOT the .45 ACP that it should have been.



Luckily there was no damage to the 1911.

We stopped the session only a few minutes latter as he was shooting my G19 and a casing came down his shirt, and he started jumping around screaming "ouch, its hot, its hot" meanwhile his finger is on the trigger, and the gun is waiving around pointing at me, and everyone else on the range! At that point, (after we came out from diving for cover) we took the guns away from him, read him the riot act, and told him he could never handle any of our guns again until he could prove he can handle guns safely by using a toy squirt gun!

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buckeyeLCPL

Sounds like someone not to invite to the next range session unless he has cleaned up his act.

IIRC .40 has a higher chamber pressure than .45, he's luck he didn't damage the gun.

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Paladin132

I called Kimber after this happened to mine, but it was fine. They told me that while the .40 is overspressured that it vents easily and .45 chambers can handle it with no real problems - of course one should really check it close afterwords... Damn that made me nearly cry or choke someone when it happened. As far as the guy, my first trip with someone I stay within arms reach any time they are handling a firearm to keep them pointed up and downrange for just that reason. Its saved us more than once, and then I did exactly what the OP said - no more guns for you!

Kerbouchard

I did it, too. Guy handed me his Kimber at the range. He was shooting .40 and .45 and mixed up the mags. The shell casing looked pretty much identical to your pic.

He handed it to me loaded and chambered.

I'm still surprised the Kimber fed with the wrong magazine.

Oh, well...

Edited to Add: Also, a .40 in a .45 is not very accurate. I was at least 8" off at 15 yards.

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nn

I put .45 acp shot rnds in a .40 mag, fit well, of course would not chamber.

BAC

I've done a 9mm in a .40 S&W. That was educational. The brass expanded just like yours (heck, I still have it), and the weapon fired (inaccurately, but still fired), it just couldn't reload.

Springfield XD .40 owners, make note that if you're ever in a really tough spot, the XD can be readily turned into a single-shot 9mm.


-B

Shizzlemah

My 1911 is set up for .45 and .38super. We were at the range one day, I was shooting super but my buddy swapped over to 45ACP and I didn't notice.

Grabbed the gun, put in a mag of .38super, and dropped the slide. The 38 super fed - into the chamber, down the barrel, and landed on the ground just downrange......

ppkheat

Also watch out for .32 auto and .380. I saw a guy shoot 16 gauge in a 12 gauge by mistake. The gun would fire once but would FTE. The report sounded odd too, sort of hollow-sounding. The guy thought the gun was malfunctioning, and he asked me to look at it, and I discovered he had loaded it with 16 gauge shells and knew that it was the shooter that had malfunctioned.

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exactlymypoint

The best I ever did was try to load .45 in a .40 magazine. I thought the magazine was defective as I could not get more than 2 rounds in it. Fortunately, I never tried to fire it.

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HotGuns

Thats better than a .380 loaded into a 9MM.

One guy (unfamiliar with guns)loaded a .380 and it didnt fire. He racked the slide and thought he ejected a dud round, and proceeded to load a 9mm in it.

The .380 was still in the chamber, but had moved all the way up in the chamber,allowing a 9MM to be chambered....almost. I found him banging the edge of the slide on the table because the slide lacked going into battery about a 1/16 of an inch.

If he had not been stopped, it is possbile that he could have forced the 9MM round in far enough for it to shoot.

That would have been like a greanade going off....a .380 bullet jammed into a 9MM with a 9MM behind it.

That happened in one of our classes several years ago, and we still use it as an example.

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