Shooting .380 ACP in a 9mm pistol

[jamesinalaska]

I went to the range last weekend and took a 9mm pistol along. I took cartridges from a box LABELED 9mm and started loading them into the pistol's magazine. They fit through the feed lips of the magazine just fine. After loading six or seven cartridges into the magazine I noticed that they just didn't seem right, they weren't long enough and didn't fill the magazine the way they usually do. After inspecting a head stamp I realized I was loading 380 ACP into my 9mm's magazine.

What would have happened if I hadn't caught this?

I don't have a .380 ACP anymore, or, I thought, any .380 ammunition. I sold the last Makarov over a year ago. At some time I must have put these .380 cartridges into a 9mm box and forgot about them.

Would the .380 ACP cartridge fed, fired and ejected?

 

[BigWoolyBanjo]

I'm curious to hear if anyone has firsthand experience with .380 in a 9.

I watched a guy run a whole mag of 9 through his 40 cal Glock last month. It fired every time but would not completely eject. Wasn't very accurate either.

 

[Schwing]

I have never seen .380 fired from a 9mm but I have seen 9mm fired through a .40. It cycled and fired fine... The brass expands and mushrooms out ruining it and accuracy was beyond piss poor.

The guy that did it had done the same thing. He had mislabeled his ammo. There are too many factors to know for sure what would have happened in your case. I seriously doubt anything dangerous would have occurred but I think it likely that it would have failed to cycled well.

 

[Jim Watson]

There was one government agency that would slip in the occasional .380 during training. Their Berettas would feed and fire but not eject the .380 so the trainees had to be ready to rack it out to keep shooting.

Other makes might behave differently.
If the shorter round got in ahead of the extractor it would either not fire or go off with unexpected effects if the firing pin protrusion were enough.

I don't think you risked anything but a nonfunctioning gun.

 

[stoky]

Someone I know well did this recently in an LC9S. Some old Glasers were mixed. None of the .380s fired. They had very light firing pin indents.

 

[golden]

I did it

I took my BERETTA 92 to the range and accidentally loaded the mag with .380ACP (learned a lesson right there). I fired the chambered round and then nothing happened.

The fired round hit the target, but did not eject. No damage to the gun or the fired .380 case.


I have also fired .380ACP ammo in one chambered for the 9m.m. ULTRA/POLICE. THIS IS NOT THE 9m.m. MAKAROV round. This is a 9x18m.m. round developed in GERMANY for the police before the police went over to the 9x19m.m. Luger round.

This worked fine and I fired over a 100 .380 rounds out of this gun.

I wish REMINGTON would load this round with either their 88 grain jhp or the 102 grain GOLDEN SABER jhp. Both rounds would get a solid boost in velocity with the 88 grain going about 1,050 to 1,100 fps and the 102 GS bullet at 1,050 fps
That would give a nice improvement in expansion and maybe a little extra penetration.

Jim

 

[M-Cameron]

me and a buddy were at the range a few weeks ago....me with my .380...and him with his 9mm.......as you can imagine, curiosity got the better of us.

so he loaded a clip with a round of .380 ontop of a round of 9mm.....the .380 fed from the mag fine, chambered, and fired all without incident.......but it stove piped when it tried to eject.....the wimpy .380 was not powerful enough to cycle the slide and feed a new round.

 

[GRIZ22]

I've seen 380 fired in 9mm pistols more than once. Mostly in S&W semi autos. Fed fine from the magazine and extractor held the case against the breech. Gun would fire but slide would remain locked. No damage to anything.

9mm Parabellum would load in magazines and fire in 40 S&W guns. Slide would sometimes cycle to eject the brass but not back far enough to feed another round. Brass would low out to the 40 chamber but I never saw any 9mm brass rupture. It would look like a reverse bottleneck.

 

[Nick Burkhardt]

Not a good idea as the diameters are different.

 

[The Lone Haranguer]

In one case I read of, the gun was simply turned into a single-shot because the .380 doesn't generate enough recoil force to cycle the slide. I would also expect the cases to be bulged because the .380 case is smaller in diameter. Neither did any harm to the gun.

 

[Drail]

The .380 round will headspace off of the extractor. Depending how snug that fit is - it may or may not fire. It would generally be better if it did not fire, but it might.

 

[mgmorden]

I went to the range last weekend and took a 9mm pistol along. I took cartridges from a box LABELED 9mm and started loading them into the pistol's magazine.

Were they labeled as 9mm Luger/NATO/Parabellum? There are different 9mm's out there and .380 AUTO (being a 9mm diameter bullet) is sometimes labeled as a 9mm variant - particularly in Europe. Usually it'll be called "9mm Browning Short or 9mm Kurz".

As to firing it in a 9mm - I have accidentally fired a .380 in my Ruger P95 before. It didn't fully cycle the slide or eject but it went bang and the bullet exited fine. Not a practice I'd recommend but it usually won't hurt anything.

Also after I started case gauging my reloads I'd find that every so often I'd find a round that had been loaded to 9mm Luger specs but in .380 AUTO or 9mm Makarov brass. Naturally I pull those and redo them but it makes me wonder how many skipped past me before I was case gauging all my rounds.

 

[TRX]

My Ingram M11A1 is marked "9mm Kurz" on the side, which I've always figured was pretty strange for a gun made in Georgia. (The American Georgia, not the Russian one)

 

[481]

I've had it happen (firing a 380 in a 9x19) once and was generally unimpressed with the result. IMO nothing to be gained other than the headache of a possible jam and messed up brass.