Last night I learned that it is possible to chamber and fire a .40S&W cartridge in a .45ACP handgun.  I certainly didn’t set out to do this on purpose, though.

Last night was range night for the Keller Citizen’s Police Academy.  The PD supplied the ammo for those of us using .45, .40 or 9mm handguns.  They also supplied a Glock to one member who didn’t own her own gun (as an aside, of the 10 people in the class all but one own at least one gun, and several of us own multiple guns; if we’re anything like the rest of the community, then I’d say Keller is well armed).

I was the only one shooting .45 last night and the Sgt. handed me a box of .45ACP.  I loaded up several mags from this box and had gone through two of them and was halfway through a third when I heard a “pop” instead of the usual “BANG.”  I also then noticed that the gun hadn’t extracted the previous round.  In fact, it was stuck pretty hard under the extractor.  The other Sgt. managed to extract the round using a knife and that’s when we discovered it was a .40S&W round.  While the cartridge case was blown to hell, it didn’t seem to do any damage to the gun (and fortunately the round exited the barrel).

It turns out that somehow a .40S&W round had gotten into the .45ACP box.  I’d never encountered this before, so it never occurred to me to check.  But from now on I’ll be doubly careful that the ammo that comes out of the box is really what it’s supposed to be.

Here’s a comparison image, for those who are not ballistically inclined…