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Note to those who have been shooting 9mm for all these years and then decide to go up to a .45 1911... .45 goes in the .45 magazine, and 9mm does not. The .45's are the big fat ones...

But just in case you manage to chamber a 9mm in said 1911... it really doesn't shoot too well as it bounces its way down the .45 bbl.

However, the good news is because .45 is such a manly gun, 9mm probably won't permanently damage it...

We had a student in class one day that was having trouble with his .45 not firing during the first set of shots. I went over to him and watched as he started to fire the second set of shots. The fire command was issued and when he pulled the trigger I saw a brass colored flash come out the end of the barrel. When the cease fire was issued I went down range about 10 feet and retrieved an intact 9mm round. Luckily the primers on the rounds were not being hit and the firing pin was just shoving the round down and out of the barrel. When I showed him the round, he had a sheepish look on his face. He realized that his wife had shot in the group before him and he had just reached into their range bag and pulled out a box of rounds, not looking at the caliber.

Moral of the story, if you are shooting different calibers, keep the ammo separated.

My near vision is terrible and I wasn't wearing readers under my goggles...Anyway, that's my story...

AndyC wrote:I've seen a whole lot of 9s fed through 40s - one guy even told me he did it deliberately to save money

I've never attempted that.....it's nice to know in case of an emergency.

And tough to reload too.

I'm amazed you were able to get 9mm rounds to stay in a .45 magazine. I wouldn't have thought that would work.

This is why my girlfriend and I both have 9mm. Now if I somehow manage to get a 9mm into my AR15 mags I guess I could have an issue, but I'm pretty sure I'll notice if I try to fit a 5.56mm into my pistol mags.

Hmmmmm, once fired brass?

I did that one time, where I loaded a 9MM in a .45 magazine.
When i cycled it, it just fell out of the barrel, and never was shot.
I reloaded, and did it again,

took me 2 times to realize my mistake!

Firing a .40 out of a .45 when you're shooting both on the same day is even easier because the cartridge size is a lot closer to the .45. The round does fire but the empty space around the projectile and shell is enough to drop the pressure to the point where the projectile leaves the barrel but the shell doesn't eject. The difference from normal is highly noticeable.

Don't ask me how I know this or Joe817 may never want to be on the same range as I am.

Situational awareness is a good thing. Thankfully in all posts it doesn't sound like any person or weapon was harmed. The very first time I loaded a semi-auto mag I got the rounds in backwards (think H&K brochure from yrs back), lucky for me the person I was there with saw my mistake before I got near the pistol. Before that all I had ever shot were single shot, tube fed or revolvers. Needless to say, I am alot more careful since then as I'm sure most of the other posters (& readers/lurkers) are as well.

I didn't even think a 9mm would feed in a .45, much less stay in the mag.

One time I actually did load a few rounds of .40 into a .45 magazine, but discovered the error after having loaded 2-3 rounds and never tried to fire it.

I was at Bass Pro Shop in Grapevine one time about 7 or 8 years ago and witnessed the following: there was a guy sitting on a bench next to the sales counter at the BPS gun range, and he was plenty PO'd. It seems that he had purchased a 9mm Glock and a box of 9mm ammo for it and then took it into the range to shoot it. The problem was that he purchased a 9mm (said so on the receipt), but the sales clerk handed him a boxed .40 cal. I don't know if BPS had mistakenly put a .40 in a 9mm box at some point, or if the clerk had simply handed him the wrong boxed gun, but it ended up with him trying to shoot 9mm ammo in a .40 cal gun. The gun actually did fire the 9mm round, but the case was all belled out, just like the one on the left below:


The customer rightfully demanded that they give him the correct 9mm pistol, but sales clerk tried to deny responsibility for the incorrect sale and said they couldn't take the gun back because it had been fired. The customer rightfully demanded to see the store manager. The manager arrived, and HE started to try and evade responsibility and refuse to take the fired gun back in exchange for the correct gun. That's when the customer got out his cellphone and said "fine, hang on a minute here and I'll just call my lawyer" ......which appeared to be the magic words. All of a sudden the manager allowed that the store was responsible, and they brought the guy a correct 9mm gun and he went on his way.