Shooting 380 acp in 9mm Para

BudE

BudE

Hillsborough, NC
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I've heard pro and con, mostly con, on this but had never experienced it. A couple of weeks ago I was at the range and a guy was shooting 380 in a Glock 43. It ejected but more or less just bounced out. Yes, it was a 43 and not a 42. He was firing store bought stuff or so it appeared to be. Being a sneaky old fart I asked if he was keeping his brass and bent over and picked a few spent cases up. Mix of 9 and 380. I asked him if it wasn't dangerous and he said he's been doing it a couple of years in several 9s.
Frankly, I don't know that much about it so I'm not criticizing him. I do solicit comments. I'm still always eager to learn.
 
BudE said:
I've heard pro and con, mostly con, on this but had never experienced it. A couple of weeks ago I was at the range and a guy was shooting 380 in a Glock 43. It ejected but more or less just bounced out. Yes, it was a 43 and not a 42. He was firing store bought stuff or so it appeared to be. Being a sneaky old fart I asked if he was keeping his brass and bent over and picked a few spent cases up. Mix of 9 and 380. I asked him if it wasn't dangerous and he said he's been doing it a couple of years in several 9s.
Frankly, I don't know that much about it so I'm not criticizing him. I do solicit comments. I'm still always eager to learn.
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I shot a few .380 in a 9mm once early on in my shooting, and it didn't seem to be a problem, but I didn't do it on purpose....lol. Now I can tell the difference when I look at the rounds.
 
nbkky71 said:
Just because you can doesn't mean that you should. Remember that both of those cartridges headspace off the mouth of the case. The only thing holding the 380 round in place is the extractor.
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Agreed. Just because you can do a thing doesn’t mean you should do a thing.


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Did it by accident once. Won't cycle my G19, but it fed, fired, ejected, and hit the target. I can't think of a reason to do it on purpose tho...
 
While they both run the same diameter bullet, the 380 tapers more towards the base. Yielding a narrower base & rim diameter. It's just not a good idea to do that.
 
While we all know these rounds headspace on the case mouth. We all should know the cases headspace no further than the extractor allows. I once had a barrel deepened to allow .45 Win Mags so I could shoot shot shells loaded in WM cases. I also stripped all the lands and grooves out. I could put one round up and one in the mag. Kinda like a 2 shot auto. Big fun shooting hand thrown clays. I mostly used this barrel to show people that the money they were throwing away on Match Barrels should be spent on ammo to get better. I would stick this barrel into their gun, with No rifling , and No headspace, with the round sitting cocked sideways and held by the extractor and shoot head shots at 7 yards with a mag full of their ammo.

As with all things, some got the message, some didn't.
 
BatteryOaksBilly said:
While we all know these rounds headspace on the case mouth. We all should know the cases headspace no further than the extractor allows. I once had a barrel deepened to allow .45 Win Mags so I could shoot shot shells loaded in WM cases. I also stripped all the lands and grooves out. I could put one round up and one in the mag. Kinda like a 2 shot auto. Big fun shooting hand thrown clays. I mostly used this barrel to show people that the money they were throwing away on Match Barrels should be spent on ammo to get better. I would stick this barrel into their gun, with No rifling , and No headspace, with the round sitting cocked sideways and held by the extractor and shoot head shots at 7 yards with a mag full of their ammo.

As with all things, some got the message, some didn't.
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Cause most of us don't like to admit that the bad shots are our fault. If only I had a better gun.
 
I unintentionally tried a .380 round in my CZ P10c yesterday afternoon. (I carried a zip-lock bag full of 9mm to the range, along with a zip-lock bag of .380 ammo for my RM380.) Somewhere, while bagging the ammo, I must've let a .380 round or two get into the 9mm. (Still haven't figured out how I did that, but I found a second .380 round later, as I was looking through the 9mm ammo.)

The third or fourth round in the mag came up and the gun fired; I couldn't see much difference on the target, but the slide didn't cycle properly.

I thought "oh crap!" assuming that I had some kind of problem with the gun -- until I opened the slide and saw the .380 casing. The slide apparently extracted the cartridge and then re-chambered the empty casing (because the slide didn't go back far enough to eject the casing or catch and load the next round).
 
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Kinda along the same lines.....I worked for a NC State LEO agency early in my career and they trained us if we ran out of ammo for our 40S&W SIG 229’s and a trooper was close by, we could use the 357sig buddy mags from their 229’s. An instructor demonstrated it does go bang and hit a target, but it split the case and made a weird bang.
 
Guns and Ammo TV did a video taking a 30-06 and firing everything made from that as a parent cartridge. .308, .270, .243, all kinds of stuff. Absolutely nothing happened. One and I can't remember what it was slipped off the extractor and finally tied the gun up.
 
You can also fire .38 Super in a .357 Mag as the cartridge is semi rimmed. Got some .38 Super in Germany and fired them out of my Coonan Model B. Same by firing .32 ACP/7.65mm in .32 S&W Long, H&R Magnum or .327 Federal. You can also fire .380 in a 9x18 Makarov. Case will bulge and may split. Bullet dia of .355" going down a .363" bore.


CD
 
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indie_rocker said:
While they both run the same diameter bullet, the 380 tapers more towards the base. Yielding a narrower base & rim diameter. It's just not a good idea to do that.
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While loading a few hundred 9mm last night with new Starline brass, I had one pop out of the shell holder when seating the primer. Inspected it and saw they slipped in a 380.
I was thankful for the rim dis difference.
 
Pink_Vapor said:
While loading a few hundred 9mm last night with new Starline brass, I had one pop out of the shell holder when seating the primer. Inspected it and saw they slipped in a 380.
I was thankful for the rim dis difference.
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That's the sure way to know a 380 slipped in the 9mm pile when processing brass. The 380 has almost zero resistance in the sizing die.
 
Grits said:
I'm sitting on about 20k in primers. The brass will probably be trashed by then.

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Ok. Well that's more than several thousand... But my point stands. It's an option for people in a pinch...
 
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