Strange happening at the range

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federal1

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At the range today with son and his girl. I was mostly loading mags and they were doing the shooting. I was loading a 9mm mag for my Beretta 92, using
a box of Winchester white box from Walmart. I was loading and talking just
taking bullets out of the box. I remember one round seemed kinda hard to get
in but in went in. Girlfriend starts firing the Berreta and half way through the clip gun jams with what looked like a "stovepipe". She pulled the slide back but
round was still stuck in the barrel throat. I took the gun and locked the slide bad and pried the stuck round out. To my surprise it was a .40 cal round.
We had no 40 cal ammo with us, I dont even own a 40 cal gun.
There was a 40cal round in the box of 9mm from Winchester.
That was a really strange , Son asked how that could have happend and I told him I had no idea.
Weird.

Bob
 
Son asked how that could have happend and I told him I had no idea.
Click to expand...

lack of quality control. cheap boxes of cheap ammo, churn 'em out fast as possible. i shoot white box all the time, in all kinds of calibers. no fault to you for that. and to be honest, no fault to winchester either. i'd chalk it up to a one time fluke. accidents happen. even fully automated processes are designed and run by human beings. glad for you that you didnt get an oddball undersized round that would feed and fire and have a blowout.
 
Another variable that I can offer is that when I worked in a sporting goods store I could not begin to tell you how many times i would see customers open boxes of ammo to compare rounds side by side. Things could have have been put in the wrong box when placed back on the shelf.
 
Ammo mixing can be dangerous, my buddy was loading up my H&K 45, and he put a .40 round in the mag (the top round), I cant immagine how you would not notice. racked the slide and it fed, held in place by the extractor. pulled the trigger and boom, shredded the case inside the chamber, luckily no one was hurt.
 
Guy pulls out ammo, spills it all over the floor, picks it all up, and accidentally puts a .40 round in that someone had spilled earlier.

I see this happen with primers all the time. If the seal on the sleeve of the primers is broken, you are gauranteed to be missing some.
 
Had a funny thing like that happen to me at the range one time too. In retrospect, it could have gone BADLY:

I was shooting a friend's 10mm Glock at an indoor range. He gave me a magazine to try it out (which he loaded) and about four shots in I get a jam. I try racking the slide to free out the round, no go. My buddy looks at me like I did something wrong and comes up to investigate. Somehow, a .45 FMJ (neither of us had our .45s with us) was loaded into the magazine? Fortunately, the round didn't even feed into the chamber, just got stuck on the feed lips of the magazine. Thinking about that now -- if it had gone into the chamber and been struck by the striker... that would have been UGLY.

How he managed to not know that he fed a .45 into a 10mm magazine beats me!
 
I kinda doubt return as being the case, not any places I know will allow you to do that. I can see it getting mixed in if people were comparing rounds side by side, there isn't a lot of size difference there. Glad nothing bad happened.
 
Most gunshops I've gone to don't allow you to return ammo for plenty of obvious reasons. On another forum I there was a guy condemning S&B because there was a 38 spl round in a box of 30 carbine. I've seen probably millions of rounds as a firearms instructor before I retired. 380s in 9mm boxes, 9s in 40 boxes, and other combos I've seen from factory sealed cases. I've seen shotshells with no shot, no primers, sideways primers, and a host of other analomies.

It happens with all manufacturers at times and that's why I learned long ago to inspect your ammo before loading. If you find it happening often with a particular manufacturer I'd buy other ammo.
 
Once I fired a .41 Magnum round accidentally in a rifle chambered for .44-40.:what: It didn't do any damage. The nearest that I could figure was someone in the store I bought it was examining different ammunition and stupidly placed the .41 Magnum round in the .44-40 box.

:eek:

Ever since then I have examined all new bought boxes of ammo no matter the caliber.
 
I was loading and talking just
taking bullets out of the box. I remember one round seemed kinda hard to get
Click to expand...

in all honesty and cause it is taught this way in NRA Class--you are supposed to be looking at each round as you handle and load it--

the reason is exactly what you experienced.

lucky once
live & learn;)
 
I had a recent incident with Winchester white box 100 round value pack 9mm. I was transferring the 100 rounds to 50 round containers and came up with only 94 rounds. Maybe they are having quality control problems.
 
I worked the sporting goods counter at Wal-Mart back in the late 80s and early 90s. I can remember several boxes of Remington UMC .45 ACP (yellow box) that had a round with the bullet seated BACKWARDS. I can also remember showing a .30-06 round to a customer and pulling a .25-06 round out of the new never opened box.

I guess there is such a thing as ammo made on a friday or a monday being different, kinda like cars :).

Just my .02,
LeonCarr
 
Keep in mind if you are loading a magazine and all of a sudden you have to force a round into the magazine I would start to think to myself you know that really ain't right and start to investigate why. I think you got lucky that after forcing a round that it didnot go BOOM
 
I have seen this sort of thing happen several times at IDPA pistol matches where people who were instructed to 'unload and show clear' jacked a round out of the chamber and then pick up the wrong round off the ground which later found its way into a magazine and caused a jam.

How dangerous is this really?

An undersized round accidentally loaded in a larger caliber pistol like a 9MM in a .40 or a
.40 in a .45 CAN head space on the extractor and fire. I have seen it happen at a match once but the report sounded like a primer pop and the undersized bullet rattled harmlessly down the barrel. The case mouth was belled out a little but did not rupture and there was an inordinate amount of unburned powder evident when the slide was pulled back. Due to lack of resistiance the powder charge did not even detonate completely.

If the round is over sized (like in the opening thread) it will not chamber, the pistol will not fully go into battery and therefore it cannot fire at all.

I'm sure someone can come up with some odd combination of some obscure caliber that might be accidentally chambered in some equally obscure pistol but is this really dangerous with common "Wall Mart" handgun calibers like
9MM's, .40's and .45's?
 
It's a hazard of the mass production that makes it all cheaper and more plentiful. I run a tire and lube shop where we use between 800-1200 oil filters a month. 3-5 times a year we get a car with a defective gasket and about 1% of them came from the box without a gasket. My personal policy is to never assume that the machine will get it right...but then again I feel the same way about people too.
 
Yes things happen , including a new in the box rifle which was LOADED !! Never assume .Keep different ammo separate ! The 12 Ga/ 20Ga mix is one dangerous mix and I remember at least one death from that. Be careful !
 
here's a couple of tips..and just good habits to get into...that come from the world of competition and serious SD shooters

1. when you open a box of cartridges, hold them up and check that all the primers are seated level with each other...this will show up highprimers, inverted primers and canted primers

2. before loading your mags...or cylinders... place each round in a case gauge to check their size. the main reason is to see if some cases are too long or distorted, but it will also catch wrong calibres
 
The other day I was shooting Winchester Dynapoint 22lr out of my H&R 999. After about 4 speedloaders, I pulled the trigger and got nothing but a fizzle. Had I not been paying attention, I would have fired another round and blown the gun up. The fizzle bullet was stuck about 2" down the barrel.
 
The other day I was shooting Winchester Dynapoint 22lr out of my H&R 999. After about 4 speedloaders, I pulled the trigger and got nothing but a fizzle. Had I not been paying attention, I would have fired another round and blown the gun up. The fizzle bullet was stuck about 2" down the barrel.
Click to expand...

i'd give the H&R 999 more credit than that...it's a top break, but it's only a .22lr
 
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