Cautionary cleaning/shooting tale

[BobFirewood]

On Friday I took my Sig P229 .40S&W to the range and picked up my Sig P228. I went through 150 rounds of .40 and 100 of 9mm.

On Saturday I went back to the range to meet with a friend. I really like my P229, but I left it behind because I wanted to focus on the new P228. I went through another 100 rounds of 9mm. Saturday was a bit better, my groups started getting tighter.

I got home and stripped both the P228 and P229 to clean them. I looked through the barrel of the P229 and thought, "This thing is so dirty I can't even see through it." I realized that can't be right and turned the barrel around and looked down the muzzle. I saw an empty 9mm casing looking back at me.

I'm guessing that as the P229 lay on the shooting bench on Friday, with the slide locked back, an empty casing from my last string of 9mm somehow landed in the breech of the P229 and somehow got down the barrel. Had I not left my favorite gun behind on Saturday I would have blown it up.

[Parados13]

Wow, that is pretty crazy.
+1 for (always) checking!

[ArmedWolf]

Ahhhhhhhhhh!!! Check check check, Always Check!! I personaly check my guns and lock them in the safe, and when I take them out I still check again, and check anytime I clean or anything, check check check, God himself hands you down a Holy gun to slay the undead that have risen, check it!... ok the last one made no sence, but just check it!!


also check the extractor out, perhaps it failed on the final shot

[TMC]

How would it have blown up?

A 9mm case in a 40 barrel would have just blown right out the barrel in front of the bullet. At the outside tolerance a 9mm case is only .390....no worries.

[ArmedWolf]

oooh I read that wrong, the 9 was in that one, indeed odd, how did it sneak into there...

[rorschach]

I once had a friend accidently shoot a stray 9mm out of my .40 Sig 226. It made a weird pop and failed to eject. He was like "Uh, dood, your piece eff'ed up" I noticed the small case head and immediately knew what he had done. Although it had fired, the 9mm case expanded nicely to the diameter of the .40 cal chamber. I used a cleaning rod to drive it out and later had my smith check out the barrel, which was fine.

[cheezerman]

A lady at the local IDPA match once showed me an exploded SIG barrel.

She had accidently loaded a 9mm into her .357sig P220. When she pulled the trigger, the 9mm failed to fire, so she cycled it and somehow loaded another round. Aparently, a .357sig barrel can fit an entire 9mm case if you shove it in there hard enough, so the 9mm was jammed just far enough to allow the .357sig to feed correctly.

She fired the .357sig round, and the gun "exploded."

The .357sig round had fired, then hit the primer of the 9mm, causing the 9mm to fire and the .357sig bullet to be lodged in the barrel. She still has the barrel, with a 9mm spent case and a .357sig bullet lodged into a giant bulge in the middle. The gun was fine, after a new barrel.

AND, the 9mm round hit the bullseye on the target!