As you can probably tell from the photo above, something is very wrong here. What you see is a .40 caliber case that almost made it out of a .45 caliber barrel. What you cannot see is the .45 bullet that is lodged in the barrel behind the .40 case. The analysis of the event points to the following scenario: a .40 round was inadvertently loaded into the .45 magazine and managed to be chambered and fired. The pistol cycled but did not extract the .40 case, loading a .45 round behind it. The .45 round was fired and drove the .40 case down the barrel and almost out. It appears that the empty case acted like an umbrella in the wind and expanded to the point where it engaged the barrel rifling (visible in photo). This provided enough resistance to plug the barrel, and subsequently bulge the barrel to the point where the slide and barrel were locked so hard that they could not be moved, even by repeated application of a ballpeen hammer.

So, what do we learn from this? In the immediate sense, the shooter learned that his pistol was strong enough not to blow apart in his hand. More to the point, we should learn that attention to detail is incredibly important. The agency had transitioned from .40 to .45 in the past year. The ammo for that day’s training was from factory new cases. It is unknown if the .40 round was left over in some of the shooter’s gear or if possibly someone picked it up off the ground at the range and added it to the ammo table. We will likely never know.

This type of mix-up is fairly common, especially with agencies that transition from 9mm to .40 or .40 to .45, as well as with entities that use multiple calibers simultaneously, such as 9mm subguns and .40 pistols. While this does not make the event acceptable, it simply highlights the need to stay vigilant at the range.