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Pizza Bob

Caliber Nomenclature

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This is a cautionary tale for the members of this forum that are new to guns and shooting, or those just venturing into unknown territory; i.e. Buying a revolver after shooting nothing but semi-autos.

Make sure that the ammunition that you buy is the correct ammunition for the gun. Check in the owner’s manual (if you have one, if not, either download one from the net or contact the manufacturer and they will send you one for free) to make sure that the ammo you are buying is appropriate for the gun.

The impetus for this post is a situation that has presented itself twice to me in the process of selling some ammunition. The first time at a gun show several months ago and, most recently, on here, yesterday.

The ammunition in question is for .38 Super caliber guns. I was overjoyed at the gun show when somebody came to the table, saw my ammo displayed, and told me that they wanted to buy it all. .38 Super is a somewhat obscure caliber, but one that is coveted by a cadre of 1911 enthusiasts. I’m a good guy, so I inquired of my potential buyer what gun he had chambered for .38 Super? He responded that it was for his buddy that had a revolver, for which it was hard to find ammo. That was the first red flag, for AFAIK, there are only about 900 revolvers extant, that are factory chambered for this round. So I pressed further. In the end, it turns out that the revolver was a S&W Victory model chambered for .38 S&W or, as the British called it .38/200.

Yesterday, I got a response to my current ad, here on the forum. Again, someone wanting to buy the entire lot. In our back and forth communication, I got the impression that he was new to either shooting in general or this caliber specifically. I queried if he realized that this was .38 Super, not .38 Special, to which he asked if I thought this ammo would give his Ruger .357 Mag “issues”.

What should be taken away from these two scenarios is that you need to be careful what you’re buying. Not everybody is a nice guy like me – LOL. If you inadvertently buy the wrong ammo at a retail store, or the counter guy gives you the wrong ammo (it happens), it is incumbent on the buyer to know what they have and whether they’ve been handed the correct ammo. At a retail outlet there are no refunds or exchanges on ammunition. If your/their mistake goes unnoticed, at best, it could result in ammo that just plain does not fit or function in the intended firearm or performs sub-optimally, or at worst, do grievous damage to the firearm, or even worse yet, to you.

There are many, many calibers that either sound very similar – because most have some relationship to bullet diameter – or, have multiple designations for the same caliber. So caveat emptor.

Adios,

Pizza Bob

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Very good points, Bob,

I once got a good deal on ammo from a forum member here, selling for a friend, who had gone to the store and purchased two boxes of Remington 22-250.

The friend thought he had bought 500 rounds of .22 LR.   It must have been a shock when he finally opened the boxes.

At least there was no danger of inadvertently chambering the wrong round.  And yeah, I can kinda see how a casual shooter with a .22 LR might have looked at the boxes and made the wrong assumption about what they contained.

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Calibers is probably the worst part of shooting... just confusing until you learn it.

.38/.357, .45 and .454 working in a .460, and not to mention .223/5.56mm and .308/7.62x51mm. I'm glad you don't see .380 labeled as 9mm Short anymore... being 9mm anything is thought to go in a 9x19 chamber.

I still have my Type I Carcano, which shoots 6.5mm Japanese, but also the Oswald replica, which shoots 6.5mm Carcano. The Italian round loads with enbloc clips, and has a longer case (with RN bullet), but I really don't like having both together due to that close of a similarity. I know which goes where, but if I'm shooting with someone, I don't want the wrong round being jammed in the wrong rifle.

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A coworker of mine showed me the pistol he got from his father, a FN 1903. He asked me to show him how to load the mag (he is not a gun guy) so he handed me the mag and a box of 38 special...........

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I watched a friend of mine and his mother-in-law try and figure out why her lever action .22lr wasnt working. It wouldn't load the rounds, and eventually got jammed up really bad. It took me all but a second to figure out they were trying to load .22 magnum when I popped the jammed round out. 

2 hours ago, Golf battery said:

I hear you Bob.  I can never get 380 to fire correctly out of my hk vp9.  

It's cringe worthy to think that people successfully shoot 380 in 9mm chambers until they figure out its not cycling properly. 

 

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i recently did many laps with someone trying to help them sort out 9x19 para, 9mm luger, 9x18 makarov, 9x17(.380) and to make matters more confusing they added 7.62x25 to the mix

a while back i  had a range officer tell me that my ak shot 7.62x54R, when it was clearly a x39 rifle. I was in a buddies port helping a new shooter at the time so i guess he didnt realize the rifle was mine, after a polite few laps i finally go dude, its my gun, i built it from a barreled receiver, i think i know what round it takes. later on he must of been pissed about being corrected because all of a sudden he started breaking my balls about shooting steel core, which i was not

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On 8/10/2017 at 0:15 PM, SuRrEaLNJ said:

i recently did many laps with someone trying to help them sort out 9x19 para, 9mm luger, 9x18 makarov, 9x17(.380) and to make matters more confusing they added 7.62x25 to the mix

 

And you didn't get into the fact that there's also 9x20 (9 Browning Long), 9x21, 9x23 Winchester, 9mm Largo (9mm Bergmann Bayard) and 9mm Steyr? LOL

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17 hours ago, Oakridgefirearms said:

And you didn't get into the fact that there's also 9x20 (9 Browning Long), 9x21, 9x23 Winchester, 9mm Largo (9mm Bergmann Bayard) and 9mm Steyr? LOL

And now im confused... 

But still leas confused then this guy

http://asmdss.com/humor/ar-15-owner-buys-first-ak-fails-epically20170812_213328.jpg.6f9819866a90f99d5ba1644bfc801e71.jpg

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Great info Bob! If you remember, you helped me with my model 25 "frankengun" as you called it. My quick story is one time when Navy Arms was still in business, I bought a boat load of 9mm for my model 659. The damn gun would not feed the ammo and kept jamming. It ejected ok but couldn't figure out why it wouldn't load, as it usually ate everythig. Turned out the cartridges were for a sub machine gun and the projectile was longer than normal and the point (yes they were pointy) wouldn't load because the angle was too high and catching on the top of the feed ramp. Lesson learned. 

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