Our friends at
Midway USA listed the laser trainer cartridge for .380 ACP on sale in the September flyer. I have a
Laserlyte training system and those cartridges in .45 and 9mm, so when I saw the sale price I went for the .380 in order to train with a pocket holster for my little
TCP. It got here today, and something seemed wrong. "It jess din't seem right". Here's the .380 laser cartridge (left) with a .380 FMJ round and my 9mm laser.
Of course, .380 is also known as 9mm Short (as "Q" refers to it in "
Skyfall") so I expected it to be shorter than the 9mm version, about the size of that round. Instead, I get a cartridge that's virtually identical to my 9. I was going to return it, even called Midway about it thinking that somehow they messed up at Laserlyte, but after some thinking about it, decided to check the
product page at Laserlyte.
Yes, this is how it's supposed to be. It won't fit in a magazine, but once seated in the chamber, it works exactly like the others. It overhangs a magazine by about 25% and simply can't be loaded that way. So being me, I think "if it's the same size as the 9mm, maybe I could use the 9 in the .380, or the .380 in the 9". Not quite. If you look closely, you can see that the smaller diameter portion of the 9mm cartridge is shorter than on the .380. The 9 will slide into the .380's chamber, but the slide won't close. So the obvious question does the .380 work in a 9mm?
Yes!! If you own a 9 and .380, just get a .380 trainer. It fits in both. I bought two so you don't have to. This
is a full service blog, after all.
Why thanks! I unfortunately bought the 9 cartridge.
ReplyDeleteIt looks pretty trivial to cut the 9mm trainer down with the lathe and make it a .380. The only drawback is that there could be something under that few thousandths. Doubt it, but you never know til you cut.
DeleteThis is slightly OT, but I had a similar experience buying a laser boresighter.
ReplyDeleteThe laser head was a separate piece, and slips in to a brass dummy cartridge that you chamber in the gun,
The one I bought for my 30-30 had a rim that was about .070" too big to fit into my Marlin 336.
I ended up chucking it into my drill press, and using a fine file to turn it down, measuring it as I applied the file to it.
Works fine now, but Old_NFO taught me how to get my scopes aligned and on target, so I really don't need the boresighter!
I seem to recall that the .380 started life as a German round called the "9 mm Kurtz"
ReplyDeleteNot too surprisingly, "kurtz" is German for "short".
I have some boxes of 380 labelled 9mm Browning Court. I assume somewhere along the way Kurtz turned into Court.
DeleteCorto in Spanish, court in french = short
Delete