.308 vs 7.62x39 ?

The idea that a rifle chambered for 308/7.62 Nato can fire a 7.62 x 39 probably originated in Vietnam with all the stories about "They could fire ours but we couldn't fire theirs", and too many forget that while a longer straight walled case can fire shorter case rounds-.357 and 38 Special/Long Colt, 44 Magnum and 44 Special/Russian, the same is not true of rifle cases with shoulders, even if the case in question is shorter and the bullet diameter is the same.
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not entirely accurate. as legend has it, GIs in the south pacific were able to fire 7.7 japanese ammo out of their 30-06s when supplies ran short. of course one should never put too much stock in such tails but just last winter there was a member here that had bought a type 99 arisaka and had issue with his 7.7 brass blowing out and it turns out that his gun had been rechambered to 30-06 by a previous owner and was never marked.

Kinds sounds like a crap shoot. Scares me!
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I had a pair of adapters like that. I don't know if they were made by MCcase or not but they came from sportsmans guide. I had one that was 303 brit to 30 tokarev and one that was 7.62x54R to 30 tokarev. extraction sucked but other than that they work pretty good.
 
Since a bottleneck cartridge headspaces on the shoulder, even if the 7.62x39 fit into the 7.62x51 chamber, the firing pin wouldn't be anywhere near the primer.
 
On the handgun side, the extractor claw holding the case is exactly how some people have managed to shoot .40 in their .45s. Well, that is the mechanical factor... the human factor was inattention during loading the mag. But there have been threads in semi-auto about people doing that.
 
I think that it will fire, but I don't think that it is a safe thing to do, and I certainly wouldn't do it.
 
I wasn't recommending that anybody try it, just pointing out that it could potentially happen if one were careless enough to load the wrong 7.62.
 
along the lines of Mleake. I've been shooting with a friend that rented a glock 22(40 cal) and the range accidentally gave him 9mm ammo and it wasn't until he had gone through half a box that I looked down and noticed all the case ruptures, he's lucky he didn't have any kaBooms. I've been picking up brass in my driveway after shooting reman ammo through my AR15 and found 380 brass, my AR is 9mm. again those are all straight walled cases and the differences in case length are not nearly as prominent as 12MM.
 
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