Well, I have just under 730 X-TREME 180 grain RNFP copper coated bullets and can get more, plenty of Bullseye and Unique powder, and only 452 Remington small pistol primers left.

...no I didn't see it coming either.

My shooting buddy has 900 small rifle primers he will sell me for $15...yes, FIFTEEN BUCKS!

Says I probably sold them to him back when I sold off my AR-15.

I make plinking loads consisting of 4.5 Bullseye and 5.0 Unique.

I've heard standard rifle primers are similar in power to magnum pistol primers, and if the loads are kept light the rifle primers can be substituted...true?

The pistol is a .40 Shield.

I also have around 550 reloaded rounds, but they all have pistol primers.

I have used Remington 6 1/2, CCI 400 and Winchester srp in my 9mm loads without any problems. I shoot them in 3 different M&P 9 pistols.

Thank you for the replies.

My reloads are purely for zapping tin cans etc. but it didn't even occur to me about a thicker primer cup being used in a rifle reload.

I did do a trigger job on my Shield that involved polishing and adding lighter springs, but I went back to the factory striker spring after a failure to ignite a single Remington pistol primer. (second strike did set it off)

My main concern really was increased pressures by using a different reloading component that I normally wouldn't use, but I will keep powder charges light and it will be interesting to see how reliable ignition will be with tougher primers.

I would definitely buy them . You can always use them for trading stock to someone that has an AR and needs primers for that and is willing to swap you some small pistol primers . Or , just use them . Start with just 5-6 rounds loaded with them and see if they fire the first time in you handgun . Regards Paul

I'm using CCI small-rifle primers in my M&P 40s and they work just finely.. Several peeps here convinced me, I tried it, they all worked, so I am.. The best part of this for me is that my 'pistol'-primer count went from 3K to 10K instantly!

I have heard that different brands of pistol/rifle primers have different hardness, (Fed. Win. CCI) and that can also determine if the primer will ignite or not, depending on firing pin/striker impact strength.

Friend says they are Winchester primers and if they don't work we can sell them on GunBroker and split the profit...

WRONG!

Those are my primers now, (as soon as you show up with them) and I didn't see a primer shortage coming, (who did )
so now I need all the primers I can find and small rifle will do just fine in a pinch thank you!

...yea I'm not jealous.

SP and SR primers can be considered as being interchangeable for handgun use. As mentioned, the SR (and SPM) primers have a thicker primer cup so it is possible that if your firing pin has minimal impact energy, you may get misfires. Load up at least 10 empty cases, and if all go Bang! in your gun, you are probably OK. No changes in load are needed. I have one 9mm pistol which is unreliable with ammo using SR primers, but every other pistol and revolver I have is 100% OK with them.

Well I was wrong, (rare) both loads are half a grain lighter than I thought, the strike marks indicate how many times the cases have been reloaded.

I've read too many cases of .40 KABOOMS, and some may be caused by bullet set-back, and knowing how steep that Shield feed ramp is, I plan on tossing them after 10 or so uses.

Friend won't come up for another week or two with those rifle primers because he lives pretty far away.

But he will show up.

I think with all the overpowered springs in those Shield .40's, there shouldn't be an ignition problem, I let you know how they work when the time comes.

Check out my brass catcher, even with light loads the empty cases still fly farther out there than the bullets!