Amen to that. I had an AR lock up on me, and after finally getting it apart, I discovered that the ammo (which a friend of mine had generously given me) was blowing the primer caps out.
I’ve not had an AR KB on me, but I have had a civilian owned Class 3 transferrable M60, a FAL, and someone had a KB with my transferrable Sterling Mk.4.
All were ammo related. The M60 and FAL from using exceedingly bad surplus, the Sterling was a squib reload that was followed by a standard charge.
I still have some small scars on my hand from the M60 cutting loose.
Come to think of it…that one torture auto-fire vid and the pics from the other thread are the only ar’s i’ve seen let go. That’s gotta say something with the qty of ar’s put out.
Seen plenty of pics of bolt guns coming apart due to ammo / obstructions.
I’d like to see real stats on how many KBs are due to sloppy reloading versus some other reason including bad factory ammo or commercial reloaded ammo (ie factory ammo made with once fired cases)
I watched a guy shooting factory WWB in his 1911 go Kaboom. Double charge (I suspect). The pistol blew out of his hands and most of the charge went thru the magwell and out the left grip panel. His hand and face were shrapnel filled with small brass shards. I believe it might have caused more than one round to go kaboom. We spent awhile picking the shrapnel out of his face and hands with a leatherman. I still remember seeing the scratches on his shooting glasses and all the shrapnel in his face around the glasses. I’m with TEMPLAR and am a EyePro Nazi to this day!
I had a guy in my Church using a bolt gun and handloads while hunting elk way in the backcountry and had a kaboom as he was squeezing off on an elk. The pressure gasses came strait back and pushed out his eye mostly destroying it. Super nice guy and very switched on, but made a reloading error & using an older rifle… and they got his eye back in but many surgeries later no sight in it.:mad:
I haven’t had a full KB that I’m aware of, but have had a couple case failures and been around a couple KB’s.
A round of 5.56 surplus split at the web in an AR. Blew the baseplate off the USGI mag and threw some rounds and a spring on the ground. The empty casing stuck against the bolt face and was a pain to remove. After a cleaning and a good look over, the gun headspaced fine and suffered no damage.
A .22lr rimfire round fired mostly out of battery from a 10/22. Where the case blew out, it sent a few small brass shards into my right arm (I shoot lefty).
At a pistol match a 1911 blew up due to what the shooter said was a double charge of bullseye. He got his hand slapped pretty bad and didn’t require any real first aid. I was next to him on the line and had a hunk of something bounce off my eye pro and downrange. Probably a hunk of the magazine that was jetted out the bottom of the pistol and broke against the concrete.
While goose hunting the shooter to my left had a 12 gauge round vent fire out of the breach of a semi-auto shotgun. That blast pretty much hit me square in the face. Got a small cut on my cheek from something.
I’ve seen a few other case failures lock guns up, but for the most part, the guns seemed to do a good job of containing/venting the hazards of a failure away from the shooter.