6 Mar 02

At a defensive handgun course in Michigan last weekend, a G22 (40S&W) used by one of my students ruptured its barrel just forward of the chamber, sending high-pressure gas into the frame and the shooter's hands. As a result, the magazine blew out. The magazine-release plunger broke in half, and the right part of it blew out. The extractor also blew out.

The slide and frame are probably salvageable as is the magazine, but the barrel is toast, and several other parts will have to be replaced. The shooter suffered no serious injury, but his hand did receive gas burns and throbbed for a while. His safety glasses prevented any serious gas impact to his eyes.

He was shooting hobby reloads made by a friend. One of them was a squib (primer, but no powder). The bullet from the squib cartridge blew into the barrel and lodged there without exiting. When the shooter then attempted to fire, nothing happened, as the cycle of operation was incomplete. As he had been trained, the student immediately did a tap-rack-bang and again attempted to fire. However, the next round didn't chamber all the way, because the squib bullet lodged in the barrel was far enough to the rear to prevent the next bullet from going forward far enough for complete chambering. Because the slide could not go into battery, the pistol, of course, still did not fire. The student immediately did a second TRB, with the same result. He then did several more TRBs in rapid succession, with the effect that he successively, and unwittingly, pounded the lodged bullet far enough forward to finally permit the slide to go into battery and the pistol to thus fire. Both bullets blew out the muzzle, but not before pressure built up enough to split the barrel. The result was the forgoing.

Lessons:

>Everyone on gun ranges needs to be wearing safety glasses. We cannot overemphasize this important safety precaution. Even today, we see in gun magazines all kinds of photos of people shooting without glasses. It's a foolish oversight. Incidents like the one described above are precipitous by nature and fundamentally unforeseeable. The mandatory wearing of safety glasses needs to be enforced by all of us

>Hobby reloads are a can of worms! No matter how careful hobbyists try to be, they don't have the quality-control apparatus and procedures that mainline manufacturers do. Squibs are just one of the typical problems endemic to hobby reloads.

>During stoppage reduction, the TRB procedure should only be applied once. When a single application of TRB does not resolve the problem, students need to be taught to immediately default to the lock-rip-work-tap-rank-bang drill. Repeated application of TRB is unlikely to reduce the stoppage and may well lead to a KB, as we see here.

>The new generation of high-pressure pistol cartridges, represented by the 40S&W and the 357SIG, are far less forgiving than are older (lower pressure) pistol cartridges like the 9mm and 45ACP. If the above incident has occurred with a G17, both bullets would have probably exited the muzzle with scant fanfare, and the shooter would have gone forward unaware that anything unusual had happened. Pistols, even Glocks, are only so strong!

/John