While at the Lewiston Pistol Club Steel Challenge match today I witnessed my first gun Kaboom!
As I reported via Twitter earlier, Bill was shooting his Glock 34 when it experienced a “high energy event”. Although there has been speculation as to the cause nothing definitive has been established.
There was no blood loss and although Bill’s hands stung for many minutes we do not believe any medical attention will be required.
Click on the pictures for high resolution versions.
I’m glad there were no serious injuries.
Stay safe.
Well, the first stupid question in my mind (that you all probably already addressed), is “Handloads or factory-made?”
Handloads.
The next question is: OEM barrel or stock? If it’s OEM, with hand-loads, this is no news. If it’s a fully-supported after-market barrel, it might be news.
I was definitely surprised to see that it was a 9mm Glock with a kaboom. With the various Alliant powders I’ve used, it’s not even possible to go below the minimum overall length with a max pressure round because the powder takes up so much space. So it will definitely be interesting to learn more about how this came to happen.
Glad that the shooter is OK. I am gonna abuse the pics and post them in my IDPA Club’s forum. Lots of G34s in IDPA.
Thanks for reporting this. I’d like to post some more information on http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com. If you could ping me @ guntruth@me.com, I’d be most appreciative. Meanwhile, I’m glad no one was hurt.
I don’t know if you were there that day Joe, but we had a 1911 do the same thing at the range a few years ago. It blew the magazine apart (we never did find the spring and the follower clipped the shooters nose on it’s way up drawing blood) but otherwise the gun was intact: old Pachmayer grips with steel liners so the grips didn’t even go. We determined from a spent case we found that he had reloaded a case with a cracked mouth and the round had telescoped. That or a squib will do it.
Alphamike,
I don’t remember being there for that.
There was another gun that almost had a Kaboom! yesterday. Janet had a squib load. Ceasefire!!!! Unloading and examining the gun revealed there was a bullet lodged in the barrel. That was a STI chambered in .38 Super.
In my capacity as a newly-minted Glock armorer I once took a look at a Glock 19 that “had a sticky slide” at an IPSC match at Interlake in Kirkland. The slide would run okay, but then hit a rough spot where it would hang up. Upon questioning, the owner revealed that he had a round go “pop” during a string, and got another round off before the RO called a ceasefire.
Turned out he’d had a squib, lodged a bullet in the barrel, then shot it out with the next full power round. All he had to show for it was a slightly bulged barrel. He probably could have worked down the bulged part with emery cloth and continued to use it, but that is obviously not recommended. I was pretty amazed the the gun didn’t kaboom – gave me a new respect for Glock barrels.