Ever dropped a round of ammo and had it go off?

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I remember the shock of having a .22 magnum round go off while vacuuming some shag carpet (this was back in the '70s). The vacuum's beater bar ended up with a dent shaped like the base of the cartridge. As memory serves, the bullet was still in the case & the case wall was blown out, apparently due to the bullet having been wedged between between the vacuum's beater bar & housing.

Nick
 
I have by accident sent a few loaded rounds of 10mm thru the old Lyman Turbo Pro for about 75 minutes. Nothing happened, I have been sorting my brass a lot better since then.
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I put loaded 8mm Lebel rounds in the tumbler all the time. Used to do .223 and 30/30 loaded rounds too. On purpose.

What about all those guns out there with tubular magazines?
 
Guns with tubular magazines MUST use flat or well rounded nose bullets just to avoid the primers ahead being dented hard enough to go off. The recent introduction of Leverevolution bullets with soft plastic pointed noses has altered this. But it's only the rubbery nose compound of those specialty bullets that allows them to go into tubular mags. Other bullets with hard plastic nose fillers are still not allowed to be used in tubular magazines.

Loading them with more than one hard pointed round would be highly dangerous for sure. The case would split, or multiple cases would split due to the impacts of multiple primers in the tube and the resulting gas pressure would likely blow apart the tubular magazine.

It doesn't mean you can't use a .30-30 with hard pointed boat tail bullets. It just means that you should only load two rounds of such ammo. The first then goes into the chamber and the second is safely on it's own in the magazine. And if you forget how many is in there then jack them all out and start again.
 
Not a small arm round but same principle

A KATUSA in our CAV Squadron in Korea dropped a 105MM round on a open battery box inside a M48A5, back in 1980. Not pretty. Fortunately it was only a battery explosion and not the 105mm...he was also lucky the battery explosion didn't ignite the rest of the 105mm ready rounds inside the turret as well. He was burned extremely badly, lucky enough to live but only because he was air-evac'd to Ft. Sam.
 
My dad was reloading and dropped a .45 cartridge. By chance, the primer struck a corner of press lying on the floor and detonated. Drove a dime-size piece of brass into his calf which required surgery to remove and the bullet struck his thigh, leaving a hell of a bruise.

Yep. It went off.

And as I have related elsewhere, when young and dumb we would stick 22s into straws and throw them in the air. When they hit the ground they would go off. All fun and games until my buddy ended up in the ER with a piece of brass lodged in his cornea.

Needless to say I'm not keen on seeing someone drop ammo.
 
gloucestergarand, having seen what a lead acid battery explosion did to walls and metal I'm sorry to hear about the guy in the turret. Hopefully they were able to do enough plastic surgery to restore a normal face to the poor guy.

As for the other stories I'm seeing about brass penetration and such I guess I can count myself lucky that I got away totally unharmed.

I know I'll be treating the ammo a tad more carefully in the future. And if another round does slip from my hand over a hard base I know I'll be closing my eyes and turning my head until it's all over.

I'm also in the habit of "pouring" my reloads from one container to another. I've always been careful to ensure that the cartridges pour slowly and over the least possible distance and drop energy. Now I know that such care has not been wasted effort.
 
Friend of mine owns a popular range in texas. on the pistol they heard a guy yell "I'm hit!!"...he was bleeding from the cheek, but the cut wasnt even stitches worthy. At first they thought it was a very unlikely ricochet, but what they found was a peice of ejected .45 brass landed on the guys loaded ammo on the bench in a plastic bok. It had struck a primer and set off the round, the bullet was sitting neatly in its place, with powder burn in the plastic.
 
Before reading this thread I would have thought such a thing was impossible. Live and learn!



figment your buddy is not the brightest fellow. cleansing of the gene pool as I call it.
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Smoovbiscuit You're new here...may I suggest that you refrain from insulting other poster's and/or their friends and referring to potential accidents as "cleansing the gene pool"?

Not High Road and not funny.
 
Didn't happen to me, but to a buddy:

He was walking down a flight of stairs in his house, carrying a few boxes of ammo. A box of .40S&W opened and the tray slid out, sending loaded rounds tumbling down the stairs. Somehow, a round fell primer-down on the nose of another round just perfectly. The bullet stayed put and the case went zinging across the room.

I always remember this story when I'm about to carelessly dump a hand full of loaded rounds into something.
 
A little Montagnard kid at my camp picked up a carbine round and fired it from his slingshot at a concrete bunker.
It popped and a bit entered his small chest cavity.
He got medivacced for surgery as the team medic wasn't authorised to go that far.
 
Never dropped one and had it go off, but I've had a chambered round go off by itself in a gun. Sadly for me it was a Jennings J-22, so as it was laying in my hand, it about took the last knuckle of my middle finger off.

The safety was on, the trigger was never touched, the rim the cartridge was never struck. Lesson learned. Don't lay a small gun in your hand. Period.
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Thank god it was "just" a hollow point .22LR. Next time buy dummy rounds when polishing a feed ramp.
 
Hooptie, I am glad that you are OK considering what could have been! :what:

Let me get this straight. The .22lr round went off entirely on it's own, and happened to be in the chamber of your Jennings, and while you happened to be holding it??? Wow. I might have to re-think making fun of the "gun just went off" stories in the news. I have always thought that there was no way that a gun could go off on it's own without some manipulation of the trigger (apart from the WWII Nambu which, from what i have heard, can fire if you press the side of the pistol where the sear connect bar is exposed)

If I may ask, what brand of .22lr ammo was it? Wait a minute, I just read the line after the x-ray, how were you polishing the feed ramp with a round in the chamber? :confused:

It makes sense to me that a rimfire might be more prone to firing from being bumped or hung up in a rough action. The priming is around the outside edge and the case thickness is so thin.
 
First firearm purchase 1986, Ruger 10/22 from Oshman's Sporting Goods at PV Mall in Phoenix.

As I'm eye-candying my new boxed rifle, younger brother asks to see the brick of .22 I picked up as well.

Unbeknownst to me, he pulls out a round, jumps in the air and whips it to the ground in the middle of the mall parking lot.

Still got a scar in the back of my knee from whatever part of the case hit me.

I just about pulled his trachea out that day.
 
As a kid, I used to take old 12g shells, dump the shot out, tape a marble to the primer and toss them in the air. If it hit concrete, it would pop. I've been more careful since. :)
 
Isomack, I had polished the ramp to see if it cured the FTF issue the gun was having, not sure why since it was a Jennings. But I had finished and wanted to see if it worked. The round chambered, I set the safety, layed the gun down in my palm and it just went off.

It was junk Federal bulk ammo. After I got home and field stripped the gun, the round was still in the chamber since it never cycled with the safety on, all I could deduce was that the case was slightly crimped on one side. other than that it was never touched.

To this day I have no idea how or why it happened, I'm just glad it wasn't much worse. The lesson learned? Never place your hand near the barrel of a gun. Period.
 
OK many and I mean many years ago my girlfriend at the time and myself had just got back to town from being out camping. We saw one of those small carnivals set up and she wanted to ride on the ferris wheel. What ever she wanted she got so off on the ride we went. being late before closing and no body else on the ride we where really having fun.

now I was wearing a 60's vintage green army field jacket and had a bunch of 22's in on off the pockets. after a few minutes the ride stopped and then the guy brought us back to the ground and asked if we were thrown anything because several bang went off close under the ride when we where up twirling around. turns out alot of the 22 rounds had come out and several went off on impact.
 
Saw another one last year on set up date at a gun show when everyone heard that dreaded BANGGGGGG.
alot of folks headed a few rows over to see who the idiot was who had a ND.
turns out that as he was unloading some zip locks with loaded ammunition onto the table one bag slipped and hit the ground causing a round to go off. bag broke open but everything staying inside of it.
No harm no foul on that one.
 
When I took the Sig Arms instructor class a couple years ago they talked about this. One of the instructors had seen it happen before. If I recall correctly, he said the student "lobbed" a loose round out of the way to get it out from underfoot and it went off when it hit. This was what I was told, but I didn't witness it personally.

We also discussed instances where a round in an ammo box on the bench went off when something hit the primer.
 
Thanks for the stories all. Good to know. I haven't seen it yet, but I think about it every time I fumble a couple rounds when loading.
 
Yeah, I know I'll be turning my face away from any dropped rounds in the future. In my case it was the coarse sand out in the parking lot. But it could just as easily be a round falling primer first onto the rim of a casing on the firing line.
 
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