Butt puckering (what happened)

[Gunaria]

Entropy and a good excuse to go buy an AK!

 

[DoggyDaddy]

A wascally wabbit?

 

[roadrunner681]

you can say what ya want but im pretty impressed the gun manged to hold together enough to keep the operator alive, i think a squib load or maybe ammo related issue.

 

[kawtech87]

Until they do.

LiveLeak.com - Allah does not Approve(

Oh I've seen that video. That very well could have been spiked ammo though.

Just goes to show that everything man made can and will eventually fail.

 

[Jeremy1066]

Did we find out the manufacturer of the upper yet?

 

[roadrunner681]

could a primer that was sticking out a bit do that?

 

[Tlam13]

A buddy of mine had an AR blowout similar to this and he realized he had loaded pistol powder into his 5.56 reloads. He swore his ex-wife tried to kill him by switching them out.

My guess is reload with wrong powder...

 

[M67]

could a primer that was sticking out a bit do that?

No, force of the firing pin hitting it would more than likely just force the primer to seat all the way and not ignite.

Or at least that's been my experience with reloads where the primer isn't seated all the way.

 

[Force10]

I would say it was not an out-of-battery situation. It looks like the bolt is still locked into the receiver. If it was out-of-battery, the bolt would not be locked in place and the bolt and carrier likely would have slammed to the rear, doing massive damage to the lower. By looking at the position of the extractor channel in the bolt, it's definitely in a locked position in the upper. My guess would be a squib load, followed by a full-power round.

I've been thinking about this a lot, my best guess is with ryknoll3, it couldn't have been an OOB discharge with the bolt in the locked position. I'm going with a squib where the bullet stopped past the gas port but before the end of the barrel, and the regular load behind it created a) a wedged bolt and b) and exploded carrier and upper due to the increased pressure in the carrier and the inability to unlock the bolt. That's the only way I can conceive this could happen, however there are smarter people on here than I.

 

[Force10]

Now I'm wondering if that much pressure would actually burst the gas tube before creating carnage like is in the pics... Dunno.

 

[Hookeye]

My guess is that a stuck bullet shot stopped the cycle, and the shooter didn't catch the problem (indoor range, may have though the report normal- hearing another shooter).

Proly guessed it just a FTE and ran another in and kaboom.

If there was no stoppage then I'd vote "no squib" and a funky reload.

 

[Force10]

At any rate makes me second-guess those mag-dump races I've played just for kicks...

 

[PGRChaplain]

Barrel obstruction. Any serious injuries?( besides his skivvies )

 

[Cuttingedge]

A good "butt puckering" always grabs my attention. This just flat out sucks. Dumb question, would a heavy barrel have any affect on this? Would it still rupture???

 

[PeaShooter]

sweet! what do i get?

The internet!

 

[Leo]

I cannot tell, are the lugs stripped off the bolt or the notches torn out of the barrel extension? A squib followed buy a live round would have probably correctly chambered.

If the barrel extension and the bolt lugs are still in place it would have been an out of battery fire. If a live round was fully seated in the chamber and operator released a locked back bolt stripping one off the magazine, the point of the 2nd round would have driven into the back of the first.

I was always taught that is why you cannot use pointed bullets in a 30-30 Winchester, The teaching is that under recoil, any point resting on a primer could cause ignition. That is one of the experiments I never tried to prove.

 

[IndyGlockMan]

did he try to fire a 300BLK in it?
pretty ugly kaboom. I hope the shooter is ok.
Probably not a double charge... not enough space in the case to hold that much powder.
Maybe wrong power used?
Maybe temp sensitive powder that got too hot?

 

[Thor]

I cannot tell, are the lugs stripped off the bolt or the notches torn out of the barrel extension? A squib followed buy a live round would have probably correctly chambered.

If the barrel extension and the bolt lugs are still in place it would have been an out of battery fire. If a live round was fully seated in the chamber and operator released a locked back bolt stripping one off the magazine, the point of the 2nd round would have driven into the back of the first.

I was always taught that is why you cannot use pointed bullets in a 30-30 Winchester, The teaching is that under recoil, any point resting on a primer could cause ignition. That is one of the experiments I never tried to prove.

That is certainly an issue that was uncomfortably discovered with .45-70 in tube magazines...it is the reason behind the development of the Hornady Lever Evolution ammo with the squishy nose so you can fire a tapered bullet.

The tapered bullet gives you a higher velocity and flatter trajectory but nothing beats the killing power of a big flat nose.

Maybe the OP pic was trying to shoot a Garrett 500gr Sledgehammer .45-70 round to see what it felt like...

 

[Rookie]

Update...

I don't have pics to share, but I saw them. The bolt is welded into the barrel, the bolt carrier was split in half. I have no idea what happened, but the barrel seems to be intact.

 

[bmyers]

He loaded pistol powder in a round and may have had max headspace tolerance (or more)