Stupid stuff that happened to you or you've seen

[Nyles]

Don't feel bad, I think that happens to everyone the first time they shoot a 97. A friend of mine (and 97 nut) suggests hooking your pinky under the pistol grip to keep it down and out of the way, I just lift my thumb out of the way when cycling. His way is probably more foolproof.

[Excalibur]

Originally Posted by Nyles

Don't feel bad, I think that happens to everyone the first time they shoot a 97. A friend of mine (and 97 nut) suggests hooking your pinky under the pistol grip to keep it down and out of the way, I just lift my thumb out of the way when cycling. His way is probably more foolproof.

I've taken a couple tactical shotgun classes so it's hard to break the muscle memory of using a modern shotgun with an old school one.


Oh, I got one. The first time I've ever shot an AK, I tried to charge it by having my left hand go under, but forgot the safety was still on and wondered for a good 5 seconds what's wrong before flicking it off.

[SPEMack618]

I was running the range in ROTC for the girls in the Army Nursing Program.

One girl had a squib. The next round resulted in a catastrophic barrel blow out just behind her hand, chunks of M-16A2 went everywhere. She set down and started to sob. I cleared her rifle and went and puked behind a bush. (my normal reaction to stress.)

A funny from that day though was that through liberal use of the Forward Assist a girl managed to cram an M855 into the chamber with the remains of the previously fired round that had been only partially ejected.

[commando552]

I once had to fire an L9A1 mortar (British 51mm patrol mortar that is hand held rather than using a bipod) in an odd situation where I basically ended up pinching the thing between my knees to steady it. Unfortunately I was on a concrete roof so the base plate had nothing to dig into so the tube slid back and hit me straight in the bollocks.

I had a close call call once shooting a 12 gauge O/U shotgun. I was thinking about buying a shotgun from somebody and they were letting me use it for a clays shoot. He handed me the gun, I loaded a couple of shells, closed the action, but then something clicked in my brain before I called pull. Something obviously hadn't looked right, and when I opened it up it turned out that there was a 20 gauge shell stuck a few inches down BOTH barrels. The guy claimed that he didn't even own a 20 gauge let alone any 20 ammo so I have no idea how it got there (he was a bit sketchy though so either he was a moron talking bs or somebody was deliberately trying to blow up his gun). I ended up buying the gun anyway, I shoot pretty well with it.

I have also had a double chain fire (as in the chamber each side of the one behind the barrel) on a repro 1851 Navy. They were only light loads and the gun was surprisingly fine, but I still ended up with a few cuts on my hand from the lead fragments as the balls pinged off the frame. It was totally my fault though, I was using really shitty caps that I could tell didn't really fit right.

On the topic of the original post, I have only ever fired 5 or 6 round from a Desert Eagle, but in that had two double feeds, one of which sounds almsot like what you described (the edge of the empty case cut into the front of the next bullet rather than actually sliding in). The owner said that this was quite common with Desert Eagles (or at least his), something to do with the ejection pattern bouncing the cases off of the slide back into the totally open-topped chamber. I think there is also a fix for it, getting stronger springs or something like that.

[Spartan198]

Originally Posted by commando552

I once had to fire an L9A1 mortar (British 51mm patrol mortar that is hand held rather than using a bipod) in an odd situation where I basically ended up pinching the thing between my knees to steady it. Unfortunately I was on a concrete roof so the base plate had nothing to dig into so the tube slid back and hit me straight in the bollocks.

[Nyles]

Wasn't there personally for these events but they all happened when I was in Afghanistan.

-US troop had a negligent discharge with an M203. Round didn't go off (the arming safety works!) but it did come apart when it hit the ground and a section mate got some shrapnel ricocheted into his leg.

-Canadian troop shot himself in the leg while doing an unload drill on a C6 RWS while standing in front of it on the cab.

-US troop was using a .50 round to pound out a pin on his gun, primer first. Went off in his hand and he lost some fingers. There's actually pictures of this one on the internet.

-Canadian troop was messing around with him loaded 9mm on his bunk. Round went through him and into his bunkmate below.

Stuff I did see, but via UAV:

-Couple of Afghan policeman went up a hill mountain in their civvies on their day off for a little recreational mortar shooting. We almost Pred striked them.

-Some Taliban broke out an 82mm mortar during a firefight with our battlegroup. They were about 500M away but fired it full charge. Near as we could tell it landed somewhere in the next district.

[Excalibur]

My first handgun was an XDm in 9mm. For awhile, I would top off my gun with the +1 in the chamber by inserting the cartridge directly down the chamber and then releasing the slide. Thankfully, a buddy observed me doing that and warned me to never do that with a handgun.

[Jcordell]

1994. Hohenfels Germany. 1/4 Infantry. My company brought a dozen M-60 machine guns back after running the M-60 range at Graf for the previous four days. We were breaking them down inside our building and one of the machine guns still had a round in it. It went off and into the floor. The Army had that little crater patched up within a couple days.

2002. The day after Thanksgiving. I pointed one of my "empty" S&W .357 magnum revolvers at the basement wall and pulled the trigger. Fourteen years later my wife still won't let me patch the little crater that the hollow point made when it impacted with the concrete wall. Says it's a good reminder for me to always make sure that the guns are really empty.