I recently had a very unusual and dangerous ammunition malfunction. This was one I hadn’t seen before, but the end result is very similar to a squib load, which I have seen a couple times. This malfunction could have caused serious damage to the gun or injury to me or my friend. Let’s take a closer look at this malfunction.
Full Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. Additionally, some links in this article are to AmmunitionToGo.com, which does provide some ammunition to SwiftSilentDeadly. As always, I would not link to a product I wouldn’t use myself, so there is no undue influence here. And to be clear, AmmoToGo DID NOT provide the faulty ammunition covered in this article.
The Backstory
I recently completed my review of the Fulton Armory M1 Carbine (if you haven’t watched it, I strongly encourage you to because it is an exceptional review). After shooting 575 malfunction-free rounds, mostly with PPU 110-grain FMJ, I wanted to shoot a little more, and let a friend shoot it. He offered to buy some ammo and came up with four, fifty-round boxes for $36/ea. at the LGS. I had never heard of the brand, but ammo is ammo, so we started shooting. After a quick zero confirmation, I was running him through some drills. I asked him to confirm that his magazine was topped off before we began a stage of fire.
He removed the mag, loaded it, then checked the chamber. Being unfamiliar with the M1 Carbine, when he checked the chamber he ejected the round. I noticed a significant amount of debris in the chamber that didn’t look right. I assumed it was carbon from excessively dirty ammo. My buddy bent over the pick up the cartridge he had ejected. He handed me a case with no bullet, no powder, but an intact primer. I realized all the junk in the chamber area of the gun was unburned powder. What happened?
Examining the Malfunction
I called an immediate ceasefire when I noticed that something wasn’t right. The case is pristine, the primer is intact, the powder is all over the gun…so where is the bullet? We unloaded and moved to the bench. Sure enough, the bullet was stuck in the rifle’s bore. Here is my working theory: the bullet was insufficiently crimped into the case. When the bolt sent the cartridge home, the mass of the bullet kept it traveling forward after the case had stopped. When my friend checked the chamber the case was ejected and the bullet remained in place.
Since I didn’t have a cleaning rod handy, we ran to Lowe’s and bought a 1/4-inch dowel rod. The bullet was easy to push back out of the barrel, but it was definitely stuck in there pretty good. Notice that the bullet had not engaged the rifling. If it had, rifling marks would be evident on the jacket. If the bullet had engaged the rifling, I would have assumed it was pulled out when my friend did his press check, rather than pulling itself when the bolt went home.
A Dangerous Ammunition Malfunction
There are a couple of undesirable factors about ammunition like this. First, with bullets that loosely crimped into the cases, the bullets probably aren’t set to a uniform depth. This means that powder burn rates are inconsistent, shot-to-shot, negatively impacting accuracy, velocity, and terminal performance. Had we fired this particular cartridge after chambering, it likely would have fired, but at much lower pressures than intended due to the bullet being so far forward.
This creates the danger of a squib load. At very low pressures a bullet might well have remained in the barrel, setting us up for a big “kaboom” on the next shot. And what if we had not noticed the powder, and my friend had not looked for the round he ejected? The bullet would have remained in the bore. If he had sent the bolt home, it is possible that the force of the bullet going home would have created two problematic conditions.
First, it may have forced the stuck bullet further into the bore. Rifling is pretty tight, so it is unlikely it would have pushed it far enough forward to let the bolt fully close, but it’s possible. What is more likely is that the bullet in the new cartridge would be pushed back into the case due to the loose crimp. The combination of pushing the stuck bullet forward and the new bullet backward may have let the bolt go home.
Avoiding This Malfunction
The increased pressure of a cartridge with bullet setback, combined with a bore obstruction would have likely been catastrophic. All of this pressure would have exited the chamber area of the gun, near the shooter’s face. I will admit this malfunction spooked me a bit. I hate to bad-mouth anyone, but I won’t be shooting any more ammunition from Precision One. Let’s talk about how to avoid this malfunction.
First, use good, clean, high-quality ammunition. There are lots of great brands of ammo out there. I buy most of my ammunition, in bulk, from online retailers like Ammunition To Go who sell brands with a strong reputation for quality. Be careful with a box of ammo from a company you’ve never heard of.
Next, inspect your ammunition before using it. I should have randomly looked at a couple cartridges to verify that they were clean, complete, of the same length, and that the bullets were tightly crimped. With today’s mass-production of ammunition it is not uncommon for cartridges to be shipped all sorts of problems, like missing primers and upside-down bullets.
I admit being sort of laissez faire about wearing eye protection. That has changed. I’m not setting a great example, and this malfunction could have seriously altered my quality of life. Always wear ANSI Z87.1-rated eye protection when shooting.
Finally, stop shooting if something looks odd. If you get a reduced report, see an cartridge case that is clean and has an intact primer, notice a bunch of powder in the chamber area, or something else falling outside what you know to be normal, STOP! Most importantly, make sure the bore is unobstructed before continuing to shoot. When in doubt, pack up the range and go get lunch instead – don’t force it with faulty equipment or ammo.
