Not just a squib. Not just a round fired into the barrel after a squib. Not just two. Three. Three rounds pushing the squib slowly down the barrel. Apparently, four bullets was more than could fit in the barrel at once (who knew?), leaving the last round to lock up the cylinder, too.
Read all about it at Tam’s.
Reminds me why I don’t shoot Independence Ammunition. This (photo R) happened to me back in ’06. It was just a single round, not a succession of them as our revolver cowboy attempted. But it apparently had just enough oomph to tickle the muzzle without really leaving the nest.
Knowing the difference between the big loud BANG noise and a soft puff of squibness is a worthwhile learning point for any shooter. Even though I shoot factory new ammo almost exclusively I’ve still had a small handful of squibs over the years. Even if it doesn’t cause injury, firing a round down the barrel after a squib has a very good chance of totaling your pistol.
Train hard & stay safe! ToddG
Todd: You should try shooting a machine gun with a squib round! Lots of not so good things happen–and you are never going to know it occurred until they do. (Weapon stops firing; pull on bolt handle, case ejects, pull trigger again, bad stuff starts happening; pull brass from exploded case out of hands, arms and face; explain to survey officer why you shouldn’t really have to buy a new barrel).
Lake City will tell you that their QC makes squib rounds impossible, but . . . .
Things wren’t adding up until I went to Tam’s and saw that they reloaded after firing two. D’oh!
Wouldn’t dump on Independence too much. Had bunches of premium defensive HP’s recalled due to a lack of charge holes in some cases! One of the big 3.
I have to agree. I have had bad ammo from almost all of the makers.
Some of the Independence 5.56 I just bought is actually made in Israel, and it is really good stuff.
I had seen a couple of squibs when others were shooting and thought I would recognize it if I had one. But in the middle of a match shooting the IDPA classifier I had one and completely missed it. Luckily the bullet didn’t go far so another wouldn’t quite feed behind it. While completely focused on clearing the malfunction I felt a hand on my shoulder and suddenly heard several people yelling STOP! I had complete tunnel vision and tuned everything else out and wanted to fix the problem and continue. That was a scary wake-up call on a couple of levels. I was shooting factory Remington UMC 9mm at the time. Now that I reload I’m a stickler for checking the charge of each round. Any doubts or if I miss seeing the charge before seating the bullet and it goes in the reject pile. And I work harder to keep my ears and eyes open to what is going on around me when I’m shooting.
Nothing wrong with that picture. If that were my gun, then I might think differently.
Interesting comment about Lake City. I’ve never had them tell me it was impossible, and I fire tons of their ammo every year, and have sent them squib reports.
If one has never had a squib or seen one in another person’s gun, how can you learn?
Not sure I get the picture. I get the situation but the picture is messing with me. Are they drilling the bullets out or something?
Ken,
“Not sure I get the picture. I get the situation but the picture is messing with me. Are they drilling the bullets out or something?”
When the gun was first handed to the gunsmith, there was a bullet visible protruding from the muzzle and another tying up the cylinder by being halfway between the chamber throat.
With three unfired cartridges in the cylinder and two bullets visibly lodged in the bore, the gunsmith quite reasonably believed that there were only two bullets stuck in the gun. It’s not until he began drilling the one stuck in the muzzle in an attempt to pull it that it was discovered that it was copper-jacketed lead turtles all the way down, so to speak.
In other words, the owner of the gun in question had gotten two squibs stuck in the bore, reloaded, and gotten two more squibs.
He’s really lucky that rounds 3 and 4 were squibs, too, or we’d still be looking for the gun’s topstrap up in the drop ceiling someplace.
OK, that explains it. Squibs stuck in the barrel wouldn’t account for the condition shown in the pic. Thanks.
. . . unless something else had been done in the interim. (he meant to say)
Depending on how the powder burns in the round, one may not realize it is a squib initially. I had a rather serious squib resulting in barrel obstruction during a drill in class the other weekend, and the report sounded correct “enough” as it appears the powder burned in the case and chamber. It was clear however that something was wrong in that the round failed to extract; and the slide was solidly locked forward (a pretty rare thing, but can happen with double feeds that leave little room to play). Ran a rip / rack malfunction clearance as I recall, and had to work at it, and a quick glance showed the chamber clear (from the rear visual angle). But the squib round was lodged just at the front of the rifling, still partially in the chamber. This was by grace – it prevented chambering another round and causing real damage. Like an idiot, I cycled several rounds through in an attempt to chamber, all without success – thinking initially that the next round may have just been out of spec, and that it was better to kick it than keep it, but eventually pattern recognition kicked in. I may not be clever, but I can learn (grin).
Took a rod to clear the round on the next break in class. Of course, this was Tula. Now, I typically have had a bad primer round every couple of cases, out of many tens of thousands of rounds of the stuff; but this was serious enough I ran other ammo for the remainder of the class. The thing threw me off more than a bit for the rest of the morning, as I have seen squib rounds before (bad ammo whilst overseas – poorly stored Egyptian fodder, old Pakistani stuff, etc.) And while I always intellectually knew that they could be missed when otherwise engaged in a different task, having it happen to me in the second string of the first training day in a stateside class – and not catching it – was more than a bit disconcerting.
The experience has led me to rethink how easily I used to dismiss those folks that fail to recognize a squib. I suspect there is more variability to how such misfires occur than we commonly describe (as the usual case is considered primer without powder in reloaded ammo). Given the current state of ammunition supply, I think this is an area where emphasis is needed on further discussion and consideration.
My first thought was that Superman had a gun pointed at him so he put his fingertip in the muzzle.
Thats why revolvers fell out of fashion.
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Most Independence handgun ammo is just re-boxed Blazer Brass, manufactured by Federal. Usually loaded with plated bullets. I’ve even seen it with the Blazer headstamp on the brass. Not that that changes anything for you… just FYI.
Everybody manufacturer seems to be cranking out ammo as fast as they can since the craze started in 2008.
Even Federal has their share of mistakes:
http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=725632