Is this Just me or....

[Daltex1]

Is this just me or when you have a round that you pulled the trigger on and it does not go "bang" when you clear the round and look at it and the primer has been struck do you get the feeling that it is going to go off in your hand? Then I feel I have to put the round somewhere safe so it doesnt go off! Just freaks me out! OR CAN IT???????

[SCone]

My Grandpa used to drop shotgun shells that didn't fire in a can of old car oil. Said, "That'll keep 'um from shootin' again"

[The Annoyed Man]

I've never had it happen with a pistol, but I have had it happen with a .308 bolt rifle about 14 years ago. The rifle was a Ruger M77 MkII All Weather, and the ammunition was some old NATO 7.62 ball of Brazilian manufacture. I had 2 or 3 rounds in a row fail to fire - dimpled the primer, but no bang. The next one fired, but it also perforated the primer and vented out the gas escape hole. Since that rifle never failed to fire any other ammunition it was fed, regardless of manufacture, I attributed the problem to the ammo rather than the rifle.

I put thate stuff away. I still have it just because I didn't know what to do with it.

[Target1911]

I've never had it happen with a pistol, but I have had it happen with a .308 bolt rifle about 14 years ago. The rifle was a Ruger M77 MkII All Weather, and the ammunition was some old NATO 7.62 ball of Brazilian manufacture. I had 2 or 3 rounds in a row fail to fire - dimpled the primer, but no bang. The next one fired, but it also perforated the primer and vented out the gas escape hole. Since that rifle never failed to fire any other ammunition it was fed, regardless of manufacture, I attributed the problem to the ammo rather than the rifle.

I put thate stuff away. I still have it just because I didn't know what to do with it.

I think you could take it to the Police station and have them dispose of it properly. I would just call first or ask the next LEO you see at the local "Stop 'N Rob"

Or just take it with you the next time you go camping and just toss it in the fire....

[Mike1951]

I was always taught to consider the possibility of a hang fire and to keep the firearm pointed downrange for at least 20-30 seconds.

As far as disposing of them, I drop them in a canal.

Taking them to the police for disposal is overreacting BIG time.

[LedJedi]

ya, that freaks me out too. i give the round a good 15-20 seconds right where it is, pointed down range, before I do anything with it.

After that I box it all up and send it to Princeton PD... it's not like they're going to use it.

[KaiserB]

......

I put that stuff away. I still have it just because I didn't know what to do with it.

I think you could take it to the Police station and have them dispose of it properly. I would just call first or ask the next LEO you see at the local "Stop 'N Rob"

Most ranges have a place to put the cartridges that do not fire.

In any case you should be careful on a failure to fire as a "hangfire" may be occurring. Keep the weapon pointed downrange.

Immediate action should be taken in the event of either a hangfire or misfire. Either can be caused by an ammunition defect or by a faulty firing mechanism. Any failure to fire must be considered a hangfire until that possibility is eliminated.

• a. Hangfire. A hangfire is a delay in the functioning of the round's propelling charge explosive train at the time of firing. The length of this delay is unpredictable, but in most cases it ranges between a split second and 30 seconds. Such a delay in the functioning of the round (hangfire) could result from the presence of grit, sand, frost, ice, or excess oil or grease.
  
  b. Misfire. A misfire is a complete failure of the weapon to fire. A misfire in itself is not dangerous; however, because it cannot be immediately distinguished from a hangfire, it must be considered to be a hangfire until proven otherwise.
  
  c. Procedures. Because a stoppage may have been caused by a hangfire, the following precautions must be observed until the round has been removed from the weapon and the cause of the failure determined:
  • (1) Keep the weapon pointed downrange or at the target, and keep everyone clear of its muzzle. If the stoppage occurs during training, shout 'Misfire' and clear the area of any soldiers not needed for the operation.
    (2) Wait 30 seconds from the time of the failure before opening the barrel assembly to perform the unloading procedure.
    (3) After removing the round from the receiver, determine whether the round or the firing mechanism is defective. Examine the primer to see if it is dented. If the primer is dented, separate the round from other ammunition until it can be disposed of properly. However, if the primer is not dented, the firing mechanism is at fault. Once the cause of the failure to fire has been corrected, the round may be reloaded and fired.

[Target1911]

Hmmmmm.......not saying the above procedures are incorrect....but....I dont know of one Competition Shooter that waits up to 30 seconds to clear a mis/hangfire.

[KaiserB]

Hmmmmm.......not saying the above procedures are incorrect....but....I dont know of one Competition Shooter that waits up to 30 seconds to clear a mis/hangfire.

I agree 30 seconds is a little extreme. But I have witnessed people have a misfire, have a puzzled look on their face, and about the time they reach for the slide to rack another round in... "BANG". Then they usually have to go clean their shorts. Hangfires are a rare occurrence but if you have a batch of ammo that does that (usually old ammo) it can be quite alarming.

[WildBill]

I was always taught to consider the possibility of a hang fire and to keep the firearm pointed downrange for at least 20-30 seconds.

Keeping the hang fire pointed downrange for 20-30 seconds is what I was taught.

[57Coastie]

Hmmmmm.......not saying the above procedures are incorrect....but....I dont know of one Competition Shooter that waits up to 30 seconds to clear a mis/hangfire.

I do. I know a bunch of them. My shooting skills, limited though they are, I owe to training and shooting with the Army Marksmanship Unit. With this group, comprised of some of the finest competitive marksmen in the world, failure to follow the procedures laid out above by KaiserB could result in dire consequences. I never want to be at the bench next to a shooter who ignores this basic safety procedure. I take that back -- I don't want to be at the same range with him or her.

Jim

[Skiprr]

Immediate action should be taken in the event of either a hangfire or misfire. Either can be caused by an ammunition defect or by a faulty firing mechanism. Any failure to fire must be considered a hangfire until that possibility is eliminated....

That section comes almost verbatim from chapter 4 of the Army's Field Manual FM 23-31, issued 1994. The only change in text is in line c.(1): Instead of reading "Keep the weapon pointed downrange..." the original reads, "Keep the M203 pointed downrange..." Because FM 23-31 deals with the 40mm grenade launcher.

I'd sure be willing to give an M203 a full 30 seconds.

And it certainly isn't a bad procedure for safe hangun or rifle handling...particularly for newer shooters, or for situations where you're doing slow-fire at the range.

The only problem I have with it is a message I've had beaten into me: Under the extreme stress of life-or-death encounter, you will not rise to the occasion. You will fall to the lowest common denominator: the level of your training.

Witness the famous 1986 FBI shootout in Miami against Matix and Platt. The story goes that at least one of the agents--don't know which (might have been Orrantia), but it wasn't Grogan or Dove, the two officers killed--had been trained to take the empty shells from his revolver and stack them on a railing: the law of the range officer where he trained becasue it made it easier to collect the spent brass. After the smoke cleared, it was found that he had actually, unconsciously, taken the time to stack his spent brass on the ground when he reloaded his revolver. (I can't substantiate this, and it may be urban legend; but it makes a good, illustrative story.)

Hangfires with quality, modern, commercial ammo are extremely rare, and when it happens, the delay from firing pin/striker impact to discharge is seldom more than one second. I admit that I've heard of delays of over a minute, but never seen one.

As Target1911 pointed out, in action-shooting competition or combat/defensive training--or a real-world emergency encounter--it's tap-rack-bang. You really don't know what caused the "click" instead of the "bang," and remediation has to be immediate to get back into the fight. That's one important reason to use old or milsurp ammo for plinking, not serious training.

Yep, there's some inherent danger in immediately clearing the stoppage because there is a remote possibility it could be a hangfire. But there, again, is where proper training comes into play: if you handle the slide of that pistol correctly, and do it the same way every single time whether you're unloading the gun to clean it or urgently clearing a stoppage, your face will never be near the ejection port, and you'll never have your hand over it.

Safety first, always. Bullseye shooting or slow-fire, always keep the muzzle safely downrange and wait...just in case. If someone is new shooter, I'd recommend not even trying to figure out what happened: keep your gun pointed safely, finger off the trigger, and raise your hand or signal a range officer for assistance. For those with an advanced level of training and experience, in competition or defensive training exercises you're probably not going to stop and wait 30 seconds...unless you're shootin' a grenade launcher.

Just MHO, as always.

[jimlongley]

Yes, a hangfire is possible.

In another thread I described the procedure for clearing a misfire from a five inch naval gun - there's a hangfire you wouldn't want to go off in your hand.

[WildBill]

Hmmmmm.......not saying the above procedures are incorrect....but....I dont know of one Competition Shooter that waits up to 30 seconds to clear a mis/hangfire.

I do. I know a bunch of them. My shooting skills, limited though they are, I owe to training and shooting with the Army Marksmanship Unit. With this group, comprised of some of the finest competitive marksmen in the world, failure to follow the procedures laid out above by KaiserB could result in dire consequences. I never want to be at the bench next to a shooter who ignores this basic safety procedure. I take that back -- I don't want to be at the same range with him or her.

Jim

A hangfire could go off in 5, 30, 60, 90 seconds, etc. The important thing is to keep the muzzle is a safe direction until the round is removed from the chamber. I have no big fear of a round going off after it is removed from the gun.

I agree with Skiprr that the procedure for Bullseye-type shooting and plinking as I described above will be different than for an experienced shooter engaging self defense competition and practice.

[G.C.Montgomery]

Is this just me or when you have a round that you pulled the trigger on and it does not go "bang" when you clear the round and look at it and the primer has been struck do you get the feeling that it is going to go off in your hand? Then I feel I have to put the round somewhere safe so it doesnt go off! Just freaks me out! OR CAN IT???????

Please give the ammo the does not go bang to me for proper disposal...I'll take one for the team and risk my life with that faulty ammo during my next range session. Seriously, most of the time, it's just fine to cycle that ammo again. About 1 in every 50 rounds or Remington UMC "Yellow Box" ammo will fail to ignite in my Glocks. Assuming the immediate action drill doesn't launch the rounds into a black hole, when I recover those rounds I just stuff them in my magazine again. They usually go bang the second time around but, sometime they don't.