I think I had a "hang-fire" yesterday at the range!

[wally]

Was shooting steel plates with my Ruger 22/45 using Remington Golden Bullet bulk pack experiencing a higher than what has been normal dud rate. I either purchased this ammo last month at Walmart or within the past two years from Academy. I had ran out of one box and opened another when stuffing my many mags so there is no way to tell which lot it might have been.

Anyways I pulled the trigger, heard click and as reaching over to cycle out the dud, when BANG! I was shooting left handed and it couldn't have been more than a second before I tapped the mag and reached for the bolt with my right hand and it discharged making me nearly jump out of my skin! I'm thankful I was shooting lefty and hence a bit slower with the drill, although I doubt the bolt from the .22 would do any serious damage beyond ruining the rest of my day (I've held it closed with my palm to turn the Ruger into a single shot when trying to diagnose some extraction/ejection problems, something I'd never try with a .45).

The gun remained safely pointed down range the whole time, but I can't be sure the round impacted the berm behind the plates

I've shot over well 10000 rounds of .22lr this past year and God only knows how how much more of it and various surplus and reloaded ammo over the years and its the first time I've ever experienced anything like this!

I never practice tap-rack-bang with surplus or reloaded ammo because I'd heard plenty of hang-fire stories, now it seems I know first hand!

--wally.

 

[SWModel19]

Your first hang fire should surely teach you to wait about 5 seconds before taking any action with a mis-fire. My first hang fire was with 8MM Mauser. It was quite a kick in the shoulder, since I wasn't expecting the round to go off, and scary as all get-out because my hand was on the bolt, about to open it up. Since then, I've always waited for a five-count before opening, and if shooting large bore, kept the butt on my shoulder. I've had two since, all with surplus 8MM. Scary stuff!

 

[GaryL]

Shoot enough old mil-surp ammo and you'll get to experience plenty of hang fires. I have some from the 1920's that can take 5-10 seconds to go off. 5-10 seconds is a long time to wait to see if it's a dud or a delayed action fuse.

 

[Lucky]

Wow that's a good question, safety drills vs ftf drills.

 

[Avenger29]

This is one of the reasons we wear safety glasses and all the boxes of ammo have "unload with breech away from face" directions in case of a misfire. You want to practice FTF drills? Randomly load mags with snap caps, then shuffle the mags. Its safer than relying on dud ammunition to give you your FTF practice. You don't want to trash the gun and your face for the sake of "training", do you?

 

[iamkris]

Yup, no biggie. It happens. Just practice the "wait 30 seconds, then unload" drill.

 

[Larry Ashcraft]

I had several hang-fires several years ago hunting antelope with my 25-06. It happened with both my handloads and factory loads. Turned out to be part of the stock (custom built gun) swelled up in the heat and and was holding back the bolt momentarily. Very scary!

Worst part was, we saw the BIGGEST pronghorn buck we had ever seen (went 17 inches easy), running about 70 yards in front of the truck. Jumped out, put the crosshairs on his shoulder and *click*. Raised my head and *BANG*.

 

[chris in va]

I experienced 5 hangfires...in one day. Got a box of that SMG ammo for the CZ 52, half of them were full duds, the others fired after a half second. Very interesting thing to experience. The rest went in the trash.

 

[Hazzard]

I've only had one hangfire. I was sighting in my rifle with a box of factory loads. Had the rifle on the sandbags, crosshairs on target, squeeze the trigger and "click". I raise up slightly to assess the situation and of course the butt of the stock at this point is about 3/4" from my shoulder when BOOM, it fires. As this was my 7mm magnum, it took a week for the soreness to leave the shoulder. I learned a lesson about patience on that day.

 

[BHPshooter]

FWIW, Remington rimfire ammo is crap. I used to shoot it a lot, and I thought all .22 was horrendously unreliable. Then I started shooting CCI, and I learned to steer clear of Remington rimfire ammo.

Wes

 

[mek42]

Randomly load mags with snap caps, then shuffle the mags.

Erm, how do you know for sure before clearing the malfunction that it is a snap cap and not a misfire / potential hangfire?

 

[Avenger29]

Erm, how do you know for sure before clearing the malfunction that it is a snap cap and not a misfire / potential hangfire?

You don't. The problem is if you want to do any FTF/whatever drills during live fire, you can't completely eliminate the possibility of a hangfire. But using snap caps and recent factory production ammunition reduces the possibility that it is a hangfire. You get what I am saying? This is a tradeoff. You know that you are going to have a misfire, but not when, and that it is probably not a hangfire.

 

[wally]

I wasn't intensionally practicing tap-rack-bang, I was just becoming frustrated by the seemingly higher than normal dud rate of this lot of ammo and forgot to pause a few seconds. The though of a hang-fire was not on my mind as it was factory ammo, reasonably fresh if not brand new. I'm always slow to rack with reloads or surplus. I had several more duds afterwards and took my sweet time before clearing.

Rare is not impossible, I'll be slower to clear duds from now on that's for sure. What bothers me most though is that I may have launched a round over the berm, presumably if it cleared the berm it still landed in the safety area -- muzzle wasn't angled up anywhere near the 58 degrees for maximum trajectory. Shooting right handed to clear I roll the thumb away from the body a bit and tap-rack with the left hand which naturally points the muzzle a bit down. But doing it left handed, rolling my thumb away from my body (I didn't think about it, just did what felt "natural") and doing tap-rack has the muzzle pointed slightly up. I'm not sure why this is but its just an asymmetry I wasn't aware of until now. Part of my off-hand practice from now on will include an extra check on muzzle discipline!


I'm happy practicing tap-rack-bang with dry fire. Although I understand the school of though that says you do under stress what you've practiced -- stories of dead cops with 6 empties in their hand because they were "trained" to empty the gun and put the brass in the can at the range. Clearly worrying about a hang-fire in a self-defense situation would not increase your survival odds.

--wally.

 

[heypete]

I had a misfire on a 120mm sabot round in the M1A1 tank I used to be a crewman of. Fortunately it was during training.

That was fun.

Tank Commander: "Gunner, sabot, tank!"
Gunner: "Identified."
Loader: "Up!"
TC: "Fire!"
G: "On the way!"
[nothing happens]
G: "Misfire!"
TC: "Fire!"
G: "On the way!" [attempts use of secondary trigger] "Misfire!"
TC: "Using TC trigger. On the way!" [attempts use of TC trigger]
TC: "Misfire! Switch to Master Blaster. Fire!"
G: "On the way!" [cranks MB]
[BOOM!]
TC: "Target, cease fire."

At least I think that's how it went, it's been a few years. Still, it was kinda exciting waiting for the damned round to go off...you aren't terribly inclined to remove a dud round that weighs 70lbs...that's a lot of powder.