I've never had a kaboom, nor have I seen one personally (knock on wood), but I've seen many documented. What strikes me as odd is that you see lots of photos of mangled hands that are supposed to be injuries from kabooms, but if you watch videos of kabooms actually happening, then you pretty much always see the person walk away without injuries, making me think people are going out and finding random photos of gory injuries and claiming they're kabooms.
I know that injuries do occur, but what are the odds, and what is the extent of the injuries that do occur?
I can not testify to other "kabooms," but was up close and personal to one in which the shooter was injured. This happened around 1980 or 1981. I was a member of the Southwest Pistol League in Southern Calif. We shot IPSC every month, Sunday afternoons. During one course, I was standing directly behind a middle aged man,
timing him. He had just got his Colt Govt. Model .45 ACP back from Clark of Louisiana, for a full "remodel" in the popular IPSC style of the time.
He pulled the trigger and "KABOOM!" The Colt came apart in his hand. The explosion blew the walnut grips off and splinters dug into his hands. The slide split with some bits of metal flying off and the frame was cracked. Several of those steel bits hit the shooter in the upper arm and went into his face. Fortunately, per IPSC rules, he was wearing shooting glasses, or he'd have lost an eye. His face was bleeding in several places, his upper arm was bleeding and both his hands were bleeding. All he could say was "I just spent $2,000.00 on this pistol and it's ruined, it's ruined!!"
As I was standing directly behind him, timer in hand, I felt the concussion but was not hit by any pieces of the blown up pistol. After some First Aid from a paramedic who was shooting with us, the consensus of us examining the pistol was that he had double charged the .45 ACP case with a hefty double dose of Bullseye powder. That's a dangerous concoction right there.
That was back before every person out there had a camera so there were no pictures of it, but I saw it happen.
L.W.