realmswalker
Member
- Joined
- Feb 11, 2003
- Messages
- 415
I haven't ever talked about it here, or on any forum but I recently had a discharge in my house.
Scenario goes like this. I have a 1911 giving me feeding issues, so I do a little polishing and a real good cleaning and I load up a couple rounds in the mag to see if the gun will chamber a round upon release of the slide lock, it was jamming every time.
I had previously taken this gun to the range on two other occasions and fired about 300 rounds through it, but it jammed like crazy and was pissing me off.
I had dropped the slide on about 5 live rounds within a matter of 10 minutes looking for where it was jamming and what was going with the gun. I had done this a number of other times on a couple of other occasions with the gun pointed in what I thought was a safe direction.
This was a very clean gun, didn't look fired very much at all, so I though it was something small or a break in period. I had purchased it in a trade.
What happened next will always haunt me and to this day I have no idea how I got so lucky in a very unlucky incident.
I live in a apartment complex. The direction I had the gun pointed at was a connection wall to another apartment.
I was sitting on the floor crosslegged, my girlfriend was at the computer about 10 feet to my left. I pointed the gun at the floor and dropped the slide. I absolutely made 100% sure my finger was off the trigger. BOOM!
I was in absolute shock. The gun surprised the living hell out of me. Luckily There was only 1 round in the magazine or it could have been ugly, I will say why later in the post.
My GF turns around and says "Oh babe are you OK"? I said yea through the ringing in my ears. I had just had an AD. I know people here say AD and ND are the same but in my case I don't believe so.
The bullet, a 230 grain FMJ round nose .45 with 5.3 grains of red dot behind it entered the carpet at a 45 degree angle. It hit the concrete slab and Thank god stayed underneath the carpet and traveled about 18 inches. It stopped underneath the carpet bunched up in a mound of padding. If the gun had been pointed at any other angle this would have been so much worse.
I later dug this bullet out, in two large fragments and 1 small. I think I only got half the bullet, the other half is still somewhere in that carpet because I searched every inch of every wall and coffee table, and anything else the bullet might have gone into and there was NO sign of a hole or any impact.
I keep these bullets as a reminder of the stupidity of what I had done. I did not press the trigger, i was so sure but there was a little doubt in my mind. The only thing that could have happened was the dreaded hammer follow.
A few days later I loaded up some dummy rounds, no primer no powder, just the bullet and brass and load them up in the gun. The second time I inserted a mag and dropped the slide, Bingo, Hammer follow.
Thats why I said earlier I was so lucky there was only 1 round in the mag at the time of discharge, I can't imagine what would have happened if it went full auto because of hammer follow on a 10 round mag.
I took the gun to a gunsmith and he told me that someone had attempted a trigger job on this gun and someone had jacked it up pretty bad. The sear was toast and had to be replace, the hammer was barely able to be saved.
When he called me and told me this I was so relieved because there was a small doubt in my mind that said "you had your finger on the trigger dummy" even though I proved it with my dummy round test that I did not.
Now for the Things I learned portion of my , STUPID STUPID STUPID MISTAKE.
1. DO NOT test out your reloads to see if they chamber on a slide drop, EVER EVER EVER except for at the range. I should have known this already Make some dummy rounds first. I have been shooting for 10 years, I have never had anything like this happed and I got confident in the safety system on my guns. I was so wrong and it almost cost me dearly. I have tested the feeding of live rounds in my m1 garand, ar, glock etc in my house. Never will I do it again except for at the range
2. 45 acp in a confined space is loud, but not as deafening as I thought. My ears rang for an hour but I have no discernible hearing loss.
3. Do not put 100% confidence in your guns, they are machines and they can fail. I have a USPF 45 that I use for home defense and I cannot bring myself to drop the slide in a normal fashion to load it since the AD. I let it slowly forward and chamber. Even this still makes me a little nervous, but I think that will pass with time. I encourage other people to load their semi auto home defense guns in this manner.
4. I made a horrible mistake by using live ammo to test the function of my gun. If this AD hadnt happened I would probably be doing this horrible practice still to this day. But I had confidence in my guns, a very misguided confidence.
This is very very hard for me to admit and write about, writing about it now gets my heart rate up. Like I said so many things were lucky about where the bullet went on such an stupid unlucky incident.
I know some of you here will tell me "it was bound to happen sooner or later with what your were doing" or as simple as "your'e a F^%* idiot" and you would be right on both occasions. But no amount of what is said about me here can be 1 100th of how hard I have been on myself, so please let it fly. I only ask one thing please learn from my mistake.
Scenario goes like this. I have a 1911 giving me feeding issues, so I do a little polishing and a real good cleaning and I load up a couple rounds in the mag to see if the gun will chamber a round upon release of the slide lock, it was jamming every time.
I had previously taken this gun to the range on two other occasions and fired about 300 rounds through it, but it jammed like crazy and was pissing me off.
I had dropped the slide on about 5 live rounds within a matter of 10 minutes looking for where it was jamming and what was going with the gun. I had done this a number of other times on a couple of other occasions with the gun pointed in what I thought was a safe direction.
This was a very clean gun, didn't look fired very much at all, so I though it was something small or a break in period. I had purchased it in a trade.
What happened next will always haunt me and to this day I have no idea how I got so lucky in a very unlucky incident.
I live in a apartment complex. The direction I had the gun pointed at was a connection wall to another apartment.
I was sitting on the floor crosslegged, my girlfriend was at the computer about 10 feet to my left. I pointed the gun at the floor and dropped the slide. I absolutely made 100% sure my finger was off the trigger. BOOM!
I was in absolute shock. The gun surprised the living hell out of me. Luckily There was only 1 round in the magazine or it could have been ugly, I will say why later in the post.
My GF turns around and says "Oh babe are you OK"? I said yea through the ringing in my ears. I had just had an AD. I know people here say AD and ND are the same but in my case I don't believe so.
The bullet, a 230 grain FMJ round nose .45 with 5.3 grains of red dot behind it entered the carpet at a 45 degree angle. It hit the concrete slab and Thank god stayed underneath the carpet and traveled about 18 inches. It stopped underneath the carpet bunched up in a mound of padding. If the gun had been pointed at any other angle this would have been so much worse.
I later dug this bullet out, in two large fragments and 1 small. I think I only got half the bullet, the other half is still somewhere in that carpet because I searched every inch of every wall and coffee table, and anything else the bullet might have gone into and there was NO sign of a hole or any impact.
I keep these bullets as a reminder of the stupidity of what I had done. I did not press the trigger, i was so sure but there was a little doubt in my mind. The only thing that could have happened was the dreaded hammer follow.
A few days later I loaded up some dummy rounds, no primer no powder, just the bullet and brass and load them up in the gun. The second time I inserted a mag and dropped the slide, Bingo, Hammer follow.
Thats why I said earlier I was so lucky there was only 1 round in the mag at the time of discharge, I can't imagine what would have happened if it went full auto because of hammer follow on a 10 round mag.
I took the gun to a gunsmith and he told me that someone had attempted a trigger job on this gun and someone had jacked it up pretty bad. The sear was toast and had to be replace, the hammer was barely able to be saved.
When he called me and told me this I was so relieved because there was a small doubt in my mind that said "you had your finger on the trigger dummy" even though I proved it with my dummy round test that I did not.
Now for the Things I learned portion of my , STUPID STUPID STUPID MISTAKE.
1. DO NOT test out your reloads to see if they chamber on a slide drop, EVER EVER EVER except for at the range. I should have known this already Make some dummy rounds first. I have been shooting for 10 years, I have never had anything like this happed and I got confident in the safety system on my guns. I was so wrong and it almost cost me dearly. I have tested the feeding of live rounds in my m1 garand, ar, glock etc in my house. Never will I do it again except for at the range
2. 45 acp in a confined space is loud, but not as deafening as I thought. My ears rang for an hour but I have no discernible hearing loss.
3. Do not put 100% confidence in your guns, they are machines and they can fail. I have a USPF 45 that I use for home defense and I cannot bring myself to drop the slide in a normal fashion to load it since the AD. I let it slowly forward and chamber. Even this still makes me a little nervous, but I think that will pass with time. I encourage other people to load their semi auto home defense guns in this manner.
4. I made a horrible mistake by using live ammo to test the function of my gun. If this AD hadnt happened I would probably be doing this horrible practice still to this day. But I had confidence in my guns, a very misguided confidence.
This is very very hard for me to admit and write about, writing about it now gets my heart rate up. Like I said so many things were lucky about where the bullet went on such an stupid unlucky incident.
I know some of you here will tell me "it was bound to happen sooner or later with what your were doing" or as simple as "your'e a F^%* idiot" and you would be right on both occasions. But no amount of what is said about me here can be 1 100th of how hard I have been on myself, so please let it fly. I only ask one thing please learn from my mistake.
