What happend?

[kx592]

Came across a few you tube videos, this one cought my attention, i only recently bought my first Ar, the xm15 e2s model and am still learning as I go. Can anyone explain what happened to this fellow in the video?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oh1lyMyejpI&feature=related

[jman841]

not 100% sure but if i had to guess, i would say the last round he fired had no poweder in it, the primer went off, pushed the bullet into the barrel. the next round fired and blew it up cause it hit the other bullet that was logged in the barrel.

[hooligan1]

It looked like to me that either the round exploded at the same time the gas tube blew, or it went off in the magazine, cause it looked like the bolt exploded.:eek: That's why I wear shooting glasses!!;) There is alot of gremlins that could be attached to this one!:eek:

[mete]

The sound of each shot seemed the same to me so I wouldn't think it was a bullet stuck in the barrel [ squib load] . With that many misfires I would have stopped shooting !! Certainly checked the bore . As a guess the handloader charged a case with too much powder.

[brmfan]

I could swear that I saw dirt fly on the backstop after the last round fired. Then the string of bad primers... then kaboom so I'm not so sure it was a squib. Sounds like they were using someone else's reloads, so it could have been due to any number of factors.

[BfloBill]

I don't have alot of experience with that style of rifle, but it looked like the magazine just disintigrated. Does that happen when the gas tube blows?
It looked like some rounds in the mag discharged.

[nimbleVagrant]

The problem is obvious. He didn't hit the forward assist hard enough.:rolleyes:

[casper_au]

looks like an unlocked bolt to me.. as mentioned previously - didn't hit the forward assist hard enough!;)

[kx592]

Are you suppose to hit the assist every time you reload?

[lmccrock]

If you have to use the assist, something is wrong. The video is proof of that.

Lee

[thesheepdog]

A bullet got pinned up in the barrel. I had this happen to me when i first started reloading; but thankfully, i started 10% below maximum on my loads and saved myself and my handgun. The gun went "boom", but nothing came out. weird right?

[GaryGGR]

I did not hear anything that sounded like a squib load. If the round didn’t have enough neck tension on the bullet and was not sized correctly the bullet may have been left in the chamber, help by a dirty chamber. When he used the forward assist, several times, he drove the bullet from the throat onto the rifling far enough to allow the bolt to lock and go into battery. He would now be firing 2 bullets with no lead into the rifling. This is not good.

I have never had a M16 or AR15 fire out of battery. I am not saying it doesn’t happen, but in this case I would look at the ammo.

We were trained to hit he forward assist on reload and bolt handle on the M1 and M14.

[mete]

The forward assist was added to the M16 because the early powders were dirty and of course there were many DUMB shooters who didn't keep their guns clean !

[Gunplummer]

I worked on thousands of M-16s and M-16A-1s and the above statement is almost correct. I remember only one that fired out of battery, and the shooter was injured. He caught brass in the face and arm. The result of the investigation was a dirty rifle caused it. There was a lot of old solid carbon in the bolt and around it, but I was never sure that was the problem.
I have to wonder how well an AR would hold up if a bullet was stuck in the bore. Anybody have experience with that?

[tirod]

The video highlights the major feature of the M16 with stoppages. If you are having that much problem - three failures to feed - then shotgun the action and remove the bolt. LOOK down the barrel. Is there a bullet lodged in there?

In this case pounding on the Forward Assist meant the shooter kept compounding the error and actually loaded the bad round. A M16 without forward assist would force the shooter to eject it and try another. Given four attempts at loading a cartridge - and taking them out of action - things might have gone better. Hopefully he would at least take a moment to look at the cartridges and examine them.

The forward assist was added because the command, trained on operating rod actions, insisted on having something to push a cartridge into a chamber. Along with that, Colt's forced ramp up in production put out a lot of tight chambers. There were armorer crews fielded in Vietnam to gage them, right out in the boonies, to get the bad ones out of service on the spot.

The myth of powder fouling the action was caused by soldier's who were told not to clean the weapon and given nothing to do it with. The so called Ball powder the service approved was little different than the Improved of other makers. If anything, some older powder was being reused, and it was eventually discovered to act differently under those conditions. Suppliers of powder had their "clean" version approved, too, cartridges with it still had problems in tight chambered M16s.

Up until 1968 and the forced fielding of M16's, very little in the way of problems were reported. Colt was building them slowly and getting it right, which may have led some to misunderstand just exactly how screwed up things can get when you go from less than 100,000 a year to 400,000. Obviously someone like McNamara, a former exec from Ford, missed that lesson at work. Most people were ignoring Deming at that time, and this is another example of the arrogance of corporate thinking.

They say that history has a tendency to repeat itself, but often its misinformation.