rupzuk

Yea, sure, that it... Drop by my neck of the woods (north coast- Prince Rupert) and bring rain gear. Pockets are great too; fill 'em with rocks to keep you down in the wind,lol 3 out of 4 qualifiers this year were below 10 degrees (I would guess 2-4) Celsius and about as wet as it gets. The 4th was just heavily overcast with the odd sprinkle...

I just saw my old (about 4 years old) M&P 40 do this... I had sold the gun after about 6 months, with a low round count. It worked great for me but I just didn't shoot it much. The new owner shot it probably a few thousand rounds a year- at best. Up until this weekend he hasn't had a problem with it except for the slide lock lever breaking on the right side over a year ago. But this weekend... Actually it started last weekend... He noticed the left front frame rail had about a third of it broken off. The pistol looked normal and he decided to shoot a match with it. Third round in on the first stage it self destructed in his hands... The barrel had the exact ring crack you said- maybe an 1/8" of barrel was holding the two parts together. The barrel is manufacturered with a machined ring at this junction- if it was a shear bolt it broke exactly where it should have... Anyway, on the last shot the barrel flexed enough to pluck the top of the slide off and launch the front site into space (we never did find it). On closer examination you can see one side of the piece that came off the slide had a bit of a polished look to it leading me to think perhaps the slide cracked first, over time was flexing and eventually flexed enough to break the barrel - but I could be wrong- The gun was shot with 40 major (175 ish on the PF) and never experienced an ammo problem. Who knew...