Murphy's Law On Squibs

[Grump]

(thinking)

I would have to say No. The extra step would not help you. If you had a squib (reload or factory) what are your choices off the practice range anyway? Call "time out", draw your squib rod and start banging away on the slug? I don't remember that being one of the rules of a gunfight.

Think about the real-life limits of "rules" and "practices", okay? ALWAYS use cover works real well when the nearest car in the parking lot is 25 yards away, remember? All this goes towards my policy of adapt, improvise and overcome, along with as much awareness as I can muster.

Hammer/striker fall without recoil means I'm going to look at what comes out of the chamber, if anything.

I *may* not perceive whether there was a pop. I expect to work better within the limits of tunnel vision than with audio exclusion. I just have funny expectation that way, okay?

Nothing comes out--I will conclude a FTFd, failure to feed, and continue with BANG because I just tapped.

Round comes out with bullet--I will conclude a FTFr, failure to fire, and continue with a BANG because the immediate action just removed the offending cause.

Case comes out without bullet--continue the rack but be ready to go backup gun, pull knife, find rock, RUN, or whatever best fits the situation. Be really ready for a failure to go into battery and then I won't have to stare blankly at the ejection port wondering what to do. (I HOPE!!!!). If it does close fully, then I'm ready for a BOOM or a ringed barrel or nothing unusual at all and will continue the "engagement."

In my youth in Army Basic, they used to call it a "pop and no kick"; and I still check any "funny" rounds if they come up during play time. They gave us a different set of rules to follow away from the qualification range.

Swerving off the "Match Screw-ups" topic and into, umm, something else; if you do find time to LOOK at an ejected case during non play time, and have the capacity to perceive what you see, you will either see a case with a bullet in it or not. It does not matter. If you can get your gun back into battery you fire it again until it quits, blows up, or you run out of ammo.

I believe I have made a good case for believing it *could* matter under some foreseeable circumstances.

How many of us expect to LOOK the mag into the magwell during a 'real-life' reload if we don't have cover handy?

Back on the range. If it was a light load squib, the case will probably eject; that means the next round manually ejected will be the next live round from the mag. It will look perfect, but that's not your problem. Your real interest is in what is in the bore. This is the hazard, and there's no good reason to bulge a barrel or potentially blow a case head under these circumstances. Stop and check. After a few hundred thousand rounds or so you may get to where you can tell a light load that just clears the barrel from one waiting patiently an inch from the wrong end of the front sight. In the meantime, stop and check.

[snip]

At the range, if the sound is funny or the gun didn't kick right, stop and check.

Although I've read reports that claim to have been instances of light recoil and ejection of the case with a bullet stuck in the bore, I'm quite skeptical of that being commong among squibs or even possible with a recoil-operated action. Blowback is of course the most likely setting for this ejected case/stuck bullet event, but also the one least likely to lead to anything more serious than a ringed barrel.