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Potentially serious accident on the range.


splashdown

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So we had a stage sunday in our house bay. Loaded gun on the table in the center of the one-room house. Mags may be positioned anywhere inside the house including 2x4 shelves we positioned below each window. All targets outside the house. All shooting done from inside the house...

I'm the RO for a friend of mine with an open gun (w/ CMore). One window is a little higher than the rest. He engages targets out that window and shot his loaded mag! Luckily the bullet he shot only hit the bullets in the mag and not the case where there was 23 9mm major loads at about 187 PF (according to our chrono that day).

It happened so fast, and it didn't detonate so I let him finish the stage. He didn't even know he did it until I told him after the stage was over.

Whew!! We escaped a potential blunder.

Lessons learned: 1. Don't design a stage that places loaded mags in a potential line of fire. 2. Watch out for that dot offset on the CMore! We were only 10 ft away from the mag. Targets were less than 20 feet away.

Pics attached.

BlastedMag1.jpg

BlastedMag2.jpg

Be safe out there,

splash

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[smart azz mode on] At least it was a STI mag and not an HSMITH SV!! [smart azz mode off]

Seriously, glad no one got hurt!

Actually, what the competitor said was, "At least it was a box stock STI mag and not one of my new SV mags." About 4 or 5 bullets in that mag were destroyed. The brass case was not deformed at all on any of them from what I could see.

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Yes, potentially bad screwup, yes sort of bad stage design, but to be honest, I don't think if the rounds had gone off, it would have been that big of a deal. We go into fires occasionally with ammo cooking off & although it makes plenty of noise, very little stuff is flying around. With no containment(chamber) the explosion just blows. The brass may move some but the bullet will be just laying there. I think being fired inside a magazine would probably give similar results. I might be wrong but still, I expect very little of the items in the mag would come out of it. Several mistakes compounded to cause this, though. Glad you didn't test my theory.

MLM

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:surprise: OMG wow! I have seen a open gun bottom out on a port and go thru hard plywood wall. But a mag just under a port is a little to close. How did the CRO not see a saftey issue there. I would have needed to be there for the full pic of the "house". Still glad to hear no one got any flack from the explodeing mag. Still a $90 oops!
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I've seen this kind of stage a few times... including the SS match. No open guns there though. I'm glad you posted this so us open guys can think about it. I'm not pointing fingers at stage design... there is often stuff that can be shot from the offset of the C-More. We just need to be conscious of it. Last year at the IL Section I tagged a barrel twice because I had the gun canted. I called two As and when we walked down to score it was 2 mikes and four hits on the target next to it. lol

Edited by JThompson
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Yes, potentially bad screwup, yes sort of bad stage design, but to be honest, I don't think if the rounds had gone off, it would have been that big of a deal. We go into fires occasionally with ammo cooking off & although it makes plenty of noise, very little stuff is flying around. With no containment(chamber) the explosion just blows. The brass may move some but the bullet will be just laying there. I think being fired inside a magazine would probably give similar results. I might be wrong but still, I expect very little of the items in the mag would come out of it. Several mistakes compounded to cause this, though. Glad you didn't test my theory.

MLM

I agree, I do not think anything bad would have happened if the rounds had been cooked off. Check this out!

Box-o-Truth

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Yes, potentially bad screwup, yes sort of bad stage design, but to be honest, I don't think if the rounds had gone off, it would have been that big of a deal. We go into fires occasionally with ammo cooking off & although it makes plenty of noise, very little stuff is flying around. With no containment(chamber) the explosion just blows. The brass may move some but the bullet will be just laying there. I think being fired inside a magazine would probably give similar results. I might be wrong but still, I expect very little of the items in the mag would come out of it. Several mistakes compounded to cause this, though. Glad you didn't test my theory.

MLM

I agree, I do not think anything bad would have happened if the rounds had been cooked off. Check this out!

Box-o-Truth

Funny seeing the "box-o-truth" site, it's done on my home range.

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Yes, potentially bad screwup, yes sort of bad stage design, but to be honest, I don't think if the rounds had gone off, it would have been that big of a deal. We go into fires occasionally with ammo cooking off & although it makes plenty of noise, very little stuff is flying around. With no containment(chamber) the explosion just blows. The brass may move some but the bullet will be just laying there. I think being fired inside a magazine would probably give similar results. I might be wrong but still, I expect very little of the items in the mag would come out of it. Several mistakes compounded to cause this, though. Glad you didn't test my theory.

MLM

I agree, I do not think anything bad would have happened if the rounds had been cooked off. Check this out!

Box-o-Truth

Funny seeing the "box-o-truth" site, it's done on my home range.

Some really great info on that site. Plus a great way to kill and hour or two while at work :cheers:

Do you know "Old Painless"?

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Once saw a vertically challenged AR/Optic shooter engage targets over the roof off the car --- he couldn't figure out why his first four rounds were missing the plates, until his fifth shot took out the sunroof glass.....

I learned that lesson when I was about 14 or so. Scoped pellet gun out my bedroom window during the winter. It was a split window and I lowered the top half so I could shoot over it. First shot put a pellet through the top edge of the lower window...oops. Since my sister was away at college, I swapped out my broken window with hers and nobody knew until she came home a few months later :lol: Of course, when she did come home there was no question as to the identity of the guilty party....family still laughs about it over 20 years later.

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Once saw a vertically challenged AR/Optic shooter engage targets over the roof off the car --- he couldn't figure out why his first four rounds were missing the plates, until his fifth shot took out the sunroof glass.....

I learned that lesson when I was about 14 or so. Scoped pellet gun out my bedroom window during the winter. It was a split window and I lowered the top half so I could shoot over it. First shot put a pellet through the top edge of the lower window...oops. Since my sister was away at college, I swapped out my broken window with hers and nobody knew until she came home a few months later :lol: Of course, when she did come home there was no question as to the identity of the guilty party....family still laughs about it over 20 years later.

Already working on that "plausable deniability" eh? :P

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So we had a stage sunday in our house bay. Loaded gun on the table in the center of the one-room house. Mags may be positioned anywhere inside the house including 2x4 shelves we positioned below each window.

I nearly had to DQ someone on that stage (needless to say...I didn't like it). After the MR command, the shooter loaded his gun, placed it on the table and just started to walk around the edge of the table to go downrange and place stage some magazines in one or two of the window shelves.....I caught him right as he got to the edge of the table...probably just inches before the 3 foot rule and well before he walked IN FRONT of his loaded gun.

After that...I modifed my start instructions with "do you want to go stage any magazines in the windows?" instead of the MR command.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I was at the match, and actually on the squad with said shooter of magazine. I told him he should put on the classified's for sale:

WTS: Slightly Used STI Magazine. $25 Used in only one match. :roflol:

+1 It's probably worth $50 just as a conversation piece

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