PSA Rifle Detonation wrong ammo

One of the ranges I belong to posted last week that a member fired incorrect ammo and had a total detonation of his nice wooden stock rifle.


Lost trigger finger and serious damage to hand as you can see it was pretty bad.
Luckily there were others there and someone had first aid kit and they gave aid while ambulance was in route.
Reminder to wear eye protection and as my mom would say “y’all be particular out there”

I have never seen or experienced this. Thanks for the post. Whoa!

Not that it matters, but I am curious what the rifle was chambered for, and what he put in it.

Same

Good PSA, reminder “y’all be particular out there”

I have never seen it myself but have seen s couple guns it happened to, lucky on those no one was injured bad.

X3

Man that is terrible. Hard to tell for sure but the box on the table looks like it might say .30-06.

The brass on the table looks like it might be belted. Looks like it’s larger than a 3006 as well.

I also am curious but the email didn’t specify and I can’t make out what cartridge is on the ammo box.
Since it’s belted I can’t really come up with combination that might do that except 338 Win Mag in 300 Win Mag??
I know for a fact you can bang 300 Win Mag down a 300 Weatherby with no issues except poor accuracy.
That stunt was pulled by the manager at the Cabelas store a while back. The range owner gave me that brass and asked me what I thought happened…. I passed the test on that one

Scary.

Really.

Found this same photo and the following comments (as well as some interesting viewer comments) on the Ammunition Depot FB page...

Catastrophic Failure - The difference two extra seconds of attention can make. Two seconds of attention can prevent two months in a cast, or life altering injuries that cannot be reversed.

Apparently, this shooter loaded the wrong cartridge into their rifle and upon firing caused a detonation and complete destruction of the rifle, traumatic amputation of the trigger finger, and damage to other fingers and hand. He is alive thanks to quick EMT response time and other members of this gun club rendering first aid.

Make sure to check ammunition. One second of complacency could alter your life permanently. Just because you can close the bolt on a cartridge doesn’t mean your gun will fire it!

For example: a necked-up version of a cartridge with a bullet larger than the bore of that gun but a shorter overall length. No interference to prevent the bolt from locking, but as soon as the trigger gets pulled, the barrel has a cork in it trapping all the pressure at the breech.

Anyone willing to speculate the confusion between which two loads might have caused this accident?

30-06 in a 25-06 maybe? Also it looks like he was shooting copper bullets which would be less forgiving than lead when shot down an incorrect barrel. I think it's a good idea to never take rifles with similar shaped cartridges at the same time to the range. No 7.62x39 and 6.5 Grendel etc.

I don't own anything I could do that with at this time.

I know someone who shot a 7-08 in a .270. It will chamber and fire depending on how the rim is captured. He was lucky by comparison but it did ruin his rifle and his day.

The only thing I have seen close to this was a bad powder charge in a 243, one of those cheap 299.00 specials from Bass Pro about 20 years ago. One brother owned it, the other brother was working up a load for it. Too much IMR 4064 we think is what did it, he had a handful of powders on the bench and had been loading for other cartridges. It contained the explosion, but the bolt wouldn't open. We ended up putting it in a vise and using a cheater bar to open the bolt. The case was separated at the .200 line and the head of it was welded to the bolt. After we played around a little and removed the head, the bolt face was fried, and the brother that loaded the ammo went straight to Bass Pro and bought another rifle.

I saw a shooter cause major damage shooting foreign made 308 Win in a Savage lever gun chambered for 7.62x51. He didn't blow up the gun, but it damaged it beyond repair. (Just so you know, 7.62x51 is rated at a lower pressure than the 308 Win is)

I know of shooters firing a 300 Win Mag in a 338 Lapua and 270 Win in a 7 Rem Mag, and one more I can't remember what they were shooting. All had multiple firearms on the bench, and had their ammo sitting all together.

This is an easy way to make a mistake and I'm sure I've been guilty in the past. I've taken to getting one rifle out, shooting it, then sheathing it and putting up the ammo before retrieving any others that I plan to shoot while I'm there. I've got .243, .308, and 6.5 CM and there's a high likelihood one would chamber and go off in the wrong rifle.

Correct. When I'm at the range, I'm often testing 3-5 customer rifles at a time. I cycle my ammo and rifles together, and confirm which ammo goes with which rifle. It's a simple process, but a necessary one.

6.5 Creedmoor will chamber and fire in 7mm-08 A.I.

Wasn't me, but happened at my range.

I had a really close call last year. I was shooting my buddies AR chambered in 5.56 trying to figure out a feeding problem that it was having. I told him to grab me a different magazine, and he did. Unbeknownst to me, he grabbed a magazine, and then reached into my ammo can and loaded said magazine with my 300BLK ammo. I inserted the magazine, chambered a round, pulled the trigger, and "click". I got lucky that day. The shoulder had been deformed slightly while chambering, and the firing pin did strike the primer, but it did not go off.

Sounds like me when I grabbed the wrong BCG that had a 5.56 bolt instead of the BCG with a 6.8 bolt. Put the gun together, snapped in mag, and sent a round home in the chamber. Click. Hmmm that's funny, must have been a light primer strike (primer was indented). Load another round, click. Wait a minute, that's the wrong BCG.

Was very lucky that day

We've had several badly damaged 5.56 guns come back after the customer fired .300BLK in them. There are several Blackout loads on the market that will chamber and fire in a 5.56, the supersonic ones will damage a gun pretty bad.

I've personally fired .308 in a .338 Fed, obviously no damage, but embarrassing !!!

I'm actually surprised that SAAMI accepted the .300BLK with it being so easy to fire it in a .204 Ruger or 5.56 with dangerous results???

Remington figured out something with the 280 Remington, that it could be chambered and fired in some 270 Winchester rifles which would be bad. Their solution was to extend the body of the case a little longer so it would be long enough not to chamber in the 270 Win.7

Years later Winchester had to delay the introduction of the 7mmWSM and do basically the same. Had they learned the lesson from Remington they would have not had the delay and did it right the first time.

I have not come up with cartridges that did this if shooting the 39-06 ammo unless it might could happen in a 7mm STW for example, headspace on the bullet and bang. With a copper bullet that would be very bad.

It would not surprise me if the 338 Federal would not chamber and fire in a 30-06 much like a 7mm-08 can in 270 Win chamber, I think it was that I saw a pic of on another site.

Good post. I knew there must be at least a few cartridge combinations where shooters who don't attention could end up loading the wrong one.

I suspect I'm like a lot of folks who store their field ammo in those small, plastic cases that hold 20 rounds. I also carry in my field bag as a backup, a small soft pouch where I store five rounds of each caliber I shoot most often. Right now in addition to a couple of other calibers, it includes both 25-06 and .270 cartridges. Not sure if these rounds could be loaded into a rifle chambered for the other but I have no intentions of trying to find out. But I can see how the mixing of loads in the same box or bag could end up with a hunter or shooter loading the wrong ammo after not paying proper attention.

I've never had this happen, but I'm always super paranoid about it happening. I only have one rifle on the bench at a time and one box of ammo. Then, I double check the headstamp to the caliber stamp on the barrel.

Wow, that's bad. Maybe a 30-06 in a .270? Not sure if that would chamber or not. Closest I have come is firing a .223 round through a 6.8SPC AR-15. It fired ok, but the case got stuck in the chamber until I could get home and drive it out. It didn't damage the rifle. I keep my magazines for 6.8 marked, but my wife got them mixed up. I'm always diligent at the range since I usually have several rifles I'm shooting, but will always move the ammo off of the bench when I switch between whatever I have out.

Update: It wasn't A Magnum case after all. 308 Winchester in a 25-06.

That would do it. I wonder how far that 308 slug made it down the barrel before she gave out.

I watched a 41 mag get shot out unintentionally of a 45 LC Marlin one day. Sounded real funny, split the case, but he hit the limb we were shooting at.

Had a customer bring my stepdad a Marlin lever action in 357 mag that they had loaded 357sig in and jammed up the action. He disassembled the gun and when he was dumping the ammunition out of the magazine one of the cartridges detonated in the magazine. He had his open hand under the magazine to catch the cartridges as they came out and wound up losing his middle finger over it. The gun was easily repaired but his finger was not.

I had a new out of the box Colt Sportster slam fire out of battery when I release the bolt catch. The receiver was cracked, the magazine floor plate blew out, and I got a nasty slice on my thumb somehow. I sent the gun and some sample ammo back to Colt and they gave me a brand new gun that somehow had the exact same serial number and a ton of swag to go with it.

Very similar circumstance to what I saw happen at the gun shop / indoor rifle range I worked at back in the '70s. Shooter was checking two rifles before a Colorado hunt and inadvertently dropped a .308 round into his Sako .264 WM. Results weren't as catastrophic as this but were certainly impressive.

The slug was swaged down and only lacked about 2" of reaching the muzzle. The case expanded to failure and released the still-expanding gases rearward through the action. Most dumped into the magazine well where the box expanded laterally, blowing a slab of wood off the left side of the stock (from the rear action screw to forward of the chamber). The remaining gas, moving rearward through the action, sheared the roll pin holding the bolt release button...blowing the button out the left side of the action and cracking the 1/4" plexiglass window alongside the booth. The wrist of the stock broke at the rear action screw. The shooter only sustained some minor punctures from wood splinters. We salvaged the scope and were able to beat the bolt open with a mallet.

That rifle (or what was left of it) hung over the entrance to the range for years. Might still be there for all I know...