Dangerous Malfunction

Two weeks ago I was teaching Beyond Concealed Carry Handgun Course and a student had a dangerous malfunction. It’s about the only dangerous handgun malfunction there is. He had a squib load or sometimes called an audible pop.

A squib load or audible pop is a bad round. Most of the time the manufacturer forgot to put gunpowder in the load and there is only a primer and bullet. When the firing pin hits, the primer is the only thing to ignite. The primer has enough energy to push the bullet out of the case and into the barrel. But not enough energy to get the bullet all the way out of the barrel and it gets stuck.

The primer also doesn’t have enough energy to cycle the slide so you get a pop sound and nothing happens in the gun. It’s really a weird feeling and leaves you scratching your head trying to figure out what happened.

The dangerous part is that you now have a barrel obstruction, if you cycle the gun (like Tap-Rack-Bang malfunction drills) you may be able to load another round and fire the bullet. Now the gun is trying to push two bullets down the barrel and generally creates too much pressure.

Some guns can handle the pressure or will let it bleed off to safe levels other places. Most revolvers will let the pressure go through the cylinder gap and you generally are okay. The gun may never be right again but you are fine.

In today’s automatics, there isn’t a really good way to tell what will happen. In this case, the bullet lodged itself in the barrel just forward of the chamber. The shooter could not chamber another round and fire it. The gun wouldn’t go into battery. It was nice of his H&K P30 to let him know he had a problem.

Other guns aren’t that nice. Generally you can chamber another round and are able to fire it. I’ve seen a Smith & Wesson M&P 9 simply push both rounds out the end of the gun, which is unusual.

Most often the gun will blow up on you when you chamber and fire a second round after the squib load. Most of the pressure will go out the bottom of the gun and magazine tube blowing apart the frame of most plastic guns.

On steel guns (like SIG’s and Berettas) the guns generally blow out the side where the extractor is and crack the slide in half.

In all these cases, the shooters is generally okay with minor cuts and abrasions, mostly to their hands. You should be wearing shooting glasses just for one of these rare cases.

If you fire a second round in your gun after a squib load, your gun is probably done. Along with the frame blowing out and/or slide cracking, the barrel normally bulges where the rounds meet and try to push each other. Most of the time the bulge is easily visible.

I’ve yet to see someone hurt and with factory ammunition this is really rare. With hand reloads this is a lot more common. I used to reload my ammo while watching TV with a single stage press. I used to make a lot of squib loads by not paying attention to what I was doing (I don’t reload anymore for this and many other reasons).

These are also very rare malfunctions. This is the second one I’ve seen in the last 5 years (since I’ve been back from Iraq and in the private sector). This case was from a 100-round pack of Military Ballistics Industry 9mm 124 gr. FMJ. I haven’t used a lot of this ammo so I have no idea whether it’s normal or not. But it is some of the cheapest stuff listed on the Internet and they are reloads.

Normally you can pull the gun apart and see the round in the chamber. I simply use a rod from a rifle cleaning kit to push the round out of the barrel from the front. This round was stuck good. I pushed and shoved but couldn’t get it out.

I had to get a big hammer out of the truck and give it a nice whack and the bullet came right out.

To avoid this problem, use good ammo. If the gun goes pop (that’s why I like the name from the Marine Corps, audible pop) and nothing else happens, you need to be careful not to just fire another round. You may have a barrel obstruction that could destroy the gun and hurt you. If you think you might have an audible pop, just stop shooting, lock the slide to the rear and look into the chamber holding up the gun. You should see light in there coming in from the muzzle. If you don’t see any light, you should take the gun apart and then hold the barrel up to the light and look through it (Notice I never said to look down the barrel of a gun).

Once the gun is apart, it will be painfully obvious if you have a bullet stuck in there. If there is one, push the bullet out and go back to shooting.

If you think you might have had a pop and then out of habit cleared it and fired another round and the gun felt funny, you should stop, field strip the gun and inspect it before continuing.

Look for cracks in the slide, especially in the right side just forward of and around where the barrel sits. This is a common spot on Berettas and SIG’s. Inspect the barrel itself carefully for bulges. The barrel should have a smooth taper to it. If it has a bubble or little spot that wasn’t there before, you need to quit shooting that barrel and get another one.

Also inspect the frame of the gun, especially on plastic guns. Normally, cracks or broken spots are very obvious, some you can even see light through. Kahr pistols have a panel on the side of the gun for just such a problem. Make sure you look at that little panel and that it isn’t bulging out or broken.

Once you’ve inspected the gun, if no problems are found, just put it back together and go back to shooting. That’s what we did in this class, and had no problems the rest of the day. The student did say he won’t be buying that ammo again and I can’t blame him.

If you find any problems during your inspection, you should stop shooting the gun and find a gunsmith or factory rep that can inspect it further to make sure the gun is still safe. You may need to replace major parts, like a barrel or slide, before the gun is safe to use again.

Stay Safe,

Ben