Anyone ever witness a "Ka-Boom" firsthand that involved factory ammo?

Yes, I was shooting Threegun's Cobray M11/9 with a HellFire and barrel extension attached. I was holding the barrel extension with my weak hand and got it running very fast. The pistol rotated counter clockwise when the cinch broke loose on the extension allowing the pistol to rotate ejection port up whilst firing full auto. KABOOM. Metal and powder burned into my face. Was wearing safety glasses. Not sure exactly what happened but barrel was bulged slightly afterwards. Threegun sent it back to Cobray for a new barrel, then sold it. It was exciting to say the least.
 
A friend of mine had a case failure in Blazer (aluminum case) in his S&W 686, and the failure lit off one of the adjacent rounds. He was OK, if not more than a bit startled.
 
I have seen two Walther P22s blow. One looked to have fired out of battery, the other just blew the slide apart. Peeled it back similar to the AR pic above. Both were high use rental guns, but obviously factory ammo. I have seen a bad batch of Fiocchi .32ACP loads nearly bolw a gun. Squib with a new shooter, lucky the shooter next to him on the range caught it. I later fired a round out of that box at a pile of wet newspaper covered with denim, round bounced off of the denim and landed at my feet. I have seen a couple boxes of Remington .357 125gr JSP (the UMC yellow box) that were loaded to extremely high pressures. Huge blast, sticky cases, and cratered or blown primers. So hot I'd call them unsafe at best, a near miss at worst.

Not a handgun but I saw a round of American Eagle .223 (62gr IIRC) blow in a new Bushmaster AR. One of the first ten rounds out of a case. Federal paid to have the whole case shipped back, new replacement ammo, and replaced the AR upper.

Iv'e seen plenty more blowups with reloads, though. Dozens over the years. and a lot of squib-type near misses too.
 
Yes. About 5 years ago I blew up a Colt Python firing Speer Gold Dots. It cracked the barrel at the forcing cone and bent the frame. Good thing it locked up the action or the next shot would have been really bad.

The gun and ammo were sent to Speer and they said the failure was from excessive pressure but refused to do anything about it. They said the problem was caused by handloads. The funny thing is that gun never had a handload run through it.
 
Yep, had an Iver Johnson TP-22 blow up using just your typical American Eagle stuff. Cracked the frame, snapped the trigger guard, blew the slide off, which also cracked. Had a thread about it with pics and everything on this very forum a few months ago.
 
Had a Kaboom with factory new ammo in 1991 with a brand new Colt Officers ACP. I called the factory and they paid for the gun repair and asked that I send back the remaining ammo (I had purchased a case of 1000 rounds...those days one need not mortgage the house or sell the first born). They paid for the shipping and sent me back two cases of a different lot of the same ammo. I had no further problem but never bought their ammo again.
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You didn't name the ammunition maker and I suppose that's okay. Personally, if the company responded in the way yours did, I'd be inclined to continue my patronage with them.

In countless (many thousands) of rounds fired over the past six decades, I've never (knock on wood) had a "ka-boom", nor knew anybody that had when using factory loaded ammunition. I have no doubt that it is possible-most things are.
 
Not a KaBoom but I did purchase some "White Box" .40 factory ammo that was 50+% misfires. Brass was too short and my Sig just couldn't strike the primer hard enough. They made it right and actually replaced it with their premium stuff and a couple of extra boxes to boot.
 
I have experienced one KaBoom in 56 years of shooting. I had a G22, that I bought used, fail on the 3rd round on the first range visit with it. The ammo, plus spent casings, was inspected by the manufacturer and one outside expert. Ammo was not the cause of the failure. The weapon was inspected by two gunsmiths, no possible cause of failure was determined......I no longer have that make of weapon in my collection.
 
Does it have to 'splode to count?

I've gotten defective factory rounds but it's been squibs, loose primers or goofy brass that tied up any weapon it was used in. The squibs are rare, the loose primers were a case of S&B (causing some ancient traffic on a C&R forum tracking down lot numbers) and the "grabby" brass was .44 PMC that the folks at PMC were nice enough to diagnose and take care of (back when they had the wherewithal to do so).

I'd suspect factory overpressure rounds are extremely rare while factory squibs are slightly less rare - the squib will open up a revolver just as handily as a double load by leaving behind a bore obstruction. Most of my revolver shooting buddies have long since left behind common sense in favor of the "just pull the trigger again" canard. The chances are much smaller with it happening with factory loads but "much smaller" != "non-existent".
 
I HAD CCI/SPEER/BLAZER 380acp AMMO BLOW THE SLIDE OFF A ,

A 380ACP BERSA pistol. BOOM, and I stood there holding the frame in my hand.
 
I blew up a Glock 23 with factory Federal ammo several years ago. Evidently, quite a few years ago, Federal had several bad batches of .40 brass and had recalled the ammo. For whatever reason, no one at the PD I worked for heard about the recall, so we were still using the ammo (180gr HydraShoks). We were shooting it up that day as it was being replaced with Win ammo. The case let go right at the extractor groove, the case head completely separated, blew the extractor and the mag out of the gun. Aside from some minor powder burns on my trigger finger and a loaded pair of shorts, I was OK.

When called, Federal readily admitted to the bad brass, saying that the recall was several years old and they thought they had accounted for most of the remaining ammo. The gun went back to Glock and was repaired at Federal's expense. Federal reimbursed the Dept with quite a bit of ammo in return for the defective ammo. Based on the way Federal handled the issue, I would continue using Federal ammo. Aside from being upset when the issue happened and being deprived of the gun for several weeks, I was happy with both Federal and Glock.

Bub
 
Yup, I've read of several incidents with a variety of pistols involving that batch of brass.

Your incident is very much a typical case failure. Very little damage to the pistol--nothing permanent and either very minor or no injury at all to the shooter.
 
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