Scariest CCW situation.

H

Housezealot

New member
I had a very frightening thing happen to me yseterday and have no idea how it happened. At work I CAN NOT show so I carry a little .380. I was cleaning the daily carry fuzz out of the gun and noticed the round I had in the pipe had a pin mark on the primer. I can not ever recall having a misfire with this ammo and know I would NOT have kept a bad round with the good. sure enough I steped outside and tried it and the round was no good. I can only imagine the horror if I had needed it.
 
Was the round already like that you think? Or do you think you accidentally actuate the trigger? I couldn't imagine when you actuated the trigger! Good thing it didn't put a hole in your leg if that was the case. Otherwise, thank god you figured that out. That would have been terrible had you needed it.
 
I don't think I could have pulled the trigger, I have experimented with a snap cap and the hammer sets differntly when it has dropped, the gun doesn't have second strike capability. Boy a I guess a smoking hole in my leg would have woke me up though!:eek:
 
Ha ha! You're not kidding! I actually shot myself before in a sense. It was a ricochet from a .22LR. I shot a skillet and it whizzed right back and caught me in the knee. It only went right under that skin so I guess I got lucky, but it still hurt and it took my leg out from under me!
 
Just curious have you checked to see if there was any powder.I assume this is factory fresh Defense Ammo.
 
no that hadn't occured to me, Fiocchi Hp, not my preffered ammo but you gotta take what you can find in .380 at the moment.
 
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Any automatic is liable to dent the primer slightly when chambering the round at normal speed, though obviously not enough to set it off. Military ammunition generally has harder primers for this reason and some commercially available primers are harder than others, though I couldn't say which.

It is called a slamfire when a firearm discharges upon chambering a round, at least most are, and that is a bad thing. In some firearms it can simply be a case of using ammuntion that has soft primers when it was designed around the use of harder primers. However, the only gun I've actually heard that mentioned about was the SKS rifles from Yugoslavia.

It would seem to be a bigger problem than it is, otherwise you would hear about it all the time here. Some guns like the Makarov have firing pins that look like horseshoe nails. If anything would slamfire, you would think they would all the time. Some submachine guns actually operate on that principle (among others), the firing pin being fixed.
 
Any automatic is liable to dent the primer slightly when chambering the round at normal speed . . .
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No, not necessarily . . . Series '80 and newer Colts and 1911 clones have firing pin safeties/blocks to ensure the firing pin can NOT get any where close to the primer even if the slide "SLAMS" home. For that matter Glocks and most other current/modern firearms also have some kind of firing pin block/safety.
 
Agree with john,however when I gear up to strap on my CCW and chamber a round, I never slam home the slide.Just as a precautionary,I rack the slide,while still holding on a forward motion.
 
Or the lesson is that the OP's .380 either doesn't have a firing pin safety, or its firing pin safety malfunctioned, or the OP somehow engaged the trigger on a fortuitously inert round.

Not to give anybody a hard time, but...
 
I didn't say that all automatics would dent the firing pin but with some it is possible. I generally think the firing pin safety on the 1991A1 version of the Colt is a good idea, even though it makes stripping a three-handed job. Many don't like it just because it makes it more complicated and, in theory, affects the trigger. But I see no reason to distrust any automatic, all other things being equal, when chambering a round, unless you think automatics are more dangerous than I do.

Presumably it would be more likely if the primer was high, too, but again, these are not things you ever hear about. Less so, in fact, that mention of "ka-booms" on this forum, so it must be an especially rare occurance.
 
Glad you found the problem before it became a life and death FTF.


That's the exact reason we should all be familiar with "Tap, Rack, Bang."
 
Hi, housezealot:

Wow, your thread is scary alright. That has never happened to me before and I have carried for years and/or shot tons of ammo down range.
Bottom line: If it were me, I would just have to get another pistol and another brand of ammo. When your life is on the line, you just can't second guess your weapon, period. Just my opinion.
 
To elaborate on my comments, I have noticed the (slightly) dented primer thing a few times, but have never had an accidental discharge with a pistol due to a malfunction. I have had that happen, however, with a .22 rimfire rifle, which would fire on closing the bolt. This was about 45 years ago and I don't remember the details, other than it was a .22 rifle. I happened to be living in West Virginia then in a place where there were a fair number of guns. They were all long guns and all old, which pretty much described most of the guns I had had experience with by then. I only fired it once.
 
Any automatic is liable to dent the primer slightly when chambering the round at normal speed, though obviously not enough to set it off. Military ammunition generally has harder primers for this reason and some commercially available primers are harder than others, though I couldn't say which.
Click to expand...

I have noticed, as well, that a primer that has been light struck a time or two can often not be fired by a full force strike. Presumably, the dent makes that area no longer have enough travel between cup and anvil for a proper ignition.

If the OP had rechambered that same round several times after cleaning or whatnot, even very weak strikes could eventually add up to a dent deep enough to cause the problem.

OTOH, I too was expecting something like having to pistol whip an enraged grizzly to death with a jammed Lorcin based on the title.
 
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