SA Friday
11-24-2009, 18:49
I have seen 1st hand cupping the ejection port when unloading a semi-auto handgun can cause a dangerous situation and cause the ejected round to discharge out of battery. A couple of years ago, I put on a fun shoot for a bunch of my agents. One of the agents was a reservist and a very experienced sheriff from New Mexico. At the end of his course of fire, he cupped the ejection port of his Sig P228 and racked the slide. The unfired cartridge didn't exit the ejection port because of his palm, and lodged with the bullet nose on the front outside edge of the port and the primer on the ejector rod. Finishing racking the slide rammed the primer into the ejector rod hard enough to ignite the round... in his palm.
The round was obviously not contained, and the discharge caused massive failure on the 9mm case walls. The energy wasn't focused, per se, and turned the round into a mini brass frag grenede with less power than an M-80. The result was he had brass embedded in his had in multiple places and powder burns. We cleaned the wounds with hydrogen peroxide and picked out all the brass we could see. Then we sent him to the Air Force Academy for an x-ray to see if there was any more in his hand. There was, and they had to dig pretty deep to get it out.
Being this happened during an official Air Force function, I completed the proper safety paperwork and documented it very thoroughly including pictures. Considering I did investigations for a living, it wasn't that hard.
After discussing this with a lot of people, I discovered this unsafe practice is widely unknown in military and LE communities. I even found a few agencies recommending this practice instead of letting the round hit the floor. Don't do it. Let the round hit the ground or roll the round out into your hand (front cocking serations being used here) with the gun upside down. Just don't cup the port and definately don't rack the round out with force. Pull the slide back and slowly eject the round. Obviously, this doesn't apply in a shooting situation. Tap, rack, back on target.
Lastly, you gotta be wearing eye protection. All it takes is something like this or a borderline hot round that blows an extractor, and you have schrapnel. You only have to be wrong once and your eye is gone.
The round was obviously not contained, and the discharge caused massive failure on the 9mm case walls. The energy wasn't focused, per se, and turned the round into a mini brass frag grenede with less power than an M-80. The result was he had brass embedded in his had in multiple places and powder burns. We cleaned the wounds with hydrogen peroxide and picked out all the brass we could see. Then we sent him to the Air Force Academy for an x-ray to see if there was any more in his hand. There was, and they had to dig pretty deep to get it out.
Being this happened during an official Air Force function, I completed the proper safety paperwork and documented it very thoroughly including pictures. Considering I did investigations for a living, it wasn't that hard.
After discussing this with a lot of people, I discovered this unsafe practice is widely unknown in military and LE communities. I even found a few agencies recommending this practice instead of letting the round hit the floor. Don't do it. Let the round hit the ground or roll the round out into your hand (front cocking serations being used here) with the gun upside down. Just don't cup the port and definately don't rack the round out with force. Pull the slide back and slowly eject the round. Obviously, this doesn't apply in a shooting situation. Tap, rack, back on target.
Lastly, you gotta be wearing eye protection. All it takes is something like this or a borderline hot round that blows an extractor, and you have schrapnel. You only have to be wrong once and your eye is gone.