It wasn’t the “wrong” ammunition per se. It was older ammunition that may or may not have been authentic. (more below)
I was wondering if this would make BB. When it happened 5 months ago, it certainly was the “holy shit, did you see this?” video in some circles. It has been 5 months since I watched the whole thing, but I will try to explain what happened.
First off - I get it - lots you don’t like guns. That’s fine. But this guy really didn’t do anything wrong that I can see. He wasn’t shooting unsafely and there wasn’t any reason for him to think his gun would fail catastrophically. The “Hurr durr, ammosexuals.” is funny only because he was able to plug his jugular with his thumb, his dad got him to the hospital, and they were able to life flight him to a trauma center.
Anyway - so, what happened?
He was using a Serbu RN-50. This is a singe shot .50cal rifle that has a breech cap that screws on. You tilt the barrel, insert the round, screw the cap on, and then snap the breech/barrel into the receiver which has two ears of steel braced up against the plug. It is a beefy design that has been around for awhile. It is considered a much more affordable option than the much more popular Barrett offerings and allows one to do long range shooting on a budget, or not so long range shooting in this case.
The round he was using were SLAP rounds. These are weird in that the projectile isn’t the typical lead or steel jacketed in copper. They use a polymer sabot to hold an undersized tungsten penetrator. They were made in the 90s and used for shooting at light armor. (For anyone concerned about the fire hydrant, AP rounds like that will cut through soft steel like a knife through butter.) So this ammo was made I believe in 2007, which isn’t too old. These are traded among collectors, they fetch a high enough price that it isn’t unheard of people making replicas of them. Or possibly assembling them from parts. You are supposed to avoid some muzzle brakes that aren’t made for SLAP rounds, but if that was the issue, it would have tumbled at some point and blown off/smacked into the muzzle brake.
So something happened to cause a catastrophic failure. The pressures had to be so great because all of the threads were just sheared off of the cap, and the two steel ears ripped off the receiver. What can cause such a problem? Well, usually it is a problem with the ammo. While it would be rare for military ammo to have the wrong charge of powder, it can happen. If it turns out this was a replica or someone who had assembled one themselves, they could have use the wrong powder or wrong charge. There was a case head separation where the back of the round splits off.
Barrel obstructions can also cause a catastrophic failure, but I don’t think from watching the video that was the issue. Squibs, where a too light of a powder charge failed shoot the bullet completely out of the barrel is a common cause of obstructions. The previous round went down range, so it should have been clear. And typically the damage happens at the point where the barrel was obstructed. Those cartoons where a gun splits into 4 pieces is from hunters plugging the tip of their rifle with mud at some point and not realizing it.
So - after this happened, pretty much anyone with a gun and a camera made a youtube video about it. Some fault the ammo, some fault the gun design, but it has been inconclusive so far. There were a lot of opinions and not all of them very informed.
Mark Serbu, who designed the gun, did two videos after it happened explaining the engineering behind the gun. He screwed up and told Scott in the video a wrong pressure rating for the threaded cap, for one. Later he got the destroyed rifle and gave it a once over. He hasn’t yet released a new video explaining what he thinks happened. I don’t know if we will ever know conclusively what happened, but if one is curious, these videos aren’t that long and explains the design of the gun and what it should be able to handle. Of course there are 1001 other youtubers chiming in, so take it with a grain of salt.
