Oh, you’re referring to the firearms are ‘evil’ quote. I wasn’t sure how I was talking down, now I can see how that could be interpreted.
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I’m sure the tech was rigorously tested and approved for safety by the appropriate government body.
Armor piercing ammunition should be distributed to every idiot who wants it. Because we’re a war zone; just like when you used it in the military.
Where’s my goddamn predator drone?
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And doing so eventually almost killed him.
The video cites a source, from the military program that developed and used this round. Stating do not shoot it in a weapon with a muzzle break. Which at a minimum shows Scot could have known the risks with this ammo, as it appears to be well documented. Despite his claims that there was no way he could have.
Rex from the video also says that Scott didn’t catch obvious signs of a barrel obstruction or follow standard safety practices that allow you to catch one before you get blowed up. He apparently teaches classes on large caliber distance shooting, and specifically warns people about all this. Seems like he might know what he’s talking about.
Artillery have a bit of a scale difference there.
On top of that there’s a rather big difference between deep, thick usually square interrupted threads you see in some fire arms, like artillery. And the shallow, pointed and narrow threads on that rifle. Because one of these things has significantly less metal. ETA: You’re also looking at a fairly thin metal cap, vs a sizable mass of metal in terms of a breach block here. Just not a lot of metal all round in the back end of that gun.
Screw caps like that are not particularly common as the locking method in small arms. For a reason.
There’s no redundancy to that lock either. Those lugs behind it don’t look strong enough, or intended to keep the breach closed. And clearly weren’t.
The risks of fucking around with old ammo are well known, and “use a strong gun” is kinda part one of doing it safely.
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I dunno… This other guy spends a lot of time “explaining” what happened, with “explanations”, and “inferences” and “logical conclusions from available data”, when he could just do, as the original YouTuber/gunshot-victim did: attribute it to “an unforeseeable ‘hot’ round.”
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That’s a $9,000-$12,000 gun he just pissed away by being stupid/dangerous.
Bet he blew 6 months of child support on that rather than pay the ex.
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Yep, my Garand can’t take modern .30-06 rounds, they’re too powerful and lead to premature clip ejection (hurr hurr) or an exploding receiver. If I want to shoot it and not risk blowing my face off, I have to track down M2 Ball ammo.
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in my opinion – MINE – there is no civilian who needs that kind of firepower. armor piercing rounds, jesus h christ. there must be a more useful way to spend time than taking advanced weaponry and blasting random shit with it. i do not get it. horrific injury that would not have occurred otherwise. no need to reply.
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I understand what 50-caliber rifles and armor-piercing rounds are designed for.
So when I see someone using them for fun and they end up injuring themselves in the process my response is probably going to be similar to how I’d respond to news of someone injuring themselves while having fun with grenades.
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You should look up threading charts and see how strong a threaded cap really is.
In many cases its actually stronger than a single locking lug, because the interference goes all the way around the circumference of the action. There’s a lot more contact than you might expect.
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Yes. Because most people who buy small arms want to use them for killing stuff. A screw breach would make that less fun.
It’s the same reason you don’t see cops carting around muzzle loaders. Much easier to shoot a black kid in the back if you have a glock with over a dozen rounds, and each triggerpull is all it takes to send it.
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There’s a lot more surface area. But there’s potentially a lot less mass and thickness to the metal, which is going to impact strength of the metal itself, particularly as it wears. And those are some pretty shallow, thin threads.
And the back of that cap as a breach block is a lot less mass than you’d typically see.
You do no even see this in other single shot .50cals, or weapons specifically designed or preferred for over powered ammo or experimenting with ammo.
In the end that’s all spitting in the wind. Theoretically or not, it wasn’t strong enough, and it failed.
ETA: A bit more than all that is the way this thing failed. Which was fairly obvious. If the gun blew the cap was going to come off and hit the shooter. There was very little to obstruct it, those posts look like they’re just there to keep the gun from closing while open, again very little mass to them. The design is going to direct a failure at the shooter.
Which is exactly what happened.
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I agree with you that there is some risk with using a muzzle brake, as I understand it, it has to do with the sabot coming apart within the muzzle brake causing the penetrator to then crash into it. That doesn’t appear to be what happened here. Nor do I think the brake would have caused a barrel obstruction.
I haven’t listened to that Rex video, but I am open to the idea of a barrel obstruction. I certainly can’t rule it out, although I would think that any obstruction would have evidence of it in the barrel via a bulge.
In the second video I posted, he gives you the specs of the threads and steel and if one is an engineer who knows how to calculate it’s strength, they can. The number he came up with via a 3rd party mechanical engineer is 161,520 psi. The cap itself sustained very little damage, other than the threads, and looks rather thick to me.
Now I have to admit, I don’t have any clue as to how strong the design is. I have heard people say it is plenty strong, and others leveling similar criticism you have. Though TBF, I haven’t heard of SERBU .50cals failing, especially in this way.
I will say there is a point where any firearm will fail. A .50cal BMG round has an average chamber psi of 55,000psi, with a proof chamber rated at 65,000psi. So even if a gun is engineered to be able to take twice that amount, having it fail at nearly three times that amount is understandable. The lugs did provide some redundancy, but again, there is a point where it will fail.
In general, whenever there is a kaboom, the gun maker will blame the ammo, the ammo maker will blame the gun. I am still leaning towards the ammo, but having a multiple issues stack up could also be the culprit.
It’s only $1,600-$2000 MSRP. It fills the “affordable” market niche.
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Those lugs (the ears) are absolutely intended to keep the cap in place in case of failure. They are made from 1/4" nitrided steel alloy that is the exact same material that the .50 caliber machine gun uses in its breech. That’s the whole reason they are there which gives you an idea of just how much force was exerted.
The normal .50 caliber chamber pressures are about 65,000 to 75,000 PSI (depending on type. SLAP, which was the type that was involved here, is on the high end), that model of rifle’s tested chamber proof is 161,000 PSI. That blast was so far beyond any reasonable level of propellant load that it pretty much has to have been a hot or a poorly made load.
There was no damage to the muzzle brake which if the sabot had gotten hung up on it, or if there was any kind of barrel obstruction, and contained the entire charge, the barrel would have banana peeled.
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How do you know that? I mean, if plastic builds up at one end of the barrel, builds up, builds up, and then the round is obstructed and there is overpressure that backs up the other way: couldnt that exceed the 88000psi that was required to blow off the screw-cap at the breach? (I don’t know.)
The SLAP rounds are not made to be fired from a gun with [normal] muzzle breaks. The M2 machine guns you speak of do not have muzzle breaks. The 2nd youtube video guy knows more than me, and he thinks the original youtuber’s muzzle break might be the culprit.
Your omniscience is extraordinary.
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Any bets on how long it will be before rightwing 2nd amendment sites are hailing this lad as a “Hero” standing up for our rights to blow the hell out of ourselves or anybody around us. There should also be a go fund me site to get him a ne rifle and some ammo. He almost self annihilated while bravely pursuing his to use a weapon that is designed for military use. WTF shooting a fire hydrant, are they really that threatening?
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Scott doesn’t need a gofundme and that type of rifle would be awful for military applications. It was specifically designed for fun and affordable shooting against things like vicious fire hydrants and expired cans of nacho cheese and white gravy…
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Well first off, if that was the case, it would not have been caused by the muzzle brake.
Second, I don’t think that scenario is possible, especially from only a handful of rounds fired. These things are made to be fired from machine guns with 100round belts. If it were possible to clog up a barrel with plastic after a dozens rounds, you would see a lot more blown up M2 Machine guns.
And third, if clogged up with plastic, then it should have left traces of that and damage to the barrel.
Watch it. It sounds like exactly what happened here. Apparently the deal is plastic buildup where the muzzle device fits to the barrel. That buildup can be impossible to see without measuring. And will apparently blow out of the barrel as the bullet passes, since it is not a complete obstruction. But causes enough of a restriction to over pressure the gun, and has caused documented failures.
He even talks about what behaviors you would see as a result of this. The exact aim problems, and increase in pressure from shot to shot that Scott experienced. The lack of a visible obstruction in the barrel. Pretty much all of it.
His description of how to avoid something like this makes it clear that Scott didn’t know how to safely go about doing this sort of thing. Apparently each of his off shots was a clear sign of a partial barrel obstruction, and you’re supposed to inspect the brass after each shot if you want to detect that sort of thing. IT REALLY seems like that ammo is documented too, what with the citable explicit warning of “don’t do that” associated with it.
It doesn’t even sound like the ammo would have been over pressured either.
Like I said it doesn’t look strong to me. And it doesn’t mechanically resemble other fire arms I’ve seen used for this practice. But we’ll go with the Rex video, as he seems to do this sort of thing professionally and is familiar with the ammo and safe practices for this kind of shit.
And he calls out that action as comparatively weak and inappropriate for this kind shooting, specifically citing the threading as a potential week point.
I literally said “oh fuck” as I watched the guy load the rifle in the main video. Not just because it looked slim from my limited experience with this sort of thing. But because that design was going to so obviously blow back on the shooter if it failed.
The posts might in some circumstances. They sure as shit didn’t here as one of them is what lacerated his jugular. A redundant system should be at least as strong as what it’s backing up, they don’t seem to have slowed anything down and ended up being the most dangerous part of the thing.
Assuming we mean the M2. Maybe you should look at the inside of one of those. Cause there’s quite a lot of material involved, all backed up by whiskey bottled sized block of metal in the bolt.
It doesn’t matter how strong something is if there isn’t enough of it to hold up. And design elements can have a major impact on how well they do that. Sharp corners will tend to create stress points, that eventually propagate cracks. Thin and small things wear faster.
Which if you watch that video is well explained, and predicted by the known documented problem he’s on about.
A failure like this does not require a full blockage of the barrel, enough of a restriction can do it. And it’s going to blow up whatever the weakest point in the rifle is. It looks very much like that was the threaded end cap. Since that’s what actually blowed up.
Did that job well too, what with one being lodged in the guy’s neck.
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He got the cheap knockoff version
