Odd
A woman at a Lowe’s store had some loose ammo in her purse. Something must have hit the primer because a round went off injuring her. I wonder how, exactly. Part of what makes a bullet dangerous is the pointy end and for that to work it has to be aimed through a barrel for pressure. Seems to me a bullet just going off would be loud but mostly just noise. I don’t see it traveling far or doing much damage.
June 12th, 2012 at 9:42 am
Maybe it was the primer or the case itself that moved?
Both items have less intertia than the bullet and without being held are more likely to move.
Though not sure it would get out of the purse.
Depends on what she was carrying and what injured her.
June 12th, 2012 at 9:51 am
I imagine it could burn her.
June 12th, 2012 at 9:53 am
From the story
“”Something must of hit the primer of one of the bullets,” Bentley said. “The bullet stayed in the purse, but its casing put a hole in the purse and caused a minor leg wound,” he added.”
She got hit by the casing. Which I suspect could have burned her.
June 12th, 2012 at 10:12 am
Seems what I’ve read/watched is right, the casing is what tends to go flying when a loose round detonates. I bet that’d startle the crap out of you lol
June 12th, 2012 at 10:23 am
And since it’s unsupported, it could split or fragment, too, creating one or more sharp flying projectiles. Not a lot of mass, but those edges can cause injuries.
June 12th, 2012 at 10:30 am
Speaking as someone who has had to remove brass shrapnel from a friends arm due to a detonated round out of the chamber, I must say that they can be very dangerous and I am lucky to have both my eyes right now. My friend still has a scar to prove it. We were not intentionally trying to detonate it either, accidents happen and thank God we got lucky.
June 12th, 2012 at 10:45 am
“The shell casings actually caused more damage than the bullets.”
http://mythbustersresults.com/episode85
June 12th, 2012 at 11:28 am
Years ago, I replicated Hatcher’s tests on blowing up cartridges (Hatcher’s Notebook, pp. 533-540.) I took an arc welder, touched the electrode to the primer and wrappped a turn of wire around the body of the case and toggled the power from behind a wall.
I tested .38 Special, .45 ACP, .44 Magnum, .30-06 and 12 gauge 3″ magnum (5 each), placing a cardboard box over the plywood on which the cartridges rested.
All cases ruptured, often without completely burning their powder charge. Nothing penetrated the cardboard. The plywood showed no more than a minor scuff for any of the rounds I tried.
I too have a small scar on my right hand dating back to the late 70s, when I began reloading. A wrinkled case tied up my 1911 such that I couldn’t chamber or extract the round. I transferred the pistol to my left hand so I could rack the slide with my stronger right hand. I had a high primer, leading to an out-of-battery AD and ejection of a shredded brass case and fragments into my right palm.
I got a 1 cm superficial laceration for my troubles.
June 12th, 2012 at 12:19 pm
We had some trespasser throw a half box of 9mm ammo in the burn barrel at our muzzleloader re-enactors club’s private range in Oregon a while back …
We did not find out about it until after we started burning old targets in the barrel.
When the rounds cooked off like firecrackers, each bullet left a big dimple in the side of the barrel, as if a strong man had whaled hard on the inside of the barrel with a ball-peen hammer.
Yea, I can see an accidental detonation of a loose round in a purse bruising the hell out of the purse wearer.
June 12th, 2012 at 12:42 pm
The orientation and restriction of the catridge matters alot.
If the case cannot move, say in a chamber or the round sitting upright in a box, then the bullet will move.
If the case can move then it, being lighter, will move more than the bullet.
Either way when the powder cooks off something will seperate and something will move.
If the case and bullet are fairly restricted you can even have primer seperation as the primer is launched out of the pocket.
June 12th, 2012 at 1:14 pm
Mythbusters got it almost right – Jack got it all right.
June 12th, 2012 at 2:58 pm
I was at an indoor range, when the clerk dropped a 50 round baggie of ammo (9mm, IIRC) on the glass-topped counter. A round in the baggie detonated. Sounded just like a gun being fired.
This was re-manufactured ammo that they carried at the store. Clerk may have taken some brass fragments, twenty year memory is fuzzy.
Only time I’ve seen/heard that happen. I was ten feet distant, looking at the bag, when it happened. Saw the contents hump up/move, so I knew immediately what had happened, but most others thought a gun had discharged.
June 12th, 2012 at 3:17 pm
I’m skeptical of brass fragmentation outside of a round jammed in an open receiver. With either end of the cartridge unrestricted the brass should be stronger than the bullet casing interface causing it to open releasing the gas. If the bullet is jammed, the force will blow the casing back. If the casing is jammed, the force would push the bullet out. If both are jammed, the force will exploit the unconfined casing, possibly with fragmentation but with rupture at least.
This reminded me of all those movie scenes, like in True Lies, where a gun flips down steps firing and hitting bad guys. Oddly the gun itself never reacts to the discharge except for pretty, pretty fire out the muzzle.
June 12th, 2012 at 4:02 pm
Confinement is everything. The case will rupture at a couple hundred psi and an uncrimped primer will pop at less than that. The bullet will typically travel only a matter of a foot or two in my experience, with the cartridge case, primer and expanding gasses being the more concerning matter.
Also (and at the risk of again being called “pedantic” about a topic of which I have certain knowledge) please be careful about the use of the word “detonate” in this context.
Detonation in pistols can occur with light loads of fast powders, such as Bullseye. It usually wrecks the gun and sometimes injures the shooter. High explosives detonate, well-made cartridges should not — any more than “clips” hold “bullets.”
http://www.vincelewis.net/44magboom.html
June 12th, 2012 at 4:22 pm
Yeah, well, Julian Hatcher never carried a purse…
June 12th, 2012 at 4:26 pm
… as far as we know. 😉