This is the kind of thing that just creeps me out. Steve’s got pictures of an XDM in .40 S&W that just blew right the hell up. The worst thing is that they don’t know what caused it, but they suspect a round firing out of battery. I will say that it’s interesting how the pistol failed, look at the parts are missing or damaged. It’s a weird damage pattern.
The shooter is okay, other than being rattled and needing a new gun!
Creeps me out as well since I am an owner and a big fan of the ugly XDm.
Not enough story. I’m just gonna assume re-loads and go about my life less concerned that will happen to me.
~whistle~
It seems I see too many fo-tays blowed up. What’s up with that? I’m not saying a .45 or 9mm hasn’t grenaded, but the overwhelming number of recent blown guns seem to me to be that particular caliber.
Some of the early 40 S&W kabooms were apparently due to manufacturers using pistols designed for 9mm pressures and scaling them up slightly for the new caliber.
I personally like the older, lower pressure, “inefficient” calibers like .45 and .380. You can grenade yourself with those, but you have to really work at it.
Guns blow up. It happens.
Close.
The .40 was designed to fit into the 9mm OAL envelope so that manufacturers didn’t have to “scale up” anything, just drop in a barrel with a bigger hole. The Glock 22 even uses the same recoil spring ass’y as the 17. The only differences are in the ejector, breechface, and barrel. Everything else is same-same.
The problem is that the most common weight of plinking ammo for .40 is 180gr; that heavy bullet is prone to setback, especially in cheapo ammo that’s rather unenthusiastically crimped, With the heavy bullet, remaining case volume is already minimal and very small amounts of setback can send pressures up over proof loads pretty easily.