Just Hanging Out (How to Deal with Hang Fires)…
Oh boy! It’s a perfect day to be at the range. There’s no one here and you’ve miraculously scored a pretty hefty box of ammo. Line is hot, you’re loaded and ready. You pull the trigger and “click”. Nothing.
“That’s odd” you say to yourself. You could have sworn there was a round in the chamber. Right as you go to rack the slide “BLAM!” the gun fires. Thank goodness you still had it pointed down range.
Welcome to the wonderful world of “hang fires”.
It’s been said many times that the two scariest sounds a gun can make is a click when you expected a bang and a bang when you expected a click. The fun thing about hang fires is that they encompass both of those scenarios.
First off, a hang fire is what they call it when there is a delay between when the primer is struck and the round actually goes off. Nine out of ten times you’ll never notice it. Sometimes, however, it can last quite a while. That one time is when hang fires become VERY dangerous.
In pretty much every case I’ve been able to find, hang fires are the result of improperly stored ammunition. The main culprit being moisture. The powder gets wet and it won’t burn as quickly. Too wet and it won’t burn at all. In the case of damp powder, it’ll still burn just not very rapidly. The pressure still builds up inside the casing and eventually gets enough pressure to push the bullet out like normal.
A lot of firearm related injuries stem from hang fires as well. When the gun doesn’t fire like it should, the first thing we instinctively do is turn the gun and look at it. Bad move, sparky. If it’s a significant hang fire and it’s pointed at your neighbor….well..you do the math. The other thing people will do is just figure it’s a bad round and eject it. Then you have a tiny grenade sitting next to a bunch of people on the shooting line.
One of the worst case scenarios is with revolvers. If you just figure it’s a bad round and fire again, that hung round is now exposed. The back of it is points at your squishy flesh and the front is pointed down range and both are no longer in the section of the gun that’s made to handle a gun shot. No matter what you do after that, if the bullet goes off then you will be injured. Remember to wear your safety glasses.
So what do you do?
First off, if you pull the trigger and nothing happens, for goodness sake keep that barrel pointed down range. Resist the urge to examine it. Resist, I say! Don’t immediately rack the slide either or, in the case of revolvers, don’t pull the trigger again. Just be patient. How long? Well, military guidelines say 30 seconds and that sounds good to me.
One Mississippi…Two Mississippi…Three Mississippi….etc…etc…
Ok, a good 30 seconds or more have passed. It’s safe to examine the gun. While still keeping the barrel pointed down range, remove the magazine and then rack the slide to remove the bullet. Now is a good time to examine it. See if the firing pin actually struck the primer. You should see a nice big dent in the primer if it did. If there’s no dent, that might be something wrong with the gun. If there is a dent, get rid of that bullet. Some ranges have a well marked box for disposing of dud ammo. If you don’t see one, ask a range safety officer or employee what you should do with the round.
From there on, be conscious of the rest of the ammo from that box. It might have just been one bad bullet but if you keep getting hang fires, it might not be a bad idea to just bite the bullet and toss the box.
I know in today’s market, tossing a box of ammo might hurt a bit. Trust me, it’ll hurt worse if you get injured. A price for a different box will still be cheaper than an ambulance ride.
Images used under Creative Commons license from another_finn and kcdsTM.
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