Just a reminder to pay attention

[Cliff R]

I'd be surprised if he was using factory ammo and switched them by accident.  Handloads seldom get crimped nearly as hard as factory ammo does.  

Most of the blown up gun issues I've seen over the years were from too much powder, or the wrong powder being used and almost always "hand loads". 

When the Beretta 9mm pistols first came out I was an SAI and put them to the test on the range.  We fired thousands of rounds thru the 10 pistols we were allocated.  They sent Israeli TZZ 9mm ammo.  That chit was HOT and put out a huge fireball when night shooting.  It came is 64 round boxes.  Hum?

We continued to use it until another unit had a slide come off and hit a shooter in the face.  I'm thinking it was a Marine Corps unit but with my BAD cases of CRS these days that may not be the case.   Anyhow, they went after Beretta for some "upgrades" and some changes were made to the pistols.  

At my unit I took a closer look at the ammo and noted that it was loaded really "hot", something like 11 grains of some sort of powder, don't remember exactly what at the moment.  I talked it over with my Weapons Officer and we decided to stop using it and switched to Winchester 9mm ball ammo instead.  Somewhere in the mix of all of this the powers that be decided to switch to the lighter Winchester loads and we chit canned all the TZZ 9mm ammo.

I beleive to this day that if we would have conintued to fire the "UZI" ammo we'd have blown up some guns as it was really giving them a pounding..........

[98Z5V]

17 hours ago, Cliff R said:

We continued to use it until another unit had a slide come off and hit a shooter in the face.  I'm thinking it was a Marine Corps unit but with my BAD cases of CRS these days that may not be the case.   Anyhow, they went after Beretta for some "upgrades" and some changes were made to the pistols.  

Those original M9s had a slide life guarantee of 5,000 rounds.  Safety messages started coming down stating slide life was now 2.500 rounds.  The final message that came down was slide life of 1.250 rounds...  That would last over 20 years, in a training role, only qualifying once a year.  

[Cliff R]

At some point in the mix of all that somebody besides us realized that TZZ ammo in 64 round boxes was made for sub machine guns and loaded pretty hot.  

For sure that wasn't helping the life of the slides.  

After they fixed all that I spent another 16 years or so as an SAI and never had a single problem with an M-9 pistol  as far as breaking it.  It was also pretty rare to have a problem with one on the firing line either, failures to feed, eject, stove-pipes etc were literally non-existent.  Ugly and bulky as they are they are a very reliable pistol.  With the 45 pistols they replaced it was IMPOSSIBLE to run a line of four or more shooters and get thru an entire BPMC or PPC course without multiple "alibies".

Even with that said most of our 45's at that point were NOT is very good shape and had been "patched" back up scores of times, then put back in service instead of melted down to make car bumpers out of!.....

Edited September 21, 2022 by Cliff R

[83107]

Those are some scary photos. The shooter was lucky. I keep different ammo in different ammo cases. I will be marking my 300BO magazines.