EDIT: Added another post in this thread with more pics.






Today at the Range. It was ammo related. Blew out the case on a 9mm round. I was shooting Freedom Munitions 115gr remanufactured ammo. As soon as I slapped the bang switch I knew something was wrong. I could see a flash between the slide and the frame followed by stuff smacking me in the face, along with leaving black marks on my hands. It dropped the mag just enough for the slide to get locked back and the case was stuck in the extractor. I immediately disassembled the shield and thoroughly inspected it along with inspecting the other empty cases for bulging. None of the other cases showed signs of having been fired with poor chamber support. The Shield showed no visible signs of damage. Function checked it and it was fine. Then I put one round in a mag and fired it(repeated it X10). Worked fine so I put 150 rounds through it after that. Worked flawlessly. I'm just glad it didn't blow my shield up. Freedom Munitions is definitely getting a complaint email. Here's a pic of the case.

Edit to add. This range session I put around 75 rounds through it before it happened.
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Yokes, glad you weren't injured

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82nd Airborne Div 1980-1986

Glad you weren't hurt, first of all. I have some ammo from them I haven't shot yet. Gonna go over them with a fine tooth comb to make sure nothing looks suspicious.

Glad you're safe and your pistol wasn't severely damaged.
Let us know what they say.

Sent from my Transformer TF101

So exactly how cheap are these "gun show reloads" when they cost you a gun and possibly bodily injury?

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M&P's and K Frames Pleeze!

Exactly how are you going to tell, just by looking, whether or not this garbage is dangerously overcharged, making you and your gun the next victim?

Cosmetic things like dented cases and set back bullets are the least of your concerns when it comes to buying and using this **** ammo...

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M&P's and K Frames Pleeze!

I've been using Freedom Munitions new and reload, in 9m and 38 Special for over a year. Never had one problem in 2K plus rounds.

So the last 160 rounds you fired were the same batch of Freedom Munitions?

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Psalm 23:4

Wow easy. What's up with the vitriol?

I've personally fired over 3000 rounds of reman from them, 9, 45, 223 and 38. Nothing like that has happened. Add in another 2000 of their factory new across the same calibers.

You can find similar failures on occasion from factory new ammo, as well.

These aren't gun show reloads. Freedom munitions is a legitimate company.

10 of them were. The other 150 were from different boxes.

That failure was due to the round not being fully seated in the breech.

Nah. The Shield has a partially unsupported chamber. That area is the path of least resistance when remanufactured brass gives way due to fatigue or an over-pressurized round.

A few days ago I saw a thread post on AR15.com regarding ammo failure with Freedom Munitions 9mm. They may have some bad ammo out there. Contact them first thing Monday!

Rob

Sorry to hear. Glad you are ok.

I've shot maybe 500 rounds of both reman and new 115 gr 9mm from my FS9 from Freedom over the past year.

Just ordered 500 more rounds yesterday, in fact.

They are having Free Shipping this weekend through Monday.

Ammunition Online at Factory Direct Prices | Freedom Munitions | Handgun Ammo & Rifle Ammo

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Take your time, fast. J.Hughes

Can you expand on this? How does something like that happen?

As a prospective Shield purchaser, naturally I'm interested in how a blow out like this occurs. Thanks.

Rich

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Take your time, fast. J.Hughes

It happened because of remanufactured ammo. Not the gun.

When freedom munitions sells new 1000 rounds for $202, and you cheap out and pay $194 for reloads instead...

Is your shield worth that extra 8 dollars?

I'm going to cry FOUL here, that wasn't an ammunition fault, that was an OOB event. For those in doubt over this LOOK AT THE FORWARD POINT OF THE BLOWOUT. It is about 40% of the way up the case and I do not believe that S&W or any other responsible manufacturer would produce a firearm with a chamber design with the feed ramp this far into the chamber. That point is well past the "safe" point for the feed ramp intrusion and would lead to a lengthy trail of complaints about bulged and blown out cases. I will also point out that the Shield seems to be gaining a bit of a reputation for OOB events in the 40 caliber version so it's not really a surprise that this might happen in the 9mm Shield.

As for how this could happen, it's a matter of design. Almost any semi ever made will fire with the slide just a bit out of battery. Because trying to produce an exact cutoff point with zero tolerance for error would prove nearly impossible in a production environment, you would need to hand fit the parts on every single pistol made. Even with these measures you would have to allow at least 5-10 thousandths of an inch of tolerance or you would find the slightest bit of shooting detritus causing failures to fire. With most pistol designs the cutoff point ranges between 1/16 and 3/32 inch. However, due to tolerance stackup that cutoff can widen to as much as 1/8 inch or possibly even a bit more. Now, take a pistol that can fire 1/8 inch out of battery WITH a barrel that may have had the feed ramp cut a bit too deep and we have the result seen here, an OOB event.

Now for what the OP should be doing. First, DOCUMENT EVERYTHING. I would suggest placing that case back into the barrel with the bulge aligned on the feed ramp and then carefully fitting the barrel into the loose slide while taking care to get the extractor groove fitted under the extractor. Once you have the barrel fitted into the slide LIGHTLY tap the end of the barrel with a block of wood to get everything as snug as possible. Then take a clear picture of the bottom of the slide and another of the top of the slide showing how far out of battery the barrel was when your pistol fired. If you have some calipers put them into place showing the gap between the rear of the barrel hood and the breech face of the slide. That will pretty clearly show how far out of battery your pistol was when this round fired.

Then contact S&W, because your pistol is covered by a warranty. Now, they will want to have you send them that case along with your pistol but I would not do that at this point. Because that case is LEVERAGE. Tell them that you will send them that case once you have a new replacement in hand provided by their warranty coverage. Once that happens, send them the case so they can use your old pistol and that case to reverse engineer the fault and hopefully do a bit of design revisions to keep this from happening again.

BTW, I will note that you are fortunate because in most OOB events the clues to what actually happened are usually blown into unrecoverable bits on the range. A case as complete as yours is rare and a rather valuable bit of evidence that can be used to clearly define exactly what happened and can be used to determine the exact position of the slide and frame when this happened.

According to the Freedom Munitions website, the only difference between their NEW and REMANUFACTURED ammo is the cartridge case. The NEW ammo is loaded on new/virgin brass; the RE-MAN is loaded on fired brass. The other components are the same, and it is loaded on the same equipment.

I ordered once from them-1 box 38 Special, 1 box 45acp, 2 boxes 9mm (115 & 124 gr.). The 9mm shot fine, no issues. Haven't shot the 38 Special yet. The 45acp, I won't ever order again. Felt like I was shooting a 357 Mag instead of a 45. Only found a few pieces of the brass and that was thrown out. I enjoy shooting the 45 auto and 230 gr. ball loads are fine, but this stuff HURT to shoot! All was their RE-MAN ammo. And I was using my FS Ruger SR1911.

They seem to have a good reputation and get good reviews. Mistakes happen, even to the major manufacturers, just sucks when you are "the one" it happens to!

Glad you and your Shield are both okay.

I feel your pain -- I introduced my father to the joys of the AR platform on Thurs and Friday with my heavily-hooked-up and amazingly tacticool 15-22.... and at the end of the shooting day Friday, I decided to put my magazine of 25 CCI Stingers I keep for emergency purposes or self-defense etc. (not that I keep the 15-22 for defense but just IF....)

the first one was a resounding success, a nice BOOM sound and right on target. The second shot hit *exactly* what I was aiming at, made me look like Wyatt Earp. The third one..... not so good.

Kaboom.

The consensus is that the gun got dirty from shooting other rounds, the overall length of the Stinger being a little longer, and the shooting residue caused an out of battery discharge.


Tomorrow morning I have to call S&W to send it in. Sucks. SUCKS. But at least I am okay, right?

"Slapped the bang switch"??

So, "I fired the weapon" isn't hip enough anymore?

Glad you're okay.

I have shot thousands of FM new and reman ammo and never had a problem. I probably have a few thousand rounds of their stuff in my safe too. I'd be very interested to hear how Freedom responds.

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-Mike-

In query of an earlier post, will the Shield fire out of battery?

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Wisdom comes thru fear . . .

Stupid question alert, but:

"fired out of battery" means the striker hit the primer while the cartridge case was not fully seated in the chamber, correct?

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Take your time, fast. J.Hughes

Will the Shield fire out of battery?
I believe so, based on the early issues I had. The first trip back to the factory was based on a similar issue that I caught before a real problem.

Symptom was that the slide would not quite go into battery. We're talking 1/32 inch, maybe. I had several cases where I had to give it a push. But at the same time I realized that pulling the trigger would advance the side and fire the round.
Happened once, and I decided once was enough. There was no "kaboom", but just the thought of something else getting me before the cancer does riled me a bit. It went back the next day.

Llando88,

Yes -

Absolutely ....

Not suggesting you are wrong, but If you believe that it is only limited to reman, then I suggest a quick google search and a bit of reading.

Plenty of stories out there where brand new rounds had blowout failures.

scooter123,
I appreciate your analysis, but I think it is not correct. For it to happen as you and RalphMP9FS say, the round would actually have to protrude from the chamber. The M&P line stay locked up for that 1/8" travel you mention. So, a round cannot protrude. Then if the slide has moved that far, the sear is no longer engaged with the sear. Thus it won't fire.

Further, if the gun were this defective, it would have done this much earlier and with several rounds not just this one.


It's certainly worth checking with S&W, but this won't happen. What will happen is this:
Call S&W and explain the problem.
They will tell you to send them the gun and damaged casing for inspection.
If you don't send them either, they won't send you anything.
If you send in just the gun, you will get it back with a statement that nothing is wrong with it.
If you send them the casing, they will claim it was an over pressured round.

This is not new. We've seen this before. If you want to head down the path of, "I'm not sending my evidence for a potential law suit" then you simply won't get anything from S&W until you win that law suit. The suit will cost many thousands of dollars and you might even win. At that point S&W will give you a new $300 gun. Do you think that's a prudent path?

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Freedom isn't free.

Stil a little fuzzy, even with Rastoff's reply: So, to be absolutely clear, if the action is not locked up, you can pull the trigger and make the striker work? How far out of battery before it won't fire?

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Wisdom comes thru fear . . .

Don't take our word for it. Try it yourself.

With an unloaded gun, pointed in a safe direction, move the slide back a little and see if pulling the trigger will release the sear. Move it 1/32", pull the trigger, then 1/16", pull the trigger and so forth. You will find that the barrel is still locked up when the trigger is no longer releasing the sear.

This is inherent in the design. If the gun were so flawed that it could fire out of battery, by pulling the trigger, it wouldn't work anyway.

Now, the gun, any gun, can fire out of battery, but only through some other means than pulling the trigger. A piece of debris could get between the breech face and the round being chambered. The striker could be broken and protruding while the round is chambered. I'm sure we could come up with other ways, but in all those cases, the gun would be inoperable afterward. That is not the case here.

I don't think this was an out of battery ignition.

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Freedom isn't free.

Uh, if I remember correctly, so-called reputable ammo companies were involved with some kabooms here, according to S&W, so what's your point? Seems like it's all a **** shoot.

That makes more sense. The actual short answer to my question is "No."

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Wisdom comes thru fear . . .

Had the same thing happen with a Sigma a couple of years ago. Someone gave me a box of Brand X reman ammo. The case looked the same. Much commotion, and the mag was blown partially out of the gun.

I field stripped the gun, looked it over well; no other damage. Fired another mag or two of different loads through it ok.

The mfr wasn't overly concerned when I called. I forget their name now, but shooting ANYONE else's reloads is a bad idea, period.

I don't buy the OOB thesis. That said, I've never had one with tons of new factory ammo or 50 plus years of my own reloads.

Here's my Shield barrel with a FM 124gr reload in it. I picked out a WIN case too. Note how much (or how little) of the case is exposed by the ramp. Now compare to the case from the OP.



I then tried to get mine to fire (DRY fire) OOB. By OOB I mean that the barrel hood began to unlock. It wouldn't. There's a very short distance the slide will travel rearward and still fire, but the barrel is still fully locked. One the hood began to move, it no longer fired.

My 40 Shield did that when new, I blamed the brass (A-MERC)
I've had trouble with it before.
Gun was not hurt, and I've fired hundreds of rounds sense with no problems.

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John

I always check reloads that I purchase from LAX, usually only get 38 doc or 357 mag reloads. I check the rounds and trash any with suspect looking brass. It usually results in about 10-15 per 500 getting trashed.

Yeah but "Slapped the bang switch" Sounds so much more tier one internet operator bad ***.

Alright, I cleared the weapon and the following pics show the position of the slide at the point the sear will still engage the striker. If the slide position is any farther back the sear won't engage the striker. The barrel is still locked up in this position. I do have an apex sear installed so I don't know if a Shield with a factory sear will fire in this slide position. I should note that I've had around 500rds through it on the apex sear and 500 through prior to installing the sear. Excuse the lint, I do clean my guns. I pocket carried this morning and got some fuzz on it.

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Pics of slide in normal position.
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A detail you failed to mention earlier. Who installed it?

Because no one has ever had a simular experience with factory ammo.

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Molon Labe!

Try fitting that fired case into your barrel. I expect that you'll find that it will only go in far enough to be about 0.20 inch short of fully chambered. This means the case was under pressure and this far from fully chambered when it failed. That fully fits the definition of an OOB event, a cartridge being ignited while not fully chambered.

Now, I cannot say for certain it was a fault in your pistol. On rare occasions a high primer can "catch" the lower edge of the breech face and cause a premature ignition. IIRC Sig Sauer recalled a batch of early P229's that were sold to Law Enforcement so they could modify the lower edge of the breech face to prevent this potential.

It could be that the round was out of spec, yet, the gun fired out of battery which should not have happened. I'm not familiar with S&W Shields. I know that Glocks, for example will indeed fire slightly out of battery to compensate for dirty combat conditions. With that much shell exposed, the gun should not have fired.

As to modifications, my Shield 9 has none. I am a "factory spec" guy.

I have experience with Freedom Munitions, but only new rounds, which are good so far. I don't use reloads or "remans" in keeping with warranties, as I can (and do) break anything / everything (guns, cars, coffee pots, you name it).

I disagree with those who say a Shield will not fire OOB, as I have seen it happen.

Likely not a factor here but during my last reloading session with 9mm 115 grain round nose I found a 124 grain flat point 9mm projectile which calls for a different powder charge but likely not sufficiently different to cause a dangerous condition. I've never bought and 124 grain so it had to come from the factory that way. So there could have been something wrong with that single round. However, I would say it looks like a case failure and it blew out along the ramp so not out of battery and far less damaging that an OOB would likely be.

As I said earlier, I think it's possible for a Shield, and other semi-autos, to ignite while out of battery. I just don't think it's possible as described in the OP.

As support for what I just said, when any of the M&P guns are out of battery, the chamber has dropped. This will move the primer out of line with the striker. Therefore, the gun cannot be fired out of battery by pulling the trigger. A piece of debris is another matter altogether.

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Freedom isn't free.

The photo "seems" to show an OOB firing, but not so. I agree with Rastoff, the Shield does not fire until the barrel is 98% locked. I say 98% as the trigger pull will cause the sear to release the striker when the slide is about 1/32 to 1/16 inch rear of full lockup, but the back of the casing is still contacting the breech face. The barrel is not fully locked upwards, but is very close to being fully locked upwards, about 1/16 inch from fully locked. Since the back of the cartridge is up against the breech face, then the cartridge is fully chambered. The case is still fully supported, and the barrel is 98% fully raised and partially locked in place by the barrel tabs into the slide, to prevent any side to side movement. If the cartridge was not fully chambered and sticking out some, the barrel would not rise high enough and would stop well short of lock up. This stopping short of lock up would stop the forward slide movement, also well short of where the trigger pull would release the striker.

This particular casing blowout most likely happened in the opening where the feed ramp cuts into the chamber. Remember as the gun fires, the recoil is almost immediate. The extractor is pulling the case out and the pressure is still within the casing and barrel. We can speculate that the cartridge case wall was weak and or the cartridge was likely over charged with powder. This would cause the blowout to occur further up on the cartridge, as the extractor was pulling the casing out and there was still high pressure exerted against the weak wall of the casing.

To me an OOB firing is when the cartridge is not fully seated into the chamber, allowing the edges of the case to be partially unsupported and allowing the breech face to be partially open.

Bob

I stopped dealing with Freedom a long time ago. Due to having gotten 500rds of 62gr 5.56 (green tip). And having tons of issues through 3 different rifles. I actually gave way the last 200 or so rounds because I was just fed up with the ****. Never again have I dealt with them nor do i ever plan on it.

I will stick to the usual wal-mart ammo. As i've never had problems with it through any of my weapons.

OP, if you put a case in the gun and tried to fire it "OOB" you would see that you would get a very light strike off center on the primer. It would in fact be so light that it won't set off the primer. My experience is with the M&P FS and not the Shield however.

I did not know the Shield left so much of the case exposed. The FS doesn't leave nearly as much out in the open:

Over the last year all I shoot in my S&W M&P 9C and S&W M&P CORE is Freedom Munitions 9mm reloads. Well over 2000 rounds. Just received 1000 more rounds last week. Just a satisfied customer.