I think this is a real video, passes the eye test for me.

For those that get a lot of range time, does this happen more often than I’m assuming? All of my time shooting in the woods means dropped rounds land on leaves or grass.

Saw that video the other day...pretty crazy. No I've never seen that happen in real life, and most of my shooting is done in what's essentially a glorified gravel pit with all manner of hard stuff on the ground.

quote:

Originally posted by 92fstech:
Saw that video the other day...pretty crazy. No I've never seen that happen in real life, and most of my shooting is done in what's essentially a glorified gravel pit with all manner of hard stuff on the ground.

Yeah, I saw that and wondered if capping our pistol range with asphalt grinding might not have been such a good idea …

Still, given the typical balance of a round, it seems like landing primer down would be a non-typical situation.

Unlikely, but no reason it’s impossible. Anything that impacts the primer hard enough in the right way can cause a detonation just the same as a firing pin.
I have read of similar incidents in the past.

When a cartridge is ejected it will normally be spinning as it falls so it’s just chance for the primer to strike something on the ground. If it were deliberately dropped so that it doesn’t rotate or change direction before landing, there’s no reason its orientation would change as it falls: disregarding differences in air drag, and as Galileo demonstrated, light objects fall as fast as heavy objects. I.e., the bullet’s weight won’t cause it to strike the ground before the base of the cartridge.

(And yes, I proved the theory to myself just now by dropping a cartridge a few times—but not on rocks. )

Never happen to me but I know people have said it has happened. No reason why something other than a firing pin could set off a primer. The CCI military are harder to ignite but I think others could be if hit right. That is why special ammo is made for lever rifles. The ammo has blunt or soft tips so they do not set off the primers while in the magazine tube.

Anything of the right size with sufficient force in the right spot can set off a primer.

One of the range rules at the police academy where I taught was "No exposed loose rounds or uncovered boxes of ammo at the firing line."

This apparently was prompted by an incident prior to my tenure of someone bringing a partial tray of rounds to the firing line, with the rounds stored primer up in the factory plastic tray insert but without the enclosing box. They set the tray on the ground in front of them, then dropped a magazine on it during a drill, and the corner of the falling magazine impacted a primer and set off one of the rounds in the tray.

Was it an anchor shot?

I remember a discussion here from years ago where a fired case shot in a booth at a range landed on the open box of ammo on the shelf dividing the shooting position from the range and ignited a round.

If I recall correctly, the unfired rounds were in a blue tray, like a reloading tray, rather than a cardboard box, but my memory may be faulty...

So I would say that the video is plausible.

While I didn't SEE it happen, I was presnt when an empty case landed in an open ammo can of loose ammo and set one of them off.