While taking a Carbine II course in May with 360 Tactical Training my Daniel Defense (DD) DDM4 MK18 AR15 rifle suffered a catastrophic failure. We were conducting precision shots while in a standing position. For me after holding a rifle and shooting close to 600+ rounds in a six hour day I was holding the magazine & magazine well while taking these shots. I had been shooting Freedom Munition's (FM) 55gr .223 FMJ "Blaster" ammo. I have used this ammo in the past in both my DD MK18 & V9LW with zero issues. Sadly the last shot I took that Saturday with my MK18 was catastrophic. Heard a loud bang, felt something different in the rifle and my left hand, looked at the rifle and the magazine missing. The instructor called a "cease fire." The instructor made sure myself and the other students were safe and not injured and we proceeded to examine the rifle.
As you can see the bolt carrier group took most of the damage but sadly the upper and lower both show stress marks and bowed out. The BCG was stuck in the upper and we could not get it out. We made the weapon safe by removing the upper and lower.
I first contacted Spring Guns & Ammo since I purchased both my rifle and gun trust through them. Their suggestion was before any more "gun smithing" is completed to contact FM & DD. I contacted both immediately.
Caroline from Daniel Defense's Warranty Department wanted the rifle so their engineers could go through it and find the cause of failure. She emailed pre-paid UPS labels for both the rifle and the magazine (PMAG) with the left over ammo in the magazine. I boxed them up and shipped them to her. Caroline was very helpful and kept me up-to-date on the status.
FM also wanted a gun smith to examine the rifle and get a full report of the cause. I informed FM that DD wanted the rifle and they agreed to have DD examined it. FM also emailed me a pre-paid shipping label for the left over ammo I had purchased and I received a full reimbursement.
This Tuesday afternoon (July 7th) I received a call from Caroline at DD and got the full run down on the cause of failure. Due to legal issues can't share all the info but will say this. The rifle performed as designed on protecting the shooter in case of failure. The cause of failure is believe to be from over-powdering in the round. DD is now in direct contact with FM with all their information to pass on so an event like this doesn't happen again.
Now as to why I buy Daniel Defense rifles... First I want to say there are a lot of great companies that build very quality rifles. I don't want this to turn into a DD versus XYZ company posting. But it does come down to customer service. And I can't deny that Daniel Defense has some of the best, if not the best, customer service, not just in the firearms community, but available. Caroline explained my situation to Marty Daniel and Mr. Daniel has chosen to replace my MK18 with a new MK18 at no cost to me. She explained that Mr. Daniel felt bad that a hard working person spent the money, and time waiting for a NFA stamp, and lost his rifle. That is a man that still has his feet in the blue-collar man's shoes. Now I will have to reapply for another NFA Stamp and have the wait, but I will have a MK18 staying in my firearms collection. And just so everyone knows how confident I am on DD rifles... I purchased a DDM4 V11LW while still waiting to hear back on my MK18 from DD.
Continuing on... I don't want people to take away a negative persona of Freedom Munitions. While I'm still waiting to hear back from FM after hearing from DD, I don't feel that FM has a poor product. Actually I feel they have a quality product. So much so that on day two of the course I was using my DDM4 V9LW with their ammo. And had zero issues.
Ladies and gents, accidents happen. I just so happened to find that one in one million round that day. I'm happy that I, nor my fellow shooters, were hurt or injured. I'm happy that there are businesses that stand behind their product(s). And I will happily continue to shoot. /RK