A friend of mine called me the other day and said that his S&W M&P 15 Sport had a failure to fire and failure to extract and the case was still stuck in the chamber.  He said that the primer fell out when he tried to extract the case, but he couldn't get the case out.  He brought me his upper and when I looked at the case when it was still in the chamber, it looked strange, so I took a wooden dowel rod and gently tapped the case out (it was pretty stuck).  My suspicions were confirmed when I examined it closer.  Here is a look for yourself.  By the way, it might be hard to tell from the quality of the pictures, but it is a brass case.

Here is a picture of the full case.


and here is a picture of the case head and primer pocket.


He is going to be contacting WalMart (where he purchased the ammunition) and the manufacturer today.

Hm... I think that brand it made in Italy by Fiocchi.  I have a couple boxes of it, switched to ZQi since they were cheaper.

Hmm. Odd. I'll keep an eye on mine. I just bought 5 boxes at the local wallhell on Friday. Before that, only shot 50 rounds of the stuff, but had no problems in my RRA predator or MI Pistol. I hope I don't run into any problems with it. 18$ for 50 rds brass, I couldn't pass it up. I can say thier 9mm is good to go.

(First post on here, but lurked for a long time.)

Welcome to ar15.com and thanks for joining and posting!

So the flash hole was not formed in the case...   Perfect A.

Sounds like he is very lucky the primer did not go off.

Wow I didnt catch that! Damn cell phone screen is too small. Educate me on what would've happened had the primer ignited.

Jet of gas with nowhere to go....

May have burned though the brass where the flash hole should have been.  Resulting in a weak ingition of the powder...

May have blown around the primer, and back toward the bolt face.  Scorch the bolt face, but probably not enough to act like a full poped primer.

Not thinks that would destroy the gun (more than likely), but would sure get your attention, and make you wonder what hte hell just happened.

Wonder what the odds of a bad primer and a case with no flash hole are. Interesting

I would think VERY VERY low....

Unless the primer pocket was not formed to its full depth, and the primer was either damaged or set off when it was seated.

it looks like it did, hence why the primer fell out



 

Primer did go off.  Nowhere for the pressure to go since the bolt was still locked, so it just shoved the case up into the chamber a wee bit.

Primer has a lot of force, but nothing that a properly built AR cannot shrug off.  No damage was observed.