Nimrod Attempts To Collect Darwin Award Firing A .50 BMG Cartridge From a Pipe Gun

By Bob Owens | 11:34 AM | July 02, 2015

“Professional Youtuber” (his words, not mine) Royal Nonesuch though that it would be fun to attempt to fire .50 BMG cartridges from his crudely-made slam-fire shotgun.

The crude weapon is fired by snatching a piece of string to force the piece of pipe holding the cartridge back against a fixed firing pin.

He’s incredibly fortunate that the pipe contained the energy of the round going off with detonating like a hand grenade. Crude homemade firearms like this can and will detonate because the pipe sections used as barrels are not made to handle the tremendous pressures generated when a round fires.

Don’t EVER be this guy, folks, and don’t hang around with cocky amateurs like this. It’s a great way to wind up seriously injured… or worse.

Bob Owens is the Editor of BearingArms.com. Bob is a graduate of roughly 400 hours of professional firearms training classes, including square range and force-on force work with handguns and carbines. He is a past volunteer instructor with Project Appleseed. He most recently received his Vehicle Close Quarters Combat Instructor certification from Centrifuge Training, and is the author of the short e-book, So You Want to Own a Gun. He can be found on Twitter at bob_owens.