Glocks and ammunition

Question
I work for an attorney's office in Moundsville, WV, who represents a law enforecment officer that was recently injured when a new Glock GL-21SF pistol exploded in his hand causing him injury while it was being test fired during the certification process. The ammunition utilized in the test firing was MFS, Lot #0919, manufactured by Hungarian Ammunition Manufacturing, Inc.,  and was purchased from Cabela抯 in Triadelphia, Ohio County, WV.  We have identified both Fiocchi of America and PW ARM's Inc as being potential distributors of the ammunition.  Are you able to confirm the actual distributor of this ammunition?  Also, we have learned that this has happened on numerous other occasions.  Have you heard of any other Glocks exploding when using this or similar ammunition?  Thanks for your help.
Leslie Chaddock, Legal Assistant  

Answer
Hi Leslie,

I have not heard of this and my questions would be more about the gun.  Was the barrel obstructed, how many rounds were fired through the gun on that day and since the life of gun, maybe have glock do an exam on the gun, and their their experts look at the gun to see if it was modified, after market parts added and to ensure the gun was stock as it came from factory.  Glock may also know something about the ammo and may have some additional information as well.

If Cabela's sold the ammo, they have records on where and when they bought it, purchase orders, payment information and lot number to track back to a specific location and distributor.  A subpoena should get you all that info, which may help for a piggy back subpoena to the supplier/manufacturer.

Glocks, as with most modern firearms, are built to specific specs to handle "hot loads" ( a term of for a bullet that has extra or double the gun powder).  So for a gun to blow up, it has to be an extreme.  So if it is ammo related, the box of ammo could be examined to measure the powder in all the other rounds.  That may produce some rounds with double loads (double powder) which could cause this and would be a manufacturer defect.

So I think you have a few possible causes this:

Ammo
gun modification
gun defect
ammo modification
gun neglect (dirty, obstructed barrel, etc)

Another possible cause of this is a light load.  Sometime a bullet gets NO powder, so when the bullet is fired, the primer has just enough power to push the bullet into the barrel, then when the next round is fired, the barrel is blocked by the bullet and it causes the gun to explode.

Hope this helps,

Rick