Perhaps the deadest potato I've run into.
 

I headed back to my parents place over the weekend for a break, I came bearing an ok Bushell scope as a gift for my dad. He has an old BRNO mauser-type with no scope, and he had often mentioned he wished it had one. So, since he bailed me out with a bit of cash around Christmas, I bought him a scope.

The problem was that once we had it partly mounted, we realized that it was going to prevent us from working the action. Dad then recalls why he hadn't put a scope on it yet, because of the large lever on the bolt.

"Why don't we try it on that old mossberg?". The old mossberg is damn near antique, a semi-auto .22 lr with a custom 15 round tube stock feed. I'd never fired it, as long as I can remember it has been wrapped up in the corner of cabinet. So I break it down, clean it up, grease it up, and mount the scope. Take a bag of old potatoes out and sight it in, a few rounds at a time. Pretty soon it's dead accurate at 75 feet and I have great groupings at 100.

Well, since it is a little bit of a pain to load, we decide to go ahead and load up 15 rounds, before we had been taking it easy. Really carefully firing, seeing where we hit, then firing again. Now that it was playtime, Dad delivered 15 shots as quick as he could pull the trigger. Then it was my turn, loaded up again, sighted in.

And as soon as I sqeezed off the first round, CRACKWHHZZAANANANANANAG. I had no idea how fast it would go, in a surprising burst of full auto. Vaporized the potato that was in the crosshairs. Turns out that sear, which I thought looked a little beat up, is worn out.

That old Mossberg has since been retired.

Here is a good sight for parts/info on Mossbergs if you decide to fix it:
http://www.havlinsales.com/right.htm

Runaway full-auto...

ouch.

Well... glad you are safe, and no one was hurt.

But I bet that was a site to see ;)

And I thouhgt it was bad when my paintball gun did that. I'm glad to hear that the only damage was to the potato.

I got shot 3 times in the CROTCH from a runaway semi auto paintball gun that was set on the ground (while loaded and off safty) it had a faulty trigger.... it sucked.

Cool story, dangerous even more though.

Not meaning to derail the thread, but this is why the barrel plug was invented.


edit: oh, and the safety was off :rolleyes: