Are KaBooms more likely with polygonal rifled barrels?

[Tamara]

I remain skeptical about unsupported chambers being the sole cause of the phenomenon. Back some twelve years and two computers ago, I posted pics on TFL in a thread on the topic comparing the barrels of a randomly-selected (because I randomly bought them off store shelves) G23, Beretta 96, and P-226 .40, and the G23 had neither the most exposed brass nor the sloppiest chamber dimensions of the three. I may still have the jpeg, but it'd be on the Celeron tower in the attic.

I'll buy a case failure blowing the mag out of the well, launching the mag release and maybe the extractor, and cracking the frame, but I won't buy "unsupported chamber" as the cause of barrel hoods and the tops of slides bent open and peeled back like bananas. That's a combination of serious overpressure and something wrong with the material of the chamber area itself, such as maybe the thin chamber walls getting completely through-hardened in the case-harde... sorry, "Tenifer®" process.

[ToddG]

I think my name is still attached to Dean Speir's "kB! FAQ" and I still certainly believe that Glocks of that era, at least, had a greater propensity for firing out of battery than competing products. Combined with less support in the chamber area and combined with brass that had been weakened by expanding into that unsupported area combined with brass that had been loaded and reloaded multiple times... it's not surprising the guns got a rep for being more grenade-ish than the SIGs, Smiths, and Berettas it was compared to in the 90's.

[Chuck Haggard]

The first semi auto pistol I saw blown up was a 1911, the next an HK USP .40, it happens.