SIG SAUER SIG556 - Manual (Page 37)

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3. Firearms may be severely damaged and serious injury to the shooter or to others may result from any condition
causing excessive pressure inside the chamber or barrel during firing. Excessive pressure can be caused by obstructions
in the barrel, propellant powder overloads, the use of incorrect cartridges or defectively assembled cartridges. In addition,
the use of a dirty, corroded, or damaged cartridge can lead to a burst cartridge case and consequent damage to the
firearm and personal injury from the sudden escape of high-pressure propellant gas within the firearm’s mechanism.
4. Immediately stop shooting and check the barrel for a possible obstruction whenever:
• You have difficulty in, or feel unusual resistance in, chambering a cartridge;
• A cartridge misfires (does not go off);
• The mechanism fails to extract a fired cartridge case;
• Unburned grains of propellant powder are discovered spilled in the mechanism;
• A shot sounds weak or abnormal. In such cases it is possible that a bullet is lodged part way down the barrel.
• Firing a subsequent bullet into the obstructed barrel can wreck the firearm and cause serious injury to the shooter
or to bystanders.
5. Bullets can become lodged in the barrel:
• If the cartridge has been improperly loaded without propellant powder, or if the powder fails to ignite (ignition of
the cartridge primer alone will push the bullet out of the cartridge case, but usually does not generate sufficient
energy to expel the bullet completely from the barrel);
• If the bullet is not properly seated in the cartridge case. When such a cartridge is extracted from the chamber
without being fired, the bullet may be left behind in the bore at the point where the rifling begins. Subsequent
chambering of another cartridge may push the first bullet further into the bore.
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