How NOT to hold a revolver!

A  St. Louis, Missouri guy on my AR-15 forum had a bad  accident with his S&W 460XVR Magnum yesterday. He was shooting with a two  handed hold and got his left thumb up near the lower front of the cylinder.  The normal (powerful) gasses blowing out at the barrel/cylinder gap ripped the  top of his left thumb off. I've added some of his posts & some  pics.

 

 
 

 

 

 S&W 460XVR  Magnum


 


460XVR blew  my thumb off today!  


 
 

No joke, about 1/2 of my left  thumb is gone ... what's left is a friggin mess.

It's pretty hard to  type, and I'm only posting because you never know, it might save somebody else  a thumb. I was using a 2-handed grip, fired off a Cor-Bon DPX .460  and the blast came violently out the side of the  gun.


At first my thumb was so  covered in blood that I couldn't see how bad it was ... and I was full of  adrenaline and felt no pain. And honestly it looked really bad, my whole hand  was covered in blood and it was kinda  gushing.



 

The blown-off thumb was on my  support hand. I'll re-create the grip tomorrow to see where my thumb was, but  it's not like I didn't already know not to get any body part near the cylinder  gap. And even if I totally screwed up and did, taking my thumb clean off seems  a bit excessive?




Just be careful with those 460's.  That case operates at such high pressure, it's just asking for  trouble.

BTW, I bought my 460 new and had exactly 12 rounds through it.  Info about the gun, it's a full-size 460 with the 8 3/4' barrel and factory  installed compensator. It's one of the Whitetails Unlimited models. Ammo was  200gr Cor-Bon DPX.

The gun only had 12 or 13 rounds of the Cor-Bon  through it, and 10 .45 Long Colt rounds through it. So it was essentially  still brand new.


 
 

 
 

Saw a hand specialist while there  today. Lots of ways to try and save what's left, but first I just have to hope  it doesn't get infected in the next few days ... then surgery early next  week.


 
 

The hand specialist I spent a few  hours with last night said that in gunshot wounds there is always a lot more  damage than is first visible ... same with things like fireworks going off in  your hand. A lot more flesh around the wound is dead, and will rot and fall  off over the next couple days. That's why it's so important to keep clean, and  that's also why they can't do surgery now. If they wrapped new skin over dead  skin it would just puss out, possibly turn gang-green, and they'd have to  start all over again.


 
 

This is an example of how he  was holding his revolver. Wrong, wrong,  wrong!

 
 

This is what's left of his thumb.