That seems like the safest/best practice solution. But mortaring is operator as fuck, especially when you inadvertently send a m855 airborne.
I have never in my life seen a ND/round go off from a properly executed mortar.
Now, if you don't know what you're doing and mortar it halfassed and then let the charging handle go halfway through, I could maybe see a slamfire occuring. But if I remember right, the firing pin can't protrude outside of the boltface until the lugs were rotated in the locked position, so thats even a reach.
Hell, I think you'd have a higher chance of a round going off from a primer strike via the tip of the second round from a doublefeed happening (which is also somewhere around 0%).
Mortaring a FTE/stuck case is actually the literal taught method of clearing this type of malfunction in a semi auto.
@Cutthroatdave since you seem a bit new to this, here's how you go about fixing malfunctions:
- To negate almost all malfunctions, learn to really seat the magazine firmly, let the charging handle go forward on its own and give the forward assist a quick smack after the bolt is forward. I do this everytime I load a mag to where its automatic.
- If you pull the trigger and nothing happens, don't stand around for 5 minutes trying to investigate. Assuming you have a loaded magazine in the gun, and your bolt is forward, all you need to do is TAP the bottom of the magazine firmly (upwards toward the gun), RACK the charging handle back (let it go, dont ride it forward) and pull the trigger to make the gun go BANG. This will fix 90% of your failures one way or another and you won't need to stand there and try and diagnose the problem; just fucking fix it.
- If you went to TRB and the charging handle is stuck to where you cannot pull it back, mortar the rifle as explained above as this is most likely a FTE/stuck case. Mortar the rifle and you should observe a round flying out. You can also TRB it again afterwards (but dont need to) just to make 1000% sure there's nothing else wrong in the system and/or that you didn't just induce another failure in the process.
- If you went to TRB and and charging handle is halfway stuck going backwards and/or you cant push it all the way forwards, its likely a bolt override failure where a round has wedged itself above the bolt at an angle. The fix here is to pull the charging handle as far back as it'll let you and literally karate chop the charging handle forward. Again, you can (but dont need to) TRB again after the stuck round is gone just incase.
- If you did the TRB action and the bolt comes back but doesn't go all the way forward (and it isn't a bolt override) check for a double feed via the ejection port. It'll be pretty obvious if it is. A TRB will fix it sometimes, but in the cases where it doesn't and/or makes it worse, you need to drop the magazine into your weak hand (hold onto it if you can) and lock the bolt to the rear. The rounds SHOULD fall out with a firm shake, or if lodged in, remove them with your strong side fingers via a brushing motion (dont try to grab them, just knock them out and get back to work). Reinsert the magazine and proceed just like you're loading a new mag.
This is how you fix the standard, non catastrophic/non armory level malfunctions on an AR.
We learned to always keep the gun on the shoulder and when the gun stopped shooting to simply rotate it slightly inward to where you could look down and see if the bolt was locked back. If so, this was an 'all clear' that the gun was empty and didn't stop firing due to a malfunction. Otherwise, you'd see an issue to where either the bolt was forward (failure to feed), had a stovepipe, bolt override, double feed or the bolt wasn't seated and/or stuck in a position other than to the rear. Then you'd proceed with either a reload, or TRB and then a secondary failure procedure as explained above. When practiced, I can do this as fast/faster than people who just drop a mag (sometimes with ammo in it) and reload because the gun stopped shooting to only find the malfunction when they went to try and shoot again with a new loaded mag.
The two failures that can occur ontop of these which can keep your gun down that are most common and can be fixed quickly in the field are a broken firing pin (common) and a seperated case. Learn how to remove and quickly disassemble your bolt and have 2 spare firing pins on you (I have mine with small essential spare items in a bag inside of my carrier). Secondly, have a broken case extractor for the correct caliber in that bag as well as if the rear of the case sheers off, you simply put the removal tool on the bolt face and it'll pull the case out.
