eli5: How does a gun backfire? isn’t there any mechanism in place to prevent it from happening?
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A “backfire” is a car thing, where the spark is mistimed and so the force of combustion pushes the piston in the wrong direction… backwards. Backfire.
A firearm can have a number of failures, but I assume you’re talking about a catastrophic misfire, where the gun basically explodes in the face of the shooter.
A modern rifle cartridge generates pressures around 50,000-60,000 psi in the barrel. The firearm usually cannot handle these pressures for very long, which is convenient because the thing stopping the pressure from venting **is the bullet, and the bullet is moving very quickly to exit the barrel and let the excess pressure escape**. If the bullet cannot leave the barrel, that pressure stays in the barrel and typically does some kind of irreparable harm to the gun.
There’s a lot of pressure in there, and if it can’t find a hole, it’ll make one if any of the materials snap under the pressure.
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