YouTube weapons expert left with horror injuries after gun exploded in his face

YouTuber Scott DeShields Jr badly injured when Serbu RN 50 rifle exploded while filming

Man left with horror injuries after gun exploded in his face (YouTube/KentuckyBallistics)

A popular YouTube weapons expert was left with horror injuries after a gun exploded in his face.

Scott DeShields Jr from the Kentucky Ballistics YouTube channel was badly injured in a “freak accident” when his Serbu RN 50 rifle exploded.

The shocking incident was caught on video and left the YouTuber with a lacerated jugular vein, a hole punctured in his right lung, and his orbital bone broken in three places.

The accident caused him to spend eight days in hospital and he underwent multiple surgeries and received five units of blood.

He says that the gun had been “functioning normally” and the likely cause of the accident was the “extremely rare” and “very old” rounds of 50 BMG SLAP ammunition that had been “acting a little funny.”

“So when I pulled the trigger, the gun exploded almost immediately,” he explained in a video on his YouTube channel, which has 1.73m subscribers.

And he added: “I have vision coming back now and they say my eye should make a full recovery, but in that moment I went completely blind in this eye – like I’d been punched and I went backwards and landed on all fours.”

Mr DeShields, who is a former Kentucky State Trooper, said that he only survived as his father was filming with him when the accident took place, and otherwise would have died from his injuries.