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This was no accident. With the BFD in place, the M-4 (m-16) in the hands of that Sgt would have blown up in his face. They are built that way. I have seen what happens to an M-16 that had a live round up the spout with a BFD installed. Trashed the weapon and put the trooper in the hospital for a week (and out of the Army) There is no mention of a BFD in the report, but one can assume that they would be in use during a "blank-only" operation. At the very least this was gross negligence and tops the scale at premeditated murder.
I, as a regular habit, carried live rounds quite often (against regs!) while training, as did many of my buddies. We were VERY careful to seperate the live mags from any traing ammo(blanks) that we may have had. The best method was to use a 20 round mag for live ammo VS a 30 round for blanks. (we also taped the tops of the 20 round mags) I'm not sure why we did this (seemed like a good idea at the time) but as long as there was no trouble, it was not stopped by our NCOs, who were also packing live ammo. There may also be a vast gulf between the operational attitude that we had as scouts vs the average line infantry Marine of today. Whatever the reason behind the death of that young Marine, the morale of that unit will be trashed, the respect that the troops had for their NCOs will be eroded and the combat readiness of the unit will be reduced.