The modern gun blowups I am aware of were mostly metallurgical failures or design defects which could have been avoided had the manufacturer done its due-diligence on inspection, design, testing and failure analysis. S&W Scandium revolver failures and Glock ka-booms are perfect examples.
A common cause of burst barrels is improper cropping of the billets in the steel mill, such that a shrinkage cavity may remain in the center of the billet, which is then elongated when the steel is rolled into bars at the mill. That is the reason when I was at Ruger our metallurgist witnessed the cropping of billets at the mill, and discarded the 1-top and 2-top cuts for remelting, the ends of bars cut off, polished for metallalography, the cut-offs inspected with dye penetrant, barrels, frames and cylinders magnetic particle inspected using the wet method with continuous circular magnetization after proofing.
In the 1980s a well-known, famous name manufacturer skimped on revolver proofing on a government contract, firing only one proof load and regular service loads in the other five charge holes, until they were caught...
When you buy the low-priced spread corners get cut and you get what you pay for.