🚀 go-pugleaf

William Christie wrote:

>Smartass.  :-)

Sorry, but I couldn't resist.  :-)

>What I mean is that for it to be truly dangerous not only does
>it have be loaded and then the trigger pulled
>_but_someone_has_to_be_in_the_bullet's_ _trajectory_.  I'm
>not implying that a firearm going off by itself is
>neccessarily safe, _however_ you need to satisfy all these
>criteria for it to injure someone.  An explosive on the other
>hand has an indiscriminate blast radius and at the least is as stable as
>ammunition if not even worse.

True, the blast is omnidirectional, but on the other hand
accidental discharge of a weapon can injure/kill at longer ranges
than any accidental explosion we're ever likely to see.
 
>Target was used in the general sense.  By the by, I'm appalled at
>whoever was the Range Officer or was teaching that guy firearm
>safety.

So was I. After my heart rate slowed and I found the guy, I had
another little conversation with him.

>The relative risk of firearms is such that we don't
>insist on a zero tolerance.  An explosive has a much higher risk
>factor and more serious consequences (anyone near the detonation
>blown to little bits rather than possibly one person who happened to
>be in the bullet's path with a hole in them (possibly non fatal)).

See above. Actually, most explosives are pretty stable; it's
usually detonators that are tricky, if anything is. The really
dangerous stuff is _improvised_ explosive and firing systems, so
to be fair we should compare those to improvised firearms, which
can be *extremely* dangerous. (BTW, I'm perfectly happy to see
restrictions on commercial explosives, as I am on some commercial
firearms. The improvised stuff should definitely stay illegal,
although I suppose that there's poetic justice in the fact that
so many people kill themselves fooling around with improvised
weapons.)

Scott MacEachern