We hand made rocket motors and stuff.
Potato guns were banned after two things happened.
One, I used one of my mom's precious horded cans of hairspray. The second was we (ok, I) shot a chicken. I did not mean to shoot the chicken. I was actually going to shoot the parrot. Which was very wrong of me. But that parrot would chase me to bite me. And it got annoying. So I was aiming at the parrot. When my brother said, "look! Chicken! Bet you can't hit it."
You can guess the rest.
Poor chicken.