Click it.
Posted on 08/10/2011 6:39:57 PM PDT by Tennessee Nana
MURFREESBORO, Tenn. - A 13-year-old boy, responding to a traditional start-of-school assignment, says he spent his summer making explosive devices.
The Rutherford County Sheriff's Office said in a news release Wednesday the Smyrna boy was charged with manufacturing explosive devices, a felony.
Investigators said he had told his eighth-grade classmates, during the assignment at school, what he had done.
Deputies did not disclose the precise explosive devices.
The teacher alerted authorities who obtained consent from the boy's mother to search the family home. The devices were removed.
A Juvenile Court hearing for the boy is pending.
I once made a bomb with white gas and it went off with a mushroom fireball 75 feet high. Loads of fun.
Back in the seventies, I broke open a bottle rocket and sprinkled all the goodie into a half filled ashtray, then waited for my dad to come by and crush out his cigarette. The ashtray fizzled a bit then let loose a mighty “PHWOOMP!!!”. Dad was pissed for a moment, then he started laughing as hard as i was. He even took a couple of bottle rockets to work with him the next day.
Once upon a time, making a boom was a sort of right of passage, certainly not against the law like it is now.
Older Britannica’s give very good directions for several types of H.E.
If my kids did what I, and my father before me, did...
But we are all so much safer in 2011 than 1980, don’t you know.
We used to use metal tennis ball cans, one for a gas chamber and one with a ball in it. Loads of fun.
When I was a kid we would mix gasoline and powdered chlorine. Couldn’t make it blow up, but that stuff burned. I think we were eleven or twelve. We weren’t stupid enough to tell a adult what we were doing.
When did this become NEWS?
Yes, but you didn’t plan on using that knowledge to take out as many innocent U.S. Citizens as you could.
Good place for it...
Worked good with no projectiles. (really loud)
Then I sat a big super ball on it and the pipe split.
I also decided to throw a cherry bomb in the chicken pen.
(Chicken always go peck at whatever you throw in in and fight for it.) I had chicken soup for a month. (Just me, not the whole family) Dad was pissed!
I live diagonally from where this took place, and I want to tell you all what really happened. The child in question is 13. The child in question is incredibly intelligent, gentle, kind and caring, always quick to help and very respectful (Personal note: I constantly find myself impressed by the child’s manners and attitude). The police came to the address in question, and immediately started arguing over “whose jurisdiction” is was. There was no bomb. This child is very mechanically inclined and likes to watch MacGuyver. (Personal note: does anybody, at 13 years old, NOT get into mischief?!). This child’s mother and grandmother are extremely upset at the way this was handled, as well as the fact that it was handled at all. What they found was collection of pvc pipes that this child had engineered to make bottle rockets shoot higher for FOURTH OF JULY. Any other “weapons,” or “explosive concerns” were from left over from 4th of July or things like a bat made of pvc pipe. The facts are that this child is a well disciplined, upstanding young member of our society, the teacher overreacted, and the situation spun out of control. Personal Note: We keep reacting in such a way, and we won’t have to worry about who is a terrorist anymore, we will just live the rest of our lives in fear. What ever happened to believing in parents doing the right thing without authority figures needing to be called? This child is :gasp: not Muslim! In fact, this child is a God-fearing Christian. Stop fear mongering and use your brain. Also, I notice that people like to make a big deal about the Mosque in M’boro, but nobody says a damn thing about the Mesdzid in Smyrna. Guess what...SAME THING. Don’t be ignorant. learn the facts before slandering a child’s name.
I don’t think kids growing up today have anywhere near such opportunities for fun!!
Moosaki! I have yet to meet a serious male chemistry student who did not (totally without outside "coaching") "mess around with" explosives during his teen years. It almost seems to be a genetic prerequisite for interest in the discipline of chemistry.
Many of the things my Jr. High/High School colleagues and I cobbled up now scare the daylights out of me -- and the strong probability that we could have been "busted" like this kid is WAY down on the threat list!
It is not a "good thing" for example, to figure out how to make nitroglycerine -- and then learn that the process -- especially when done without adequate cooling -- is extremely hazardous! (Not to mention the quandary of WTH one then does to get rid of a pint or so of the wildly unstable stuff...) :-(
This kids' life may have just been saved -- but making a criminal of him for something boys have done for centuries is asinine!!!
“This days I dream of building a trebuchet for chucking big rocks out into the center of the lake.”
I helped my Son build one for physics class. His fired 1 inch lead balls. Problem was, sometimes they would launch the opposite direction.
Good grief what can a person say? A kid pieces together pipes for rockets. Or for that matter a kid says gee I wish the school would burn down etc. KIDS SAY THESE THINGS! It has been only in the past decade kids saying what kids say and kids doing what kids do has created such mass hysteria.
I'm a life long Tennessean. The county next too mine fireworks possession and purchases are legal including some sizable rockets. In my county the deputies do not waste their efforts on chasing down fireworks offenders unless they are actually endangering someone such as shooting them at passing cars etc.
My dad in his 80's now tells me about as a kid in Knoxville they would take spent .22 rounds, place a match head in them and crimp the end off then hit it with a hammer. The local rail road yards back then also yielded some good fun magnesium flares.
Many Tennessee counties have a serious Meth Lab problem and resources are being wasted going after kids being kids? There was only one very dangerous stunt I remember in high school one kid did and it was very foolish and could have killed us. One student not so smart turned on all the gas valves on the science classes while during lunch I think. {about 4 rooms IIRC. Yea now that is what I would call a serious behavioral problem and the one I'm talking about had a long record of such. IIRC he was expelled for the school year.
My son and a friend converted a 1022 to full, open bolt, automatic fire. I have to buy a trigger and bolt sytstem to change it beack to legal. Thye ttok a single shot 12 gage and cut the barrel off to fifteen inches, too. I had to have a compensator welded to the barrel to save that one from the bone yard. Boy ... will be boys.
Being close to the site, does the Mesdzid in Smyrna send out a loudspeaker call to prayer?
Gunsmithing is my current hobby. I remain strictly within the law. There is enough complexity in modern and antique weapons without confusing the issues on ‘banned’ items and systems.
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