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Exploding Pellets - Squirrels - YT

If I remember correctly, John Hinkley used explosive 22 LR rounds when he shot President Reagan. Luckily, the round that hit the president didn't explode. They were sold legally back then. I'm not sure about now.
Hinkley just gouged out some 22 lr hollow points and stuffed them with black powder. They did not have the effect he was looking for. He was then and will continue to be an idiot. If the black powder ignited at all it would have been from the heat of the round passing through the barrel.
 
In Nam, I used 1 r=tracer round 3 rounds from the bottom of every magazine as an early warning I was about to go empty. Since the odds of an actual firefight are slim. I personally have no use for them, but if I ever got a CC permit, next to impossible in California, I'd go back to the next to the last round in the mag.
Did the same thing-only used as a notification the mag was empty, not to see where the bullets hit.
Some stripper clips came 1 in 5 with tracers. I always took tracers out of clips (marked where you were shooting from). loaded all my Mags myself. The newer Tracers don't light off until 50-100 yrds go by RPMs of the bullet.
We carry here and can't imagine using more than one pistol mag, but carry a SBR in the truck with plenty.
You should see some of the fire fights Police get into here in ATL. Criminals are outgunning the PD.
Semper Fi!
 
I wonder if you could use Tannerite to make your own?
I'm thinking it would never make it out the tube and would probably be an ugly bang with the shooter entirely too close, and it would make me nervous with the ATF. A friend shot a big can, (not sure how much, guessing a lot) and he lives in rural OK. Within an hour OSBI, ATF and other noteworthy agencies was at his house wanting to know what just happened. No one got in trouble, but I haven't heard of him doing it again either.
 
I'm thinking it would never make it out the tube and would probably be an ugly bang with the shooter entirely too close, and it would make me nervous with the ATF. A friend shot a big can, (not sure how much, guessing a lot) and he lives in rural OK. Within an hour OSBI, ATF and other noteworthy agencies was at his house wanting to know what just happened. No one got in trouble, but I haven't heard of him doing it again either.
 
Gentlemen,
I don't want to spoil the fun of speculation, and so on, but I'm going to anyway.

I understand the excitement to see a tracer round showing the travel etc, the risk of starting a fire isn't worth the momentary thrill.
While I worked at two public ranges, other than pointing a weapon at someone firing off a tracer round was a quick way to be escorted off the property. Multiple offences lead to being banned from the range. Yep, we did have a couple of serial offenders
No manner of rules, signs, verbal admonishments - especially during drought conditions, there was always someone who thought they knew better & fired off as many as they felt they could get away with.
We (range employees) had to put out several grass fires with one that we couldn't contain requiring a call to the VFD.

Bottom line, be very careful, and mindful of fire risk with tracer rounds.

I would hate to hear of a range being shut down, or worse someone hurt from the fire started from a tracer that got out of control.
 
If I remember correctly, John Hinkley used explosive 22 LR rounds when he shot President Reagan. Luckily, the round that hit the president didn't explode. They were sold legally back then. I'm not sure about now.
Yes, I believe they were called "Velet exploding bullets". They were available for a while in different handgun and possibly rifle calibers. That company even made "Mercury core" handgun bullets, filled with mercury-supposedly to cause fatal mercury poisoning in the event the "victim" wasn't killed outright by the gunshot.
 
Ah, hot tracers and mercury, those were the good old days!
There is a problem with putting mercury into a lead bullet in that over time, the mercury crystallizes the lead and it just sort of turns to mush. I've tried a bunch of other things, including putting primers - or priming compound - into hollow points. Sometimes they go off and sometimes they don't but they never create additional damage so basically are a waste of time! And labor! Plus, if you think about it, they are kind of working against the bullet!

Tracers are another can of worms, unless you can get the cold tracers or the stick on reflectors for reloaders. I've never used either one so can't really comment on them. Real military tracers are another matter.

Me and a few other similarly crazy friends went out on a an evening trek to an old abondened Vega left out in the desert. There were 5 of us, everyone had AR's or M-16's except my one buddy with an FAL. So we all loaded up with our stash of tracers and had a mad minute on the Vega. One of my rounds lit up after hitting the car but bounced way up high and dropped over the rim of a small cliff. I went out and took a look but all was well.

However, my FAL buddy had set his gas port on grenade launch and only got one round off, so when we did another mag dump on the car, he was the only one shooting tracers. His very last round ricocheted around inside the car a couple of times then popped straight up out of the roof about 50 feet up and landed just a few yards beyond the Vega. After we all picked ourselves up from rolling around on the ground laughing, I looked to where the tracer had landed and saw flames. I yelled "Fire!" and we all ran towards the fire. But by the time we had covered the 50 yards to the fire, the flamers were already head high and roaring! That Tucson desert is like a match head! We all started stomping the several little fires that had magically sprung up around the dried up little tree. But we were losing and things were rapidly getting out of our control! That's when I remembered the tarp in back of my pickup. I ran and got it and we used it to good effect to beat the flames down and within 4 or 5 minutes had nothing but a few glowing embers and 5 very scared and out of breath guys standing around looking at each other. Right there we all swore off tracers forever!

I do have 3 tracers loaded into the bottom of 4 of my AR mags I keep for any bad times, just in case. But just to play around with them? Not me, boyo! Never again!
Cheers,
crkckr
P.S. it had been less than a year since a lone hunter got lost on Mt Lemon.just out side of Tucson and started a signal fire that quickley got out of control and burned several hundred acres. Fortunately no on one hurt but he was tried and convicted (it was a "no fires" month) and he was presented with a 3.5 million dollar bill from the Forest Service! I never heard what all else happened to him but I'm pretty sure he didn't have the cash to pay the bill! Scary stuff.
 
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