Originally published at: College student arrested for making explosive devices "for entertainment purposes only" | Boing Boing
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If the cop is explicitly saying they’re pyrotechnic devices, not bombs, then why is this guy being charged with two counts of prohibited weapons? Why not charge him with possession of illegal fireworks? That’s a class 1 misdemeanor with about a $1000 fine in Arizona, probably enough punishment to teach him a lesson without needlessly clogging up the criminal justice system and ruining his future employment prospects.
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“Components when put together, they make an explosive; there were quite a few,”
That’s a lot of “entertainment” for one Dude.
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Again, I’m reminded of…
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Student must not be white.
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Well, the hard part in chemistry is to make something NOT explode, so it isn’t telling that much here.
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Was his name Bryce?
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It’s really a miracle that men survive young adulthood at all.
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I did lots of that, back in the day, and never suffered any interference from law enforcement. Of course, as @theodore604 points out, I’m white.
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Oh, there’s been plenty of well-funded work in chemistry devoted to exactly the opposite point of view.
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I guess the story about JPL’s origins in The Martian is true…
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Caution, Jack Parsons is a rabbit hole that’s full of rabbit hole.
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Pyrotechnic device? So fireworks or a smoke bomb?
Obviously not safe in a dorm room- and many, many other places. But not a bomb maker.
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I can say definitively that I would not have gone without criminal charges for things like this if my teens and twenties had been significantly more recent and/or I wasn’t white.
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I don’t think there’s any sort of line between “pyrotechnic device” and “bomb” at least not until you start considering intent.
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It appears that the authorities are able to make that determination.
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Right? I might remember that I might have experimented with both ANFO and Tannerite just to see what happened. I was a science geek in high school when DIY chemistry was still a thing.
Back in the 70’s, my friends and I used the local sand pit as our “proving grounds” for the various explosives, rockets, and the like that we created, often with the help of our high school chemistry teacher, Mr. K. He had just taught us how to make our slow burning gunpowder into a real explosive using a rock tumbler as a ball mill, and I had a goodly amount packed into a metal 35 mm film can with an electronic igniter and about 15’ of wire running out to the battery in my Dad’s car. Imitating miners, we bored a hole about 4 feet into the side of a sand bank and loaded up the bomb. It went off with a low whoosh, but the sand bank came blasting forward at about a billion miles an hour. Unfortunately, I neglected to roll up the windows of the car, and most of it ended up in the front seat. Good times, good times.
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