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TX: Twelve-year-old Boy Ignites .22 Cartridge with Cigarette Lighter
Gun Watch ^ | 19 June, 2014 | Dean Weingarten

Posted on 06/20/2014 4:39:11 AM PDT by marktwain


In the story out of Texas, the boy's mother drives him to the hospital.  The deputy interviewing the young man found out how he was injured.  From thevindicator.com:

Deputy Hobson stated that upon interviewing the young man as to how he got injured from the bullet, the young boy told Dep. Hobson that he had held a cigarette lighter under a .22 caliber bullet to see what would happen. The bullet exploded sending bullet fragments through his left middle finger and lodging in the left eye lid.
There are a couple of lessons here.   The first is not to try to set off cartridges outside of a firearm in close proximity to your flesh.   A .22 does not have a lot of gunpowder in it, but it is enough to cause minor injuries if it is in contact with flesh when it goes off.  If you are more than five feet away from it when it happens, presuming that it is not contained in the chamber of a firearm, your risk is minimal.   Surprisingly, the tiny .22 rimfire seems to entail a bit more risk than centerfire cartridges.   The case is very thin and light, and is more likely to rupture or develop enough velocity to be dangerous. 

While we do not know exactly what happened, a .22 case and bullet, being made of metal, transmit heat very effectively.  I suspect that the boy was using something to hold the cartridge to avoid being burned.  Even a pair of pliers or a a few wraps of tape might have been enough to provide some support for the case and make the resulting ignition more dangerous.  I have heard of people who put the .22 cartridge in a vice and hit the base with a hammer.  That is a dangerous procedure.

In another article on fires and ammunition, a source on an Internet forum reported that he had experience of a fragment that barely punctured the skin at a range of less than five feet from a .22 rimfire case that was ignited in a fire.  He concluded that any other cases were too sturdy to fragment.  Here is a Link to the SAAMI paper, "Facts About Sporting Ammunition Fires".

40 or more years ago a fellow told me he touched a match to some homemade gunpowder to see if it would go off.   He lost his eyebrows and burned his hand a bit, but suffered no permanent injury.    Young males are adventurous, curious, and willing to take risks.   We can guide them and attempt to channel that energy; but suppressing it can result in more harm than good.  An amusing web site could result from the theme: Silly risks I took as a boy/young man.

As the "fragment" in question (almost certainly from the case and not the bullet) lodged in the boy's eyelid, it seems likely that the eye itself is not at risk.

Eyes are the most vulnerable parts of the body to these sorts of projectiles, which is why wearing safety/shooting glasses of some kind has become a regular part of most shooters' gear.  

©2014 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included.
Link to Gun Watch


TOPICS: Education; Science; Society
KEYWORDS: 22; banglist; injury; tx
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In my experience, the smartest boys usually found ways to mess with explosives of some kind. The really smart and/or lucky ones kept all their fingers and eyes intact.
1 posted on 06/20/2014 4:39:11 AM PDT by marktwain
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To: marktwain

Primers in a vise was one of my childhood favorites.


2 posted on 06/20/2014 4:42:11 AM PDT by cripplecreek (Remember the River Raisin.)
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To: marktwain

Hey, it’s just a brass firecracker, right?


3 posted on 06/20/2014 4:44:14 AM PDT by The_Victor (If all I want is a warm feeling, I should just wet my pants.)
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To: marktwain

Hold muh juice box and watch this?


4 posted on 06/20/2014 4:44:23 AM PDT by Wolfie
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To: marktwain
And the incident wasn't even preceded by the phrase “Hold my beer!”.
5 posted on 06/20/2014 4:44:51 AM PDT by reg45 (Barack 0bama: Implementing class warfare by having no class.)
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To: marktwain

That sounds almost as stupid as a few things I did as a kid.


6 posted on 06/20/2014 4:45:17 AM PDT by Telepathic Intruder (The only thing the Left has learned from the failures of socialism is not to call it that)
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To: marktwain

A pretty dumb thing to do. A smart kid would have found a way to not hold the round in his hand while he torched it.

That said, kids do dumb stuff. I remember when my son was about 5 or 6. We heard him screaming and crying in the kitchen and holding his thumb and forefinger. Imprinted on each digit was the outline of the head of a bobby pin burned into the skin. He had spread the ends and poked it in a kitchen island electrical outlet that just happened to be right at his chest level. As he stood there crying I said, “I bet you won’t do that again, will you.” He stood there sobbing and shaking his head “no”.

Years later I asked him what in the heck possessed him to do that. He said he saw something in a Science Fiction movie that he wanted to recreate. It was a mad scientist’s “Jacob’s Ladder”.........well, he got what he went for, but it was just too fast for him to see it.


7 posted on 06/20/2014 4:46:27 AM PDT by Gaffer
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To: marktwain

Will the mother now sue the store stating that their was no signage warning not to put a flame source under a cartridge?


8 posted on 06/20/2014 4:48:53 AM PDT by Truth29
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To: marktwain

The real question here is where did he find enough .22lr to waste any?

Actually it’s sort of a miracle that I have all my body parts in working order. Speaking of my childhood, it’s also sort of astounding what 6” of copper pipe, black powder, lamp cord and pencil lead can do in response to a 9v battery


9 posted on 06/20/2014 4:53:23 AM PDT by muir_redwoods (When I first read it, " Atlas Shrugged" was fiction)
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To: Gaffer

As long as it doesn’t kill or severely injure them experience is a great teacher.


10 posted on 06/20/2014 4:53:45 AM PDT by riverrunner
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To: The_Victor
re: Hey, it’s just a brass firecracker, right?

You would be surprised at how little respect the 22 cartridge gets. It may not have much powder or a heavy bullet, but that lil sucker will kick that little bullet out at super sonic speeds for a mile or more.

11 posted on 06/20/2014 4:56:25 AM PDT by Tupelo (I feel more like Philip Nolan every day)
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To: cripplecreek
The Myth Busters have done some really cool experiments with ammunition and firearms.

In one they put various calibers of ammunition in a barrel and set it on fire, showing that the bullets don't go whizzing off as if they were shot from a gun.

In another one they shot various firearms into a pool showing how far the rounds would typically penetrate into the water.....

12 posted on 06/20/2014 5:04:37 AM PDT by Hot Tabasco (By now, everyone should know that you shoot a zombie in the head. Don't try to reason with them...)
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To: Tupelo

.22LR can certainly be deadly when fired from the barrel of a gun. But outside of a gun barrel there is insufficient pressure to send the projectile at anything close to supersonic speed. Thus, the “brass firecracker” comments.


13 posted on 06/20/2014 5:05:18 AM PDT by Above My Pay Grade (The people have the right to tell government what guns it may possess, not the other way around.)
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To: marktwain

We used to take cases apart and collect a bunch of powder, to light.

Then we tried this with model rocket engines.

WOW!


14 posted on 06/20/2014 5:11:30 AM PDT by lacrew (Mr. Soetoro, we regret to inform you that your race card is over the credit limit.)
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To: marktwain

When I was a kid there was always plenty of 22 ammo around. I used to throw them on the pavement and make them go off, and sometimes I’d put them in the woodstove.

Crazy as could be, but no one ever got hurt.


15 posted on 06/20/2014 5:13:45 AM PDT by weezel
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To: Gaffer
I was just a little older when I made a ring out of very small linked chain.

Somehow, that combined with the following created a desire to bring them both together.

The width of my finger and chain-ring nicely bridged across those two terminals.

I wore the burn marks from that immediately heated chain for a long time. You could clearly see each individual link where it was touching my skin.

Seemed a good idea at the time. I don't know why. Maybe I thought it would be Green Lantern type of ring afterwards.

16 posted on 06/20/2014 5:15:34 AM PDT by thackney (life is fragile, handle with prayer)
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To: lacrew

we did the model rocket thing. Crushed a few of them up and sparked it off. One kid got too close and lost his eyebrows and threw his hairline back a few inches. Wonder if it ever grew back?


17 posted on 06/20/2014 5:15:54 AM PDT by Yorlik803 ( Church/Caboose in 2016)
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To: lacrew

Then we tried this with model rocket engines.

WOW!

...and?


18 posted on 06/20/2014 5:22:56 AM PDT by wita
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To: marktwain

And don’t smash blanks with rocks!


19 posted on 06/20/2014 5:28:27 AM PDT by Jack Hydrazine (Pubbies = national collectivists; Dems = international collectivists; We need a second party!)
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To: marktwain

I don’t get why was the police involved at all?

A kid was playing with a bullet like he shouldn’t have been doing. It went off. He got some shrapnel.

Whats it the police’s business?


20 posted on 06/20/2014 5:29:56 AM PDT by envisio (Its on like Donkey Kong!)
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