How twisted is the liberal mind it's enough to 
Posted on 04/07/2018 9:13:36 AM PDT by Simon Green
A 14-year-old boy in rural Wyoming who was building a small cannon using instructions from YouTube videos died after the contraption exploded, a local newspaper reported on Friday.
The cannon misfired late on Thursday as Archie Pearce was assembling its components, in an abandoned lot in the northern Wyoming community of Recluse, the Gillette News Record reported.
A 12-year-old child who was with Pearce was later treated at a hospital for minor flash burns. They were building the device as an experiment, with no intent to cause harm, Campbell County Sheriff Scott Matheny told the newspaper.
"They were in over their heads, trying to do something they shouldn't have been doing," Matheny added.
The teenager packed gun or fireworks powder too tightly into a 2-inch (5 cm) steel pipe and a projectile inside became stuck, resulting in the fatal explosion, Sheriff's Office Lieutenant Kevin Theis told the News Record.
Representatives from the Campbell County Sheriff's Office could not be reached for comment.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
boys being curious, and adventurous, which is their nature.
We made cannons as kids, but they were made from used soup cans and the propellent was lighter fluid or gasoline. This boy took it to a much higher and more dangerous level.
Sad. One should be able to survive somewhat dangerous experimentation.
It seems the difference between a cannon and a pipe bomb is the presence of an effective exit hole, which serves as a pressure release.
Ban Cannons! ( sarc.)
Actually that would make a great name. “Ban Cannon,” the extraordinarily redundant super hero of the anti 2nd amendment ,puling left!
Condolences to the family of this poor kid!
Flaming tennis balls...
We used to make matchstick rockets as kids. Just sneak some aluminum foil from mom, wrap the tip, cook it, and watch it fly. We were thrilled when it did, which was about one time in 100. Ah, the simple joy of playing with matches.
3 or 4 soup cans.
Completely remove the top lid using a standard can opener.
Perforate the bottoms of all but one using a can punch
Tape them together making sure the unperforated can is the bottom.
punch a 1/8 inch hole in the side of the bottom can right near the bottom.
Stick a tennis ball in the top opening
Squirt a good blast of lighter fluid in the bottom hole and shake it vigorously for a few seconds.
Aim
Stick a lit match in the bottom hole
Good for about 10-20 yards.
Amazing that I lived past 10 years old. The stuff my older brother and I did/tried should have taken us out of the game permanently but fate kept us alive. So far I made it to 80+ years, older brother died a few years back.
I feel bad for the youngster and his partner and for both of their families.
I have been to “Recluse”.....mighty small town.
We used starter fluid. The tennis balls went a little farther than 10-20 yards.
PVC pipe, hair spray, golf ball.
No window was safe.
L
Indeed. However, some people's purpose in life is to serve as an example to others.
I used to mess around with this stuff and then I saw a story on the news of a young teen who lost both his arms and his eyesight making homemade firecrackers.
That was the end of it for me.
We once tried our knowledge of this technology with an old, metal globe of the earth. In a basement. Squirted it full of a LOT of fluid, shook it well, match....BOOM!
We got stunned.
The two sections flew away from us or we could have been decapitated. The northern hemisphere spun on the floor in flames as we shook it off.
Friends mom came running down the stairs in a panic. She thought we killed ourselves.
Ahhh, youth.
Before I got around to proper black powder cannons I made a really large carbide cannon with electric ignition. It shot apples really well. I later attached a tank of hydrogen and was able to achieve fairly rapid rates of fire. One evening the local police came by and confiscated it.
My dad had to pick it up at the station a few days later, giving a promise that I’d only shoot it in the daytime. He said that it was quite the talk of the station.
Sad.
My friend and I used ground up Estes rocket motors, copper tubing, and spent CO2 cartridges as projectiles. It’s a wonder we didn’t lose any body parts.
My fraternity had a black powder cannon. Took some oil field casing pipe with an interior diameter about same as a beer can. Two wagon wheels and a realistic carriage. Mostly we would fire blanks but it would launch a concrete loaded beer can about several hundred yards.
Our tradition was to celebrate a brother’s betrothal by marching to his fiance’s sorority pulling the cannon. Torches, rebel flag, quite impressive. We would serenade the fiance, finishing with Old Dixie (the slow version) and firing the cannon.
That was the sixties. Imagine the Social Justice Warriors and Cupcakes if that happened today.
From the responses, it seems to be a basic characteristic of Freepers when young - they liked to experiment with things that go “boom!”
Just from the lousy description of the device by the NYT, it sounds like this thing was a whole lot closer to pipe bomb than it was to a cannon.
How twisted is the liberal mind it's enough to
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