Posted on 12/28/2010 3:04:57 PM PST by rawhide
A man has been arrested after FBI and TSA officials said his luggage contained volatile gun parts, which caused his bag to explode Tuesday just before it was about to be loaded on a plane.
The unidentified 37-year-old man had 500 to 700 bullet primers in his luggage. Primers are considered the "spark plugs" of a bullet and ignites the gun powder, projecting it toward the intended target.
Officials originally said the exploding bag was caused by a hairspray aerosol can.
The situation turned out to be much more serious and could have been even more dangerous if the bag containing the combustible elements would have exploded while the plane was in the air.
Officials believe when the baggage handler sat the bag down on the ground, it caused one of the bullet primers to rupture and explode, which ignited a chain reaction among the other tiny pieces of metal.
While it is legal to have a gun and ammunition in your checked bags, it is illegal to pack primers or percussion caps.
The passenger faces federal charges of transporting hazardous materials.
(Excerpt) Read more at nbcmiami.com ...
A hearing hazard indoors, anyway, if one is not expecting it. I think there were recalls years ago with one brand. Static sensitive. That said, the person would probably be OK, because they ARE like little firecrackers..But I suspect it's a quick way to lose interest in reloading, should it happen. The problem is when they are in the primer feeder dish on a progressive press. The operator may end up wearing little pieces of plastic from the primer feeder cover, but everyone wears safety glasses when they load, right?
But not when they toss a package on the ground...
Used to shoot black powder and the percussion caps came loose in a tin. Throw them into your bag, (separated from the powder of course,) and never had one go off on their own. Shoot, sometimes you couldn’t get em to fire when the hammer fell!
That’s with percussion caps anyway. Never really considered them that much of a threat.
That is one at a time, I doubt they would notice just one going off in a bag.
-----While it is legal to have a gun and ammunition in your checked bags, it is illegal to pack primers or percussion caps.---------
very odd...doesn’t pass the “Smell Test”.
Need further information before I believe the exploding primer story...
They are now, but I was given the reloading inventory of a co-worker's father who died, and there were old rifle primers just loaded full up in a square plain cardboard box.
I only buy CCI, so I do not know about how the other brands are packed.
Primers are on the banned substances listed on the big signs at check in. From a security standpoint, the exposed charge on an unseated primer is likely to give a positive where as a properly sealed bullet is not. While bomb sniffing dogs often hit on primers, they don’t hit on the ammo carried by every cop they meet. For once, there probably is a reason for that particular rule. The fact they were missed is the real story.
P.S. the Libtard who wrote the article probably has all the facts wrong anyway.
Does said idiot’s name start with Mohammed?
PS - the story head says bullets not primers. So which is it?=================Three errors I can see!
Hair spray is ‘primer’ for a spud gun.
ANSWER...it’s both!
“Does said idiot’s name start with Mohammed?”
LOL that is what I thought when I first heard it.
While we wait for facts, a wild guess.
What would happen to the TSA “brains”, and I use that word with some hesitation, if the news got out that another bomber got by TSA?
Say he had a little powder, a detonator and a timer and something went off too early?
Would TSA announce to the world that he got past all of them and that it was nothing but luck that it went off on the ramp?
Would they?
I don’t think so.
That may not be the exact scenario, but there is something that is not being admitted to and that is why the hair spray story that was implausible is now replaced by the primer story that is also implausible.
So neither the reporter nor the TSA mouthpiece is a reloader and we end up with BS.
I carried percussion caps in a can loose and in my saddlebags when I was reenacting. These caps took one helluva beating and never had one go off unnecessarily. Caps were also in my cap box attached to my sword belt and none of them ever went off. This smells.
Does this mean cans of Hairspray are once again safe for flight???
/sarc
Last ones I bought for my black powder pistol were rattling around loose inside a metal container.
I suspect if you carefully set the bag down, just like our very highly paid baggage handlers are wont to do, then have a 70 lb bag unfortunately slip from their hands from a height of 8 or so feet, and land squarely on the a fore mentioned bag, then a enough force might be applied set off a primer or crush a passenger.
It really does not take that much force, something like a light hammer strike, to set an unprotected primer off. If they were in the original crappy cardboard contained like Remington uses then I could see where they would rapidly be randomly scattered through his bag.
I used to load .243 rds with an Original Lee Loader and every few hundred rounds a primer would pop when I was seating it. It is significantly less powerful than even the weakest fire cracker, more like a cap pistol.
Well there you go. If the percussion caps use for muzzle loaders won’t go off by accident and regular pistol primers are ridiculously hard to set off accidentally, and... given that the reporter didn’t have a clue, the whole story is probably a bunch of BS.
Remington ships their primers 10 to a row on their side and are held in the thin cardboard skip by a piece of tape. I don’t think it would be difficult to jiggle them out of a box if you have Baby King Kong handling your bag like the old Samsonite commercial.
I have never seen a baggage handler just ‘set’ a bag down have you?
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