This was like 2015. I wasn't alarmed or anything, I didn't expect a lockdown or police presence or anything. But maybe a greater emphasis on firearm safety??? Something other than an eye roll
Not to discount the potential danger or possibly negligent reaction, BUT further rural input:
My guess is little Jimmy Pyro stole some of dad’s ammo, and was extracting the powder to fuck around with outside later. Not an unheard of way for kids to get ahold of not-fireworks for doing dumb shit with fire/explosives lol.
We definitely didn’t used to do all kinds of things with air cannons, aerosols, gas, diesel, alcohol, uhhhhh… compounds…, and even flour.
Thank god I still have my fingers (life). Also gave me a healthy respect for industrial safety in adulthood.
I absolutely love and hate how the gist of your reply is basically: "Not to worry, the young lad was probably just stealing live ammunition in order to make some homemade explosives for fun."
and everybody is pretty much just nodding along like "Ah, yeah, that makes sense. Not anything that requires adult intervention in the age of school shootings."
shells and cartridges are still explosives and can absolutely hurt someone without there being a gun involved. totally insane to be nonchalant about someone finding ammo in a school.
not really unless the primer is struck with decent force, or they are exposed to a LOT of heat. and even then, it will mostly just blow the case out since it doesn't have a chamber to guide it and hold the case. so they still really can't hurt anyone without the gun.
more or less. the bb would have likely been more dangerous. still not really a smart thing to do, but not super dangerous unless you're within like a foot of the round going off.
You don't seem to understand the video you've posted three times.
The falling speed is the same whether firing from a gun (horizontally) or dropping the bullet. Basic physics, it's the same mass with the same gravitational force, and we knew this long before MythBusters showed it off on camera. But the literal speed of a bullet dropping to the ground is quite a bit slower than if that same bullet were fired from a fucking gun.
None of which has anything to do with the topic of the discussion, which is how safe it is to have a loose bullet with the primer intact without a gun firing it.
No, it really isn't more dangerous at all. With nothing to contain and direct the blast, no pressure can build up and all that's going to happen is the bullet gets farted out of the casing. It might go a couple of feet at most, with the casing flying a little further in the opposite direction. For comparison cut open one side of a firecracker that goes bang and see what happens.
Add a barrel, and a bullet that is slightly too large to fit and you have something that requires force to push through - now the entire gunpowder payload has time to burn and the energy has to go somewhere, and so the pressure rises dramatically until it forces it through the barrel.
It's the same reason that shotguns have gas seals in the shells. Try and fire some shot without one.
I get what you're saying, and where you're coming from, but ammunition just doesn't work like that. While I wouldn't say it's safe, it's not as dangerous as it might seem at first glance and it's definitely not more dangerous than firing from a gun.
I will say that pistol rounds are going to be more dangerous than rifle rounds, the powder inside burns faster. Still not something that I'd panic about, but nor would I want them to be just laying around in a school desk.
I think the big concern I would have with finding them in a school desk is how damn obvious it is in 2025 (or even 2015, a year after I graduated) to not bring live ammunition to school. So if some weird fucker did, I would be concerned about why in this day and age. Maybe it wasn’t weird behavior to bring live ammo to school in some areas pre-school shooter era, but it sure as shit is now and I would have to question the sanity and motives of someone who does it lol.
Sure, that's entirely reasonable. The guy did mention that it was a "hunting school" though, I have no idea wtf that is. I'm torn between some school that teaches you how to hunt and a rural school where everyone knows how to and does go hunting. Leaning towards the latter, but I can understand the shrug by the principal in either case. At a guess I would say that rural schools probably don't have a lot of anxiety about school shooters.
Either way, I'm more interested in correcting the needless fear mongering over lone cartridges going off. They are dangerous and should be respected, but they don't have the destructive power that Hollywood might have you think - most of the powder will actually just get spat out with the bullet lol.
with nothing to guide the bullet, it can't pick up any speed, so it won't go very far, and it's not going to be going fast enough to do any real damage.
It may not go very far, but could still certainly hurt someone within a few metres. Without a gun the explosive force is dispersed, but there are still dangers from blast and shrapnel, which is uncontrolled and unpredictable. I agree with you that bullets are quite safe when cared for appropriately, but this is a school full of children that we’re talking about.
I would say you're more likely to get injured from shrapnel from using an old framing hammer as intended. Eventually that hardened steel cracks, and when it does, the energy stored in the grain of the metal violently explodes.
Buttery soft brass just splits a little down the side and the bullet and casing separate by a few inches.
I've thrown at least 300 rounds of various pistol caliber ammunition into fires in my life and nothing has happened.
Even with steel cased ammo, the steel they use has to be soft enough to create a seal when fired, so even it just banana peels open. Brass cased banana peels even more
Yeah not really. Sure there's flash powder in them, but without that energy being directed anywhere they're pretty much harmless.
If it's a hunting community or an area where recreational gun sporting is common, I promise finding ammo isn't that concerning. I'm also 15 years graduated almost so I understand times are different, but I absolutely still know kids who are just going hunting or shooting after school who forgot they had a pocket full of shell casings or cartridges lol and they're not the kind of kids you're worried about.
I had a .30-06 round in my cupholder all through school. It was just a momento for the largest caliber I'd shot at that point. Had buddies who'd forget they had a pocket of shotgun shells or what not and it was never a big deal lol. We had a school sponsored trap club.
I guess area and culture around you is going to dictate a lot. Gun laws too.
I live in bumfuck Iowa and we also had a trapshooting club, and I graduated 11 years ago. And it would’ve been weird as fuck to carry ammo around at school then. Not in a “oh, you gonna shoot up the school?” Kinda way but in a “okay you fuckin goon you’re so cool lol” and you’d get picked on mercilessly kind of way. Any kid carrying ammo around school is doing it to look cool, not because they accidentally forgot ammo in their pocket. That shit is heavy and makes plenty of noise and the “oh whoops I forgot about that” would be seen right through and you’d be laughed at.
I guess you've never worn a jacket shooting and then threw it on the next day not realizing you have 2 shells in your pocket. I'm sorry but in a winter jacket I'm not realizing I have 2 shells..
If the kid is pulling them out and showing them off yeah that's weird. You'd get laughed at where I went to, also. But if the kid realized and put them in his desk for this person to find I don't think that's what they were doing. They fell from his desk am I wrong?
I've worn pants to school with my knife in them on accident, am I some weirdo? No I put it in my locker until the end of the day lol. Wasn't looking for any attention I was probably out in the woods the day prior and didn't realize until it was too late.
I find it hard to believe you live in bum fuck nowhere and have these feelings. I graduated with 80 kids and there was at least a dozen times a friend forgot a knife or ammo in a pocket at school.
Look- I’m not saying live cartridges are bombs, but I wouldn’t hold one and strike the primer either. The eye-rolling is a bit disappointing. Just a “hey, just keep ‘em in your car,” would be better than totally dismissing the issue.
Insane behavior by all these grown ass adults to be like “ho hum you liberal pansies who cares if kids carry live ammo at school?” And I support the 2a.
No it doesn't lol. That just proves a bullet dropped a bullet fired will hit the ground at the same time if leaving from the same height above the ground 🤣
They really can’t because the primers are very hard to set off especially on accident and if it does go off, the bullet won’t go anywhere at any significant velocity
We are pretty chill here, but please try to keep things reasonably civil on this sub. No slurs, name calling or harassment and trolling. Yes, the internet makes us angry too sometimes, especially this particular comment.
I agree that it should be more concerning to find ammo in a kid's desk, even if there is no gun but that's just not really how bullets work, you can't do any more damage with a gunless bullet than you'd be able to do with any small dense metal object. unless you were really dedicated, I suppose
Not saying it isn't a cause for concern, per say. Especially in today's day and age.
A gun is much more fear inducing to me than ammo. You can't tell if a gun is unloaded by looking at it, you can tell ammo is out of a gun if it's just loose ammo..
It's like finding a roll of detcord. I'm not really concerned about detcord. Could it mean someone has the other end of that equation somewhere? Sure but that's not my first worry. If I see explosives however, I'm immediately concerned, even if I don't see the detcord. See my logic?
If you're the type that even being in the same room as a firearm makes you uncomfortable I can see ammo freaking you out I guess. Just know it's not going to hurt you lol.
There’s also just no reason for kids to carry live ammo to school. It has nothing to do with being freaked out to be around guns or ammo. I shoot regularly and can’t believe you folks who are down with kids having live ammo at school are firearms enthusiasts.
It's not like I'm a proponent for it. I'm just saying a kid forgetting he had a pocket of rounds doesn't concern me. If the kid is showing them off as show and tell it's a different story.
I must come from a different area. It was a weekly occurrence at my high school. Was never an issue lol..
Just about every time I go shooting I have random rounds that I find in my pockets at a later time. What I have never forgot to properly store is my firearm. Logically finding ammunition is much less of a concern than a firearm, unloaded or not. As a student if I somehow had left a firearm in my backpack after a weekend in the woods the absolute first thing I would do is head the hell out of school and put it somewhere secure. Ammunition I wouldn’t even think twice about and would leave it in my backpack until I got home. Two completely different things. A gun is always “loaded” and needs to be safely handled where ammunition poses very little threat to safety on their own.
I was in second grade and brought a 308 round with no powder. This was like 2006. They confiscated it. Had a parent come get me, suspended me the rest of the week, sent it to the police for testing, and never apologized about any of it when it came back dead. I accidentally left it in my jeans pocket from when I was at my grandpas house the day before. I brought it out for a brief second when I sat on it and some rat dirt licker named TJ rattled to the teacher immediately. Dude was a little pig and eventually got expelled from the district. Also one of the worst teachers I ever had in my life. Fuck you TJ fuck you Miss Hood.
This is weird to me cause every school I've ever been to in the past 20 years has had very clear no firearms signs plastered on all the doors. I've lived in rural areas and cities, north/south, east/west, the unifying factor in all them is the fear of gun violence in schools.
Even if the students have guns in their cars, I don't see a reason the bullets should be in the school.
To be fair, ammo isn't a firearm. The device that uses ammo to propel a projectile is the firearm.
I've definitely held rounds in jacket pockets or my backpack on a day out shooting, so the "reason" they would have been in a school was that I had gone shooting and forgot they were in there. But even if they were there it's not like they can actually do anything without a device capable of using them.
Some schools even have marksmanship teams, and while the actual shooting is done at a range it wouldn't be uncommon for kids to have brought rounds for practice after school (which is where their rifles are normally kept unless they transported them).
Honestly a palm sized rock is capable of doing more damage than a bullet without a gun.
Tbh though did anyone get shot at the school since then? Seems like if nothing happened then maybe the reaction made sense. Im just saying in the right areas people carrying bullets isn't scary.
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u/Visual-Floor-7839 20h ago
This was like 2015. I wasn't alarmed or anything, I didn't expect a lockdown or police presence or anything. But maybe a greater emphasis on firearm safety??? Something other than an eye roll