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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: combjelly who wrote (712283)	4/28/2013 8:47:51 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1574265

Hi combjelly; Re fireworks used in amateur bombs. I haven't been following the news, quite a laugh if it was made from fireworks. I think it's safe to say we're not going to ban them. It's not a matter of high-tech modern America being "pretty dependent on high energy chemicals". Black powder is old technology. When the Spanish conquistadors marched through South America they made their own gun powder from stuff they found on the march. They also found lead deposits and smelted lead to make bullets. They were completely self sufficient in a way that no modern army can imitate. They even made cannon from iron ore. [See The Renaissance at War, Smithsonian History of Warfare, Thomas F. Arnold, Series Editor John Keegan, Smithsonian Books, around page 30] All that stuff can still be found, if you know where to look. Gun powder is a jinn that can't be put back in a bottle. Any fool can make it. We're just lucky, so far, that the people who make bombs in this country usually aren't very good. McVeigh was an exception. (Right wingers tend to make more effective bombs. The press should have realized that the Boston bomb wasn't a right winger effort by the amateurish way it was done.) -- Carl