Of course, it's dangerous

I hang out at The Firing Line, a firearm forum that seems to be fairly well run. They talk about guns and shooting and reloading and all things that go BANG!

At that forum, as in all other forums, the moderators have to worry about liability and getting sued in our over-litigious society. If something reeks of not being absolutely, entirely safe, or outside of accepted practice, it's frowned on. I understand the motivation of the forum owners. I get it, okay?

However, young'uns ask questions and it's up to us old-timers to bring them along properly. One thread recently dealt with an age-old practice of building hot .38 special loads for use in the .357 magnum revolver. So, I told the young'un about the Lyman 358156 bullet. It's an old one, designed by the renowned Ray Thompson, who designed bullets to push the limits of the cartridge. Ray's idea, at just about the time that the .357 was gaining acceptance, was to make a bullet with two crimp grooves. The upper groove was for regular .38 Special cartridges. The lower groove was to make .357 ammo when you didn't have any of those newfangled .357 cartridges handy.

Was that dangerous? Well, if you didn't know what you were doing and loaded a hot cartridge and put it in a gun that wasn't designed for it, you ran the risk of blowing up your revolver. Still, the Lyman 358156 sold a lot of molds, and it's still available today. Lyman sells enough of those molds to keep the item in production, so the production history of the mold tells me that it is an idea worth producing, and the simple fact of the matter is that it's a damned fine bullet.

I"ve been piddling around the gun world since 1964 and I've seen a lot of weird and wonderful things. In all that time, I've seen just exactly three guns damaged from handloads. Two of those were on a shotgun range, and the other was a revolver that was so old it shouldn't have been loaded with anything. One memorable shotgun was a Browning Superposed that had been loaded with what must have been a double or triple charge of Red Dot. The barrel was bulged just beyond the forcing cone and we had to open the action with vise-grip pliers. Back in those days a new Browning Superposed cost $400.00, which was about a month's pay for a working man. The owner was considerably distraught. I digress.

We can't be completely safe in everything we do. Handloading and shooting are risky hobbies, yet we've managed to make them as safe as we can. Millions of rounds of ammunition are loaded ever year by hobby-tinkerers in their garages and that's what makes our hobby interesting. Just because it's different doesn't make it unsafe, although there are risks associated with using powder and low explosives to drive projectiles down a range.

I'm reminded of a story that Jim Wilson tells about the legendary Texas Ranger Charlie Miller. It seems ... well, hell, I'll let Jim tell the story:

One time, probably back in the '50s, Miller and a bunch of other Rangers got called into the main DPS headquarters for some firearms training. Now you can imagine Miller walking around in his white shirt and khaki britches with his rather pronounced belly sticking out over the grip of his 1911 on halfcock with the safety tied down and all. One of the young firearms instructors finally just couldn't stand it any longer and walked up to Miller and asked, "Mr. Miller, isn't that thing dangerous?" Charlie just glanced up at the boy, the way your banker does when you're trying to borrow money and said, "Son, if the damned old thing wasn't dangerous, I wouldn't be wearing it!"

Below is a picture of Charlie Miller's pistol.

I'm not proposing that we use gunpowder to blow stumps out of a pasture, and I'm not proposing that we do something that's inherently unsafe, but loading ammunition pre-supposes that you've done some research and you've learned to use your tools. If you put a triple charge of fast pistol powder in a brass case, seat a bullet on top of it, then pull the trigger, something is liable to turn loose. But, we've got to experiment, we've got to push our own boundaries, we've got to venture into the unknown, or we'll never make that next great breakthrough that expands human knowledge. And, if some young'un can benefit from my woeful experience, it's my duty to impart that wisdom to him or her. If a young'un asks a question and I've already experimented with that problem, then it's up to me to lead him in a safe direction, to show him how the problem has been solved successfully before. Just because it's outside the norm, doesn't make it immediately risky.

The point of this whole rant is that sometimes our hobby is dangerous. We manage the risk, we follow safe practices, but there is danger involved in everything we do. If you want to be completely safe, then wrap yourself in bubble-wrap and take up knitting. Just be careful of those damned knitting needles. You might put your eye out.