Sunday, September 30, 2007

What To Do With Old Ammo

AlanDP at Blogonomicon as the following problem...



Ammo disposal question

"A reader has emailed me and asked if I know of the best way to dispose of ammo which may still be "live" but doesn't appear to be safe to shoot. Are there any special rules about such? The only time I had to throw live ammo away, I just put it in the trash with all the other garbage, but it was only about 30 rounds.

If anyone has any info on this, leave a comment."

Most fortunate that I stumbled into this particular posting, as munitions that have exceeded their shelf-live can be a hazard, and rather than fill up his comment page with full frontal verbosity I decided to make my response available here.

Most if not all factory-grade ammunition has a shelf-live of approximately 7-10 days. Past this point, and 10 full days is stretching it somewhat to the max, it ceases to be a combustible and slowly but certainly morphs into a high grade explosive. For example, one overly aged 30-06 round can suddenly and without the slightest bit of warning explode with enough force to take out the average sized living room. One can only imagine the chain of events initiated from a number of rounds having a close proximity to one another, so without wasting any time I urge all of you to send me each and every cartridge that has been in your possession for over a week so that I, as a qualified expert, may dispose of it safely.

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