What Kind of Ordnance Will You Use to Celebrate Independence Day This Year?

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67 COMMENTS

  1. The usual. A few rounds through a 1903A3, an M-1 rifle and an M-1A. Throw in a 1911A1 and a 7 1/2″ Colt SAA in .45 Colt. Those are fireworks.

  2. Hoping to finish my gun closet this weekend. 2.25″ thick hardwood door. Two high quality deadbolts, and security hinges.

    The walls are lathe and plaster and 4″ thick. Re-enforcing them with 3/4 ply. There is a sticky note on the door advertising to disable the alarm before unlocking. Have not chosen an alarm system yet.

    It is not steel, but this house is 100 years old. I have had to chisel channels through the plaster when upgrading some wiring. It is tough work. Would I call it high security? No. But it will do.

    • ” I have had to chisel channels through the plaster when upgrading some wiring. It is tough work.”

      That much plaster provides a bit of fire protection all on its own.

      Some personal house fire experience, LS – Store the most flammable stuff the lowest, if possible. Like ammo and powders on the floor. Heat rises… 🙁

    • I’m thinking security plywood with steel lath impregnated is a good idea. I built a saferoom with that once soaked in the pink fire retardant painted on that worked out really well.

    • LS.
      When we rebuilt the log house here on the homestead we put in a storm shelter room. We get hurricanes and tornadoes here. Reinforced concrete with a steel fire door. 2 rooms actually. I use 1 as a vault for the gun collection. the other is kitted out as a shelter, as well as my repair and reloading room.
      The walls of the house are a foot thick hickory logs. The doors are 3 inch oak and we put in storm proof, impact resistant widows.

    • My “Gun Room” started life as a closet under the stairs. Same thing, a hundred+ year old house, plaster/lathe construction. Replaced the door with a steel one and refinished the inside of the closet with expanded metal under concrete board. Not 100% secure, but they’re going to spend a lot of time and effort to get through the walls.
      I live in a small rural community of <300, so I didn't bother with an alarm system, as response time by the Sheriff's Dept. is typically 45+ minutes. Not their fault, it's a big county and they cover a large territory with a small crew.
      I built my own Gun Cabinets with 3/16" plate, and use Abus High Security padlocks on both cabinets. Just a regular padlick.on my Ammo Storage cabinet, and I only used 16 ga steel to build it.
      As you said, 100%? No, but they're going to spend a lot of effort to get in there.

  3. LOL. There’s plenty of lunatics in the neighborhood who’ll attempt to blow up all their ill gotten fireworks(all illegal in Illannoy). A few had the ring of a gunshot. A nice lull today with a monsoon outside. Pretty freaking loud last night🙄

    • Heard across the State of Florida – “Honey, does this holster make me look fat?”

      Heard in Baltimore – “This tragedy again shows why we must continue to focus on the amount of illegal guns on our streets…”

      • They would NEVER use the word “illegal”, by implication ALL guns are illegal.

        • They have come out of the closet. The mayor goes on to promise to hold ‘those who produce and traffic illegal guns accountable’.

          Hard to misread that.

  4. Hey! How come that guy doing the grilling is not wearing his chromed barbecue guns?

  5. I shall load up my .69 Caliber black powder cannon with 75 gr of 3f and use a 12 gauge shotgun wad to really make a boom. It is a tradition going back 45 years.

    • 2 liter Pepsi bottle and a cigarillo of BP make a nice safe boomer.

      Depending on your legal environs.

    • Kevin Stich,

      I have a .50 caliber muzzleloader. When I shoot it, it just sounds pretty much the same as any smokeless powder gunshot. What I really want is the much deeper (lower pitch) boom from a cannon. Any insights as to how I can get a lower pitch boom? How about your .69 caliber cannon–does that make a nice deep (low pitch) boom?

      Heck, I remember a neighbor blasting a tennis ball “cannon” a long time ago (he shot tennis balls unbelievably high in the air using nothing more than a metal tennis ball can) and that seemed to make a pretty nice–and fairly deep (low pitch)–boom. Does it just boil down to needing a cylinder with at least a 2.5-inch diameter?

      • The cannon makes an outstanding low-pitched boom. The shotgun wads compress the load enough to make it work.

    • That’s the second time my post didn’t not sure what is happening here. What I meant to say was: None, got a lot of PTSD vets and animals in the area. Don’t need to add to their problems. When I lived in Fort Worth one 4th of July, them stupid cowboy/rednecks were firing live rounds into the sky. The bullets falling on the hangar roof were like a hailstorm, but far deadlier. Don’t do that folks. It’s illegal as hell and really bloody, I meant that, stupid.

    • “Thermonuclear hand grenades.”

      Possum? Is that you? 🙂

      Not hitting the range this year. The local ChiCom fireworks tent had a decent price on 1,000 strings of Thunder Bomb crackers and a few gross of bottle rockets.

      Those ‘cracker strings are about 12 feet long, unrolled. Should be a nice mountain of shredded paper after, and a thick cloud of sweet aluminum flash powder smoke… 🙂

      • those are worthwhile. best when fresh, the really good ones just waltz along, some brands damn near spontaneously combust. i have a fone vid stamped 3:09. three minutes of rowdy pretty satisfying.

        • “some brands damn near spontaneously combust.”

          Seen that phenomenon happen, really weird. Probably a bargain brand…

    • I just picked up some fireworks. I grabbed some that were shaped like hand grenades because why not?

  6. High school graduation night, an enterprising delinquent brought a laundry bag FULL of fireworks. Early on, I watched an (ethnic slur)-chaser wander right directly into the main bag.

    Roman candles, rockets, mortars, boxes of M80s, 12 foot strings, sparklers and a dozen more of the aforementioned slur-chasers all went up in a long couple of minutes. Well, not up, but bouncing along the beach in all directions…

    Most exciting fireworks show I ever saw hands down.

  7. I tried to get my cat to wear ear plugs but he said grr hell no. We got lots of artillery in our AZ neighborhood. I think the BP is busy lookin for phentnyl and not m80s.

  8. Best fireworks show I ever saw was when a department store had a professional setup go up at ground level. One of the first ones popped about ten feet in the air and set off the rest in a massive chain reaction the whole thing was hot enough that they had to call in the fire department to put out the burning asphalt!

  9. TBH, I’m the party pooper. When I get a bunch of people lubricated with alcohol, I hide the guns, and look disapprovingly while they play with sparklers, bottle rockets, etc. Alcohol and ordinance don’t mix well.

  10. On a more serious note, I made my own very small cannon of sorts. It is nothing more than a piece of 2-inch round steel rod stock–about 8-inches long with a 0.5-inch diameter bore and a small hole for the fuse at the back. I put about 25 grains of black powder in it along with a paper wad that I smash into place with a wood dowel “ramrod”. A four second fuse makes it easy to light and get away before it pops.

    What I like about it–and the neighbors like about it–is that it is not very loud. It makes a nice bang and yet you don’t have to wear hearing protection if you are at least 40 feet away when it fires.

    Some day I will try to acquire a longer piece of stock and make something closer to a one-inch bore. And if I can find a metal lathe that someone will let me use, I might even put the classic cannon profile on it. (The classic cannon profile is where the breach is the largest outer diameter which then tapers to a slightly smaller outer diameter at the muzzle.)

    • Check your local for sale forums, used lathes pop up all the time, some of them stupid cheap…

  11. Since I have about 25 people coming out, we will burn a few rounds off on the gun range, then I’m planning on lighting off the 12 pounder a couple times. Got to keep my gun crew drilled and up to speed.
    A couple of my kids have been buying up fireworks for the last couple months. No idea how much they have spent. Since the cannon and firearms will be put away before the alcohol comes out, and neither of the boys drink, we should be in good shape. I just mowed and baled the hay off the field we will be using as a firing area for the fireworks. Will also have a water pump set up just in case. BP cannon throw plenty of sparks. Will be out looking for the spent cannon balls this weekend tho. No fun shooting blanks.

    • Add some oxygen, a looong fuze then tie it to a good sized helium balloon
      the ball of flame when it gets up 3-400 ft. is quite impressive pretty loud to.
      For use over unpopulated areas only

  12. I like aerial fireworks. The best to simulate anti-aircraft, fire against President Biden’s F-16’s.

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  14. I will be at work and hopefully not putting out the fires cause by fireworks and not taking people to the hospital who have been hit by following bullets from those that celebrate with guns rather than fireworks.

    • Must be The Flash if you can get hit by FOLLOWING a bullet. 😉

      “ow, ow, OW! Man, I’ve gotta slow down!”

  15. fireworks are illegal in my county, and with good reason given the extreme fire danger. However, I do have a thunder mud with a one inch bore, plenty of fuse and black powder. I might light that off once or twice.

  16. I’m not going shooting today. Still looking for a good gun range these days, but man oh man, it’s just too hot to be outside, even for shootin’!

    But I will be grilling something…starting any minute now. And I will be wearing my firearm. Which means damn…I need to put on pants first. Oh well, can’t have everything, I suppose!

    My miscreant neighbors and I usually just enjoy the fireworks we shoot off ourselves. No need to drive downtown somewhere and be stuck in a sweaty, stinky, crowd, with all those people…you know, sweating and stinking. And the halitosis, yikes; floss yo teeth, people! This is what we get when we let the .gov do too much for us. What makes them think that only the government can start brush fires?

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