Why do we treat bullets outside a gun as safe, wouldn’t big caliber bullets be a mini grenade?
In: Physics
Technically you mean “cartridge” or “round” (of ammunition) as a bullet is just the hunk of metal (lead etc) that is propelled from a firearm when the primer is struck and the cartridge is fired.
Many of us have loaded thousand and hundreds of thousands of rounds into magazines and firearms without a single instance of anyone being injured by JUST the un-fired cartridge.
We would get blisters as the most serious ‘injury’ from handling ammunition.
You can safely drop them on hard ground or concrete. They don’t go off unpredictably, and if they did they would not propel the bullet.
You probably shouldn’t suck on the ones loaded with lead bullets due to the risks of heavy metal poisoning but just holding or loading them has done no on any harm.
Contrary to what you see on TV live ammunition cartridges generally cause no real trouble when set on fire as they need a contained “chamber” to build up pressure to propel the bullet
Though don’t do this, there is some slight chance that the ignition and popping might propel debris into someone’s eye or cause people to run away in fear and injure themselves in a panic by falling or running into trees.
If someone is stupid enough to throw cartridges into a fire do be sure to stand well away. And note that if a firearm is set afire then the bullet could possibly be expelled forcefully (in the direction the barrel happens to be pointed) and do serious damage if it strikes someone or something valuable.
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