Firearms Instructor Injured In Binary Explosives Blast

By Bob Owens

Binary explosives are incredibly safe-to-use low explosive mixtures, when they are used correctly.

Unfortunately, even some professionals sometimes forget that while binary explosives are very stable and predictable, they still must be respected as explosives, and that placing them in a such a way that they can create shrapnel is a very bad idea.

The Washington County Sheriff’s office says an instructor conducting firearms training was seriously injured when he was hit by shrapnel after an exploding target went off.

The office said 42-year-old Scott Turner of Albany suffered life-threatening injuries in the accident. He was flown Saturday night to a hospital in Portland.

Turner was leading a group of former military and law enforcement officers in firearms training involving the use of Tannerite. The group had rented a private facility near the rural community of Timber.

The training exercise involved shooting the exploding target. The target was placed behind a car door and when it exploded, shrapnel from the car door hit Turner.

In every single incident we know of where someone was injured using these targets, three things happened.

The first is that the users used a much larger than recommended mixture. Most manufacturers recommend keeping the target mixture down to 1/4-1/2 lbs …read more

Source:: Bearing Arms