Mills Bomb Nº 36. Note that Bubba has been at the filling plug with a misfit screwdriver.

Mills Bomb Nº 36. Note that Bubba has been at the filling plug with a misfit screwdriver.

British Media called a Code Brown emergency over a “grenade” found in a safe in a business. (“Code Brown” refers to what happens in their trousers when the debased Eloi of today encounter the tools with which their more-robust grandfathers contested the future of Europe).

An unexploded grenade was found at a property in Beckenham Lane in Shortlands earlier today (September 22).

Officers were called to the scene at around 1pm.

Police said nobody was injured but the area was cordoned off and specialist officers attended.

Alex McFee,  who works at local estate agent Curran and Pinner said staff from The IT Crowd, a computer repair shop on Beckenham Lane, had found the grenade.

The 20-year-old, of Ravenscroft Road in Penge, said: “The police shouted to us to stay inside. Everything here came to a standstill. There was definitely a sense of confusion.

“The bomb disposal squad went in and brought it out. It was dealt with quite quickly really.”

Steve Hughes, who works at Kent Fireplace in Beckenham Lane, said he heard police had found a grenade in a safe above one of the shops.

via UPDATE: Hand grenade found at Shortlands property (From News Shopper).

Nothing seems to clarify whether the grenade was live, inert, or toy; not that that makes any difference to the way media and police react. At least in Britain, where guns (handguns anyway) are already outlawed, and crime is soaring. Unpossible!

The amazing thing about grenades as a criminal weapon is this: what earthly good are they? They are not a certain murder weapon, unlike the Islamic sacrament that’s been in the news lately. They are of no real utility in a robbery. Unless you have cover, they’re damn near as hazardous to the thrower as to the intended recipient. All in all, it’s a highly limited combat weapon, and a practically useless criminal one.

Just the thing for the media and senior police managers, to set their knickers atwist. But really. Anybody remember the last hand-grenade murder?

This entry was posted in When Guns Are Outlawed… on by Hognose.

About Hognose

Former Special Forces 11B2S, later 18B, weapons man. (Also served in intelligence and operations jobs in SF).

13 thoughts on “When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have Mills Bombs”

awk

Well I do. This year, in our fair capital.

<a href=”http://www.vienna.at/handgranatenmord-in-wien-ottakring-neue-details-enthuellt/4041360&quot; title=”Article in German”

Hognose Post author

That link didn’t work but this one did for the previous story:

http://www.vienna.at/maenner-bei-explosion-in-wien-ottakring-getoetet-granate-als-ursache-vermutet/3824334

At that point they didn’t know if they were working with a crime or with an accident with criminal overtones.

This mod to your link worked for me:

http://www.vienna.at/handgranatenmord-in-wien-ottakring-neue-details-enthuellt/4041360

Seems like it was a murder, by a third party who is in custody, meant to solve a small business problem in the business of black market diesel oil in Austria, which business both the victims and the murderer seem to have been in.

I guess we have learned a few things about crime and grenades.

Maybe that’s why when the Vienna fire brigade ran an exercise recently, they featured an explosion in the scenario:

http://www.vienna.at/bankomatsprengung-am-hauptbahnhof-wien-polizei-und-rettung-probten-den-ernstfall/4098131

Andrew

I actually do recall some murders, or attempted murders, in England, from within the last couple years.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-manchester-19249050

“Automatic weapons” used too…

They must have come from an American gun show.

Kommander

Fun story. It’s the late 90’s and I am in middle school in So. Cal. A retiring teacher decides that she wants to get rid of some WWII stuff she used to use for teaching. While rummaging through her box of stuff I managed to find an old inert 60 mm mortar shell. Not wanting any trouble I simply left it in the box. I can only imagine what the response today would be if they found that thing in a dusty old box in a back room.

Wyoming Bound

I’m sure code yellow was issued before brown. Surely.

Y.

There are lies, damned lies and statistics.

I would not trust anything but the homicide rate. And even there some countries which fudge the stats by turning murders into suicides..

Especially one country which shall not be named in which slightly less than a million people have died due to crime in the past 23 years.

Ecpat

The amazing thing about grenades as a criminal weapon is this: what earthly good are they?

1 )Toss a couple behind you when being chased. Bet it slows the pursuit.

2) Leave a case of them in the seamier side of town to liven up Friday nights.

3) Ask a TSA agent if it’s ok to travel if you put them in your checked luggage.

The possibilities are endless. The outcome is pretty much set but the way to get there could be very imaginative.

Kirk

Hell, just talk to any EOD technician who’s done some time here stateside. The stories will leave you in awe of a.) Just how stupid the average person is, when it comes to handling “found ordnance”, and b.) How lucky some people are when it comes to this sort of thing.

Not to mention, you have to start wondering just how good the controls are, on some of this stuff. I was BS’ing with a fairly senior EOD guy while we were both playing Observer/Controller down at the NTC, and he starts reeling off all these stories about getting called out on incidents where it was blatantly obvious that someone, somewhere, was putting a shitload of high-end ordnance out there for God knows what purpose. You think you’re going to run into the odd old 60mm mortar shell, and then some podunk county sheriff in Montana calls you up to say that he thinks he’s found a stack of TOW missile tubes that he kinda-sorta recognizes from his days on active duty, and while he’s pretty sure that nobody would have those things… The seals are still intact, and the tubes feel about the right weight. Could the Army please send someone out to check?

Then, there were the crated M19 AT mines, and the crates of old 3.6 Super Bazooka rounds…

Some of the stuff he said he got called out on really makes me wonder just how carefully they control and track these things as they are moved between factory, depot, and bases.

Bill K

I thought we needed to wonder no longer when the Air Force stashed some of its nukes at Barksdale in 2007.

robroysimmons

Friend of mine was grading a NG outfit that basically went into mutiny and the mutineers were handing out the 203 grenades, he never knew if they got them all back because he got in his jeep and saved himself a world of hurt.

Stefan van der Borght

Ecpat (I suspect you meant “Expat”, but suffer from occasional sausagefingeritis like me)

“The amazing thing about grenades as a criminal weapon is this: what earthly good are they?……………….

2) Leave a case of them in the seamier side of town to liven up Friday nights.”

You would owe me a new keyboard if this wasn’t a spill-proof one.

If anyone wants some exciting moments with some EOD he’s guaranteed his fun if he merely peruses the old WW1 Western Front. Easy to access, and farmers are kind enough to collect the iron harvest and pile it up at the base of lamp-posts on the roadsides next to their fields. When I lived in Belgium a few years back I went for a weekend ride and photographed a cornucopia of international goodwill…..Brit 18 and 60 pounder, German 7.7 and 15cm, French 75’s, toffee apple mortar shells, rifle grenades, all sorts. Some of that lot likely had chems in them, but I wasn’t curious enough to start hacksawing and chiseling. Grandpa survived them, so will I.