You couldn't make it up!!

Absolutely unbelievable.........................

A judge may have regretted asking a policeman if he ‘knew how grenades worked’ – after the man pulled the pin on a live hand grenade in court.

The policeman, the judge and a court clerk were all injured in the blast in Karachi – and are now recovering in hospital.

Police surrounded the court after the blast, fearing a terrorist attack.

The bomb had reportedly been brought in as evidence, but had not been defused, according to the Daily Pakistan.

The policeman will be disciplined after he recovers from his injuries.


Read more:Judge asks policeman to show court how a grenade works so he pulls the pin | Metro News

There goes their evidence!

I was working a gun show in Tampa, Florida back in the 1990's when a patron came through the front door with a semi-auto AK to sell. The policeman at the front door who was tasked with clearing and disabling ALL firearms with plastic ties, checked it all right. Now I'll admit that one way to positively check a firearm to see if it's loaded is pull the trigger but that really does go against all basic firearm safety rules I've ever encountered! Luckily it was pointed at the ceiling and the round went through the ceiling and directly through an office chair situated at a desk in the office upstairs. It was Saturday so luckily no one was in there. We all shook our heads in disbelief when we crawled out from UNDER our tables and found out what had occurred! That's a horrible sound, a rifle going off in an enclosed exhibit hall. I encountered it 8 times, (6 handguns and 2 rifles), over the course of several years working shows 2-3 times a month back then.

Policemen and hand grenades........ I certainly COULD believe it! I was explaining the workings of the old No1 cup discharger to a policeman and a couple of his colleagues during a discussion about it's apparent legality in the UK. Off I went on autopilot explaining that the striker lever should be in the cup before the pin was pulled out. Otherwise the grenade would go off. He looked puzzled and said something like '......I thought you wanted it to go off......' So I went through it again, more carefully this time, thinking that I hadn't made myself exactly clear 10 seconds beforehand. Then again he looked puzzled and said that he thought that the whole idea of the thing was that it would cause the grenade to go off.........

It took me a couple of seconds before I explained that exploding the grenade was exactly what we wanted to happen....... But we wanted it ti happen 75 yards away! He thought it went off in the cup that we were pointing/aiming in the direction of the enemy.

Then I thought about it........ He was going to explain to his boss that............... and eventually explain the workings of the cup discharger to the Judge

It does happen, and there are plenty of "almost tragedies." Just 4 months ago a fellow contacted me wanting to trade his 9mm carbine for my 22 Henry. He put his weapon in the back area of this pickup cab, dragged along his young son, then rang my doorbell with the gun when he arrived. He showed me the gun, I saw the safety was off, then checked the chamber and it was loaded, ready to fire. I calmly looked at him, handed back the gun, and suggested he clear the action, which he did with great embarrassment. I was relieved and we both looked at his 11 year old sign without saying a word about the danger he was in. Luck and the dear Lord was with us.

“…….. the grenade in question was a locally developed bomb…. “

Probably Arges 84 then?

https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo.../plastic-1.jpg

Since it’s plastic, I wonder if their expert didn’t know it was a real grenade?

I was in the Lawrence Ordinance gun shop here in Sydney, Australia during the famous Guns Buyback, and a fellow walked through the door with a long thing wrapped in a blanket to surrender, Turns out to be a WW2 BAR fully loaded with one in the chamber. Thing is, he caught the train, walked through the CBD and was unlicenced and the best part he was none the wiser that something was wrong.

Non-trained professionals with hand grenades is seldom a good thing.

I am reminded of one of my encounters with the Afghan National Army (ANA), we were on a dismounted patrol somewhere in the dusty side of Helmand province when we were working with a contingent of ANA guys. Since things were a little quiet we had some time to linger in an area, and one of their PKM gunners approached me for some idle conversation. Not knowing much Pashtu and him knowing no English we chatted with pantomime and guessing what the other was saying.

Before long it was comparing kit, he was quite proud of his PKM, which only had 20 rounds or so on the belt, all his other friends were well loaded, but not him, this should have been an indicator. An empty MG is a pretty useless bit of kit.
He took to pointing at various pouches of my Load Bearing Equipment and "asking" what was inside.

The first few were loaded magazines, each was met with a nod and a grunt of approval, and the furthest one on my right held my grenades. Opening it I pulled out 2 M67 fragmentation grenades and his eyes lit up, he got quite excited and started digging in his own pocket.

Then he basically pulled out this;

https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo...qdefault-1.jpg

A Russian F1 grenade, covered in heavy rust and clearly picked up or dug up from along his travels, and this ANA guy was trying very enthusiastically to give it to me.

Nope, Nope, Nope, Nope! as I back pedaled as fast as I could and waving my hand stop.

He paused and put the thing back in his pocket and mumbled something with a shrug.

I immediately put some distance and a mud wall between us and warned the Section Sergeant to keep everyone away from the exploding souvenir hunter with the PKM.

I think it was clear why the guy only had a teaser belt of ammo, too dangerous to be trusted with anything more.

1972 we were on a compass march back to the Northam army camp after being trucked undercover to a point miles away the route our 4 man group took had us crossing the mortar range where my friend stooped down and picked up a 2" H.E round and said look at this we were all scattered at this stage whilst he calmly placed it in his JG trouser pocket and carried on a respectable distance behind us.
He hid that thing in one of the toilet blocks whilst our course was on and then in his kit bag on the bus trip back to Perth I made sure I was well away from him.
After 44 years I look back and think if the damn thing had gone off in the bus chances are a good few of us would not be alive today me included then where would the forum be without CINDERS........:dunno:
We were young and really dumb......:surrender:

Peter,
Yes you are right in part about "some" Police not all.
I received a call one day whilst in CID (as those in the control room knew I had Military experience), to attend a small copse between the A14/A428 roads where they merge just outside Cambridge, where some kids had found a crate containing what the crate read as GRENADES WD crows foot and not much else written on the side.
A Traffic car had already arrived and fiddled around with the contents, as he put it, and quickly ascertained they were a form of grenade in a good usable condition.

He was of course absolutely correct, they were in fact 25 x White Phospherus grenades buried in dry conditions beside a bunker, which was positioned in a vital location of importance during WW2 as a main military crossroads to the eastern ports, and had clearly been forgotten over time as it had been emptied of its equipment, as one of the last lines of defences in the UK, hidden in woods which would have been manned when the Germans finally got on British soil. They say we have plenty still fully loaded around the country that have still not been found..........:eek:

Suffice it to say, I asked for the A14 to be closed which it was for several hours, (it is most days nowadays anyway because of accidents:lol:) until EOD had rendered them in a condition fit to take away and dispose of.:surrender::surrender:
How close those kids and the PC's came to winding up dead, and shows that Police officers do not get a lot of trianing on weaponry of any kind, because in part, they rely on ex servicemen amongst them to take the lead in matters they know about, supposedly anyway!

When I was child, 6 or 7, I used dig up artillery rounds in Normandy. I would beat the projectiles on the bunker steps until I could remove them and get the powder.

Vincent,
Good to have you on the site mate at your tender age, some you win and many you lose, you were lucky, as various shells have tolerances built into them to allow such brutal handling, not all though:lol::lol:

Once visited a demolition range with a National Guard unit. The officers were big city police in real life. When I got there, they had a collection of C4 tied in with det cord the most horrific and convoluted ways. They didn't much care for my advice, and just as I was starting to point out that their rig was not smartly set up, the LT ignited the fuse with not much length on it.

So we retired quickly to a safe area, the crap went off half assed, then started a range fire. (There was a strong chance with what I had seen that not all of the C4 had detonated.) The boys promptly ran back down range with shovels and began beating on the fire. I promptly left the range, not wanting to be the senior officer present if one of them blow'd up.

It appears that stupidity is one thing that is common to all cultures!

A French guy living near Chartres nearly killed himself and upset a few of his neighbours a few months ago when one of his collection of artillery shells exploded in his house.
The neighbours were evacuated while the bomb squad took charge of the remaining collection of around 70 unexploded shells.
Apparently he had been metal detecting the WWI battle fields for souvenirs; which is illegal in France.

A few years ago there was this guy in or near Petersburg, Virginia that collected civil war era shells he would make the exploding shells safe by drilling into them and draining out the powder and apparently offered to do this for others as he had done for years. I think they said the shell that killed him in his driveway was a fused shell.

There is a housing estate near where I currently live that was built on ground that was part of a large WWII training camp. It was an area that was used for live fire exercises and infantry weapons training. Imagine everyone's surprise when two boys 'exploring' some of the adjacent bush land blew themselves up with an unexploded mortar round. A year or so later another pair did the same thing, and then three more . . . Suddenly, Army EOD was called in AND NOT at the land developer's expense either.