From: Doug Gwyn <gwyn@smoke.brl.mil>
Newsgroups: rec.guns
Subject: Re: Stockpiling
Date: 9 Nov 1993 20:03:21 -0500

In article <2bb4q9$tb0@whale.st.usm.edu> dnewcomb@whale.st.usm.edu (Donald R. Newcomb) writes:
#As for powder manufacture, I would suggest one gets familiar with
#"Cordite". This, in my limited understanding, is just cotton or hemp
#string that has been nitrated by soaking in nitric acid, stabilized
#and cut into pieces.

It is best to use a mixture of (about equal parts of) concentrated
sulfuric and nitric acids.  If you actually do this be EXTREMELY
careful with the acids, and rinse the product thoroughly.  Never
pour water into acid, and don't expose metal to contact with acid.

When I was an undergrad, we made "trinitro-toilet paper" by soaking
a roll of toilet tissue in such a mixture of acids.  It made great
flash paper, smokeless firecrackers, etc.

Commercial smokeless powder is usually a composite of nitrocellulose
(which is what the above process produces) and another compound whose
name escapes me at the moment (maybe nitoglycerin, but that doesn't
seem right).  You can probably read all about this in an encyclopedia
somewhere.

#The "trick" would be getting the nitric acid. I don't
#remember enough chemistry to know how to make nitric acid.

Many chemistry texts, especially from the WWII era, describe processes
suitable for manufacturing HNO3, H2SO4, etc.  Even the alchemists of
the middle ages were able to make these..  Of course, H2SO4 will
probably be readily available in the form of "battery acid".

##	Would you hide your guns rather than give them up? 

The problem is that licensed gun dealers generally have to keep the
form (ATF 448?) on file that in effect "registers" your gun so that the
authorities can track you down.  In some places it is lawful to sell
guns privately without having to keep track of the buyer, so you
could claim you sold it to some individual at a gun show, or just
lost it, or whatever.  However, I'm sure the authorities could get
a search warrant since they would have reasonable suspicion of a crime.
In effect, you'd have to hide the guns extremely well and *leave* them
hidden, which doesn't do you much good.

I suggest if it ever comes to that, that you do neither.  Refuse to
surrender your arms, and fight it out in court.  Insist it is a
constitutional matter; presumably there would be zillions of other
gun owners doing the same thing, and judicial support from NRA-ILA
and others to escalate the matter to the Supreme Court if necessary.