Man Finds Hand Grenade, Decides to Pull Pin

No doubt, probably the beginning of a lifetime of psychological issues for the kids. I read there was one boy and one girl and the investigation hasn’t concluded how the grenade detonated.

On top of the horror, witnessing something like this, they have to endure droves of people snickering and calling their dad an idiot, etc. How sad.

I found one once when I was a kid in Hawaii crawling around playing, adjacent to where Barbers Point Navel Air Station used to be at one time. I could see that the bottom plug was missing and the top was also missing. I scooted back at speed and told my dad. He worked security at Pearl Harbor and was a WWII vet and he checked it out and said it was not dangerous as it had no fuse or powder in it so he gave it to me. I thought it was really cool. Took it to school to show it to my classmates and someone stole it. How rude. Can you just see some kid taking an old fragmentation grenade to school these days. I can just imagine. LOL.

This was sometime around 1955-1959 so the anti-gun people were not around then to scream or gnash their teeth.

jsoo59 said:

I saw this I believe Monday and just kind of skimmed the article and didn't give it anymore thought until I saw this thread this morning. That article said the 14 yr old is the one who found the grenade and pulled the pin. Then dad grabbed the grenade away from him and it went off.

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As a father of two younger teenage boys, that was my first thought reading the CNN article. I was rather (sadly) surprised at the overwhelming reaction on this thread that the father was an idiot.... He did what a father is supposed to do.

Additionally, with the popularity of Call of Duty type games, a lot of kids NOT raised with guns honestly feel like they know what they're doing with military-type weapons from playing these games. Unfortunate.

DHC45 said:

As a father of two younger teenage boys, that was my first thought reading the CNN article. I was rather (sadly) surprised at the overwhelming reaction on this thread that the father was an idiot.... He did what a father is supposed to do.

Additionally, with the popularity of Call of Duty type games, a lot of kids NOT raised with guns honestly feel like they know what they're doing with military-type weapons from playing these games. Unfortunate.

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I do not think that going to reboot will be of much help after a live grenade goes off.

When I first saw this, I couldn't imagine a father doing something so stupid and jeopardizing his kids. Tragic event, but it's a relief (of sorts) knowing this father did what he had to to try and protect his sons.
The worst of this is, as I believed someone else mentioned, this 14 yr old is going to go the rest of his life holding the responsibility in his heart, no matter how much therapy he gets.
IMO, he needs to be on a 24/7 suicide watch.

fracguy said:

Those "dummy" grenades are dangerous. Just ask any surviving Branch Davidian.

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My dad used to repeat a story that happened near where we lived back in the 1970s. A man on business checked into a hotel, and he happened to have a fake grenade with him that he used as a paperweight. Well he left it out when the maid came in to clean the room, and she saw it and called the police. The cops immediately sent the nearest squad over to check it out, and they happened to be undercover cops dressed up as hippies. So they broke into the room, the businessman saw hippies busting through the door and reached for his concealed revolver. He was shot dead.

DHC45 said:

As a father of two younger teenage boys, that was my first thought reading the CNN article. I was rather (sadly) surprised at the overwhelming reaction on this thread that the father was an idiot.... He did what a father is supposed to do.

Additionally, with the popularity of Call of Duty type games, a lot of kids NOT raised with guns honestly feel like they know what they're doing with military-type weapons from playing these games. Unfortunate.

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Like you I was quite surprised at the replies.
It's like a liberal media feeding frenzy. Take a small shred of information and twist it to fit your narrative. I guess it's just human nature to form an opinion based on literally no factual information.

The only fact we know is what the article stated. “Someone reportedly pulled the pin on the device, and it detonated,” No where does it say who pulled the pin. The only other fact known is the father is dead.

I always did find the pineapple design to be the most aesthetically pleasing when it came to hand grenades. The baseball thing we had was just 'meh!'. No style, no class, no panache, as they say. Far and away, the WWII era had the most stylish of just about everything - from pistols, to Garands, to BAR's, to Thompsons... hell, even their bayonets and knives... it was all about taking the fight to the enemy with class! Everything is so cheapened and devoid of style and grace these days!

While we may never know the exact sequence of events, if I were a father, I would NOT hand over all or part of a military service collection to a 14-year old without fully inspecting it first. Photos included. I certainly wouldn’t let a teenager play with a hand grenade. If dad grabbed the hand grenade from the son, after son pulled pin, it was too little too late. This dad doesn’t make my Dad of the Year list.

jsoo59 said:

Like you I was quite surprised at the replies.
It's like a liberal media feeding frenzy. Take a small shred of information and twist it to fit your narrative. I guess it's just human nature to form an opinion based on literally no factual information.

The only fact we know is what the article stated. “Someone reportedly pulled the pin on the device, and it detonated,” No where does it say who pulled the pin. The only other fact known is the father is dead.

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Jumping to conclusions, and knee jerk reactions aren’t new anywhere, including here.

USMM guy said:

I do not think that going to reboot will be of much help after a live grenade goes off.

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Unfortunately not... I will say I talked about this situation with my boys. We live near a military installation with an old WW2 artillery training range. While on Active Duty in the late 90s, I used to run and hike out there until they started finding old duds and closed the entire area off. Every now and then the windows rattle with a UXO (Unexploded Ordinance) being disposed of... We talked about never picking something up that you don't know EXACTLY what it is...

Have friends that live near a large WW II US Army base that shrunk since 1945. Houses are being built on what used to be training areas. Lots of assorted UXO has been and is being found. Local contractors just call them and they determine if its a excellent , valuable souvenir or to call EOD. Considering the value of most WWII Ord. the safe items can be saved for collectors and the local museum.

At Fort Benning in the early 70s some hikers found UXO in the woods. We believed it was a 105 round.

I took charge of security, I had MPs a quarter mile down the road blocking traffic in each direction and kept all the bystanders and onlookers back. E0D showed up. They placed sandbags on three sides of the armament, a piece of plywood across the top and stacked it with sandbags. They packed it in C4 and told me it would be destroyed immediately, and the shrapnel would blow out the one side that was not sandbagged.

We all backed up, and I watched through binoculars. When they hit the igniter, there was a big concussion, some smoke and the ordinance, completely intact, went spinning into the air over the treetops, and disappeared from sight.

So much for UXO doing what you expected it to do. After a thorough search, it was never located again.

Shark1007 said:

At Fort Benning in the early 70s some hikers found UXO in the woods. We believed it was a 105 round.

I took charge of security, I had MPs a quarter mile down the road blocking traffic in each direction and kept all the bystanders and onlookers back. E0D showed up. They placed sandbags on three sides of the armament, a piece of plywood across the top and stacked it with sandbags. They packed it in C4 and told me it would be destroyed immediately, and the shrapnel would blow out the one side that was not sandbagged.

We all backed up, and I watched through binoculars. When they hit the igniter, there was a big concussion, some smoke and the ordinance, completely intact, went spinning into the air over the treetops, and disappeared from sight.

So much for UXO doing what you expected it to do. After a thorough search, it was never located again.

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LOL, not surprising at all. For the heck of it look up what a 105 and 155 projectile are selling for. Inert of course especially the fuse. Had some Ord. at a show marked “ Inert”. Some uninformed guy asked if it was live. I pointed to the label, his response was,” I don’t know what that word means”. My buddies laughed at him as I told him what inert means.

Most of us on this Forum knew well enough, even well before we were teenagers, not to ignite/pull pin on a hand grenade. We knew that hand grenades are things that kill/maim whomever is around when they detonate. We also knew that the detonation occurred in a matter of seconds after pulling the pin. Despite Hollywood’s many defects, even Hollywood taught us that much.

No matter who pulled the pin, this family threesome wasn’t particularly intelligent. Among the three, likely four counting grandpa, at least one has dutifully earned a Darwin Award.

We can and likely should have sympathy, but this was still an incident of astounding stupidity. Not labeling it as stupidity — and thus embracing liberal ideology that it was some object’s fault (ban guns due to idiots?) or someone else’s fault — might further accelerate the decline of intelligent thinking in our Country.

One can pull the pin on a grenade and Hold the spoon and there are No Issues. Releasing the spoon is what allows striker to ignite the fuse. Many booby traps were made using a grenade with the pin pulled then placing something on top of the spoon. Curiosity will kill the cat every time.

USARV72 said:

One can pull the pin on a grenade and Hold the spoon and there are No Issues. Releasing the spoon is what allows striker to ignite the fuse. Many booby traps were made using a grenade with the pin pulled them placing something on top of the spoon. Curiosity will kill the cat every time.

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Indeed so.👍

With a smile of sorts, I’d still bet that one Indiana family threesome was a little short of that degree of sophistication. With them, the spoon was dropped, almost certainly without a thought, concurrent or near concurrent with the pin pull.😳😳😳

USARV72 said:

One can pull the pin on a grenade and Hold the spoon and there are No Issues. Releasing the spoon is what allows striker to ignite the fuse. Many booby traps were made using a grenade with the pin pulled them placing something on top of the spoon. Curiosity will kill the cat every time.

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plus you cannot put the pin back in like they always do in the movies or TV shows either. Once you pull the pin you have to use it.

I still have a dummy inert pineapple grenade I bought many years ago. I was going to make a humorous desktop ornament with sign that said please take a number. But the number tag would be attached to the pin. But I never did do. At least not yet. I suppose if I die my family would freak out if they didn’t know it was a fake.