http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/articl ... ction=News

Boy injured by malfunctioning firearm near Cotton
Duluth News Tribune
Published Tuesday, July 01, 2008
A 10-year-old boy was injured south of Cotton today when the weapon he was firing malfunctioned.

According to a press release from the St. Louis County Sheriff’s Office, the boy, from St. Paul, was visiting his family’s cabin in Northland Township when the accident happened about 9 a.m. Tuesday. The boy and his father, Paul Schmidt, had been firing “an old homemade type of firearm” they had used in the past, the press release said.

The weapon broke apart and sent shrapnel into the boy’s head and face. He was airlifted to St. Mary’s Medical Center in Duluth and remained in intensive care after surgery this evening, according to the Sheriff’s Office.

Yikes, home made gun? Not made well enough apparently. Poor kid probably had all the faith in the world in it too.

I wonder why it failed? Logic tells me if the gun was home made, so was the ammo, maybe a chamber pressure issue? I wonder how they went about making the action/barrel, if it was truly home made as in forged in the garage i'd have a hard time trusting it myself.

Cabin + homemade firearm = potato cannon in my mind. . . Or some variant cannon.

In a newspaper writers mind any homemade firearm must be an AK47 & I just don't see that unless they built a reciever from a flat and didn't heat treat it. Very unlikely.

I'd bet on the spud gun thing.

BP musket from a kit gets my vote.

Zip gun

Shot a single shot 12 gauge breech load pistol of the 3 inch variety once (only once).

Made for a missionary friend of mine by the local metalsmith in a small Ivory Coast village.

That was about 9 years ago, hand still hurts...

Showing your age slurpee....................

Likewise you old fart, as you know what i'm talking about.

Had to do exhaustive research to figure it out.........way before my time

Don't make me laugh, you rowed out to welcome Sir Walter Raleigh

If automakers hadn't changed the design of their antenna's you would still see zip guns arround.

I am (cough) not all that old, but I do remember quite well the adolescent miscreants I attended high school with. They couldn't operate a lathe well enough to produce a class requirement that would pass muster. What they could do is produce nifty little hand guns with a screw-in breach and a 6" barrel that would accomodate either BB's or small steel ball bearings.

I remember a movement well over 30 years ago to put BP weapons in the same category as "modern" weapons for purposes of background checks at time of purchase, etc. One argument that I remember is that the "bad people" would be using them for robberies in lieu of weapons that required a paper trail. My take is that the "bad people" never opted for that due to environmental concerns of the large clouds of sulfur smoke.

"They" still are pushing that. 6 months ago or so a police officer out in NY was shot twice by a BP rifle. The news also likes to push the "50 caliber" aspect.

Oops. Zip gun was the first thing that came to my mind also. Age is telltale.

Yep, zip gun gets my vote also.

For some reason I see a felon furiously ramming a ball and patch down the barrel to get off the second shot.