MACON COUNTY: Man arrested for shooting Tannerite on his property…

Thanks to a viral video, the Macon County (IL) Sheriff’s Department has achieved internet fame.  They arrested a landowner, Roger Major, for shooting Tannerite on his rural property.

“How can that be?” you ask.  “Tannerite is legal!”

Well, let’s start with a TV News report.

Here’s more background.

Mr. Major has been shooting at his place for a while.  Even though there is reportedly no berm.  You read that right.

Neighbors have called the police in the past when the explosions rattle their windows and generally create a sense of unease with them.  Cops have come out, and asked nicely for Mr. Major to stop.

This time the cops came out and they weren’t quite so amenable.  Why?

Yes, that’s a pretty salacious feature image for the tannerite video, but that’s not exactly anything close to what went down.  I don’t want to call it clickbait, but…

Mr. Major seems to have saved up money from his couch cushions and made a very large batch of Tannerite.  I believe one report said that the big boom that led to the sheriff showing up in the video was caused by a 40-pound batch.

That’s a pretty big boom.  Big enough to knock photos off the walls of houses a good ways away.

And again, I was told last night that Mr. Major doesn’t have a traditional berm to soak up the bullets he fires.  If you’ve been to Knob Creek’s Machine Gun Shoot, you know how bullets can ricochet in all manner of weird directions when rounds aren’t fired into a berm.

As for the Tannerite, well, just because you legally can do something doesn’t really mean you should do it.

Story time:  Years ago, when Tannerite came out, we had fun with it.  Dean Rothermel, bless his heart and rest his soul, brought some out to a GSL meeting to introduce folks to this cool new product that makes grown men giggle.

Fast forward a year or two and Pete Wheeler (again, bless his heart and rest his soul) mixed up a 2-liter bottle about 3/4s full of Tannerite.  Me and my fellow GSL Defense Training team were outside shooting at Darnall’s on the west side of Bloomington while a class lecture was taking place in the classroom.

Pete put this bottle under a tree that was just barely hanging off the front of the berm about halfway down.  His goal?  To knock down this tree that had been hanging on for dear life for years.   He shot at his magic bottle a few times and kept missing it.  Of course, we mocked Pete mercilessly.  Frustrated, he handed me the rifle.  “Here, John.  You shoot it.”

So I took the rifle and walked up to about 30 yards away.  I missed.  It helps when your gun in sighted in properly – and his wasn’t at that moment.

So I walked up to about 20 yards and tried again.  KABOOOOOOOM!  I distinctly remember seeing small balls of dirt flying directly at my face (yes, I had glasses on).  I closed my eyes and held my breath.  I felt dirt and pebbles pelting me from head to toe, some of them stinging pretty good.

When I opened my eyes I couldn’t see anything except gray.  I heard my friends calling my name asking if I was okay.  The smoke hadn’t cleared yet and they couldn’t see me (and I couldn’t see them).

I exhaled, safed the rifle and put it down, and began brushing the dirt off my person.  Pretty soon they could see I was okay and I could see them.  And I could see the tree was still there, mocking us.

Mrs. Sue Darnall, however, was not okay.  The proprietor of the facility came out of the house highly irritated.  The blast had rattled the windows of their house fifty-plus yards away along with the dishes …and everything else.  That was the official end of Tannerite at Darnall’s.

We were seriously apologetic as we didn’t realize just how big of a boom it would make.

That was a 2-liter bottle not even completely full – maybe 3ish pounds?

So I can only imagine shooting a 40-pound container of Tannerite?

I know Mr. Major is likely to read this.  Shooting 40 or 50 pounds of Tannerite with anyone living anywhere nearby is above and beyond the call of brains.   Just because you can legally do something like this doesn’t mean you should.

Better idea:  Limit your creations to five pounds or less and invite the neighbors over to watch (from a safe distance).

On top of that, Mr. Major was rather combative and defiant with the deputies.  Hence why he earned himself a tour of the jail before they released him.  Especially when he said he would continue with his behavior.  What did he think those deputies were going to do?  Let him mix up an even bigger batch after they left?

So while the video I first saw Tuesday of the moments leading up to Mr. Major’s arrest had well over TWO MILLION views, this story is getting some traction.  Hopefully this will add some context to the initial reports.

Here’s a video of a 50-pound Tannerite mix:

Here’s examples of how quickly Tannerite can go wrong…  and no, I’d never shoot a 2-liter bottle of Tannerite at less than 50 yards today.  Age has given me some wisdom…