This video, produced by SAAMI, has been going around for a couple months, but because it’s 25 minutes long I didn’t have a chance to watch it until this past weekend. Make the time to watch it, because it’s informative and kinda cool too.

The video was made to address concerns of firefighters regarding sporting ammunition. Things like dropping ammunition, ammo getting crushed, and of course, ammunition being involved in fires.

The main takeaway is that sporting ammunition is difficult to ignite, and when it does it doesn’t propagate (e.g. one round going off doesn’t cause other rounds to go off and chain reaction into a big problem). As well, consider that gunpowder isn’t an explosion but rather an extremely fast burn with an extremely rapid expansion of gas. The gas wants to expand in the path of least resistance. This is why when a cartridge is contained within the chamber of a firearm, things work as they do because there’s only one path of least resistance: down the barrel and out the muzzle. But when the cartridge is “free standing”, there isn’t much to contain it so the brass case shatters, the bullet does fly, it’s nothing you still want to get hit with, but it’s all of such low velocity that it’s not a big problem.

Watch the video, you’ll see.

That said, still take care with storage of ammunition, and don’t be a dumbass and throw cartridges on a fire because you want to hear the rounds cook off.