ATF Bans Consumer Grade Smoke Grenades

[BrickHaus]

Leave it to our goverment to make more bad policies. I'm one who loves smokes, weather I'm tossing em or I'm in it. Sure it's probably pure cancer. But the immersion factor is worth it to me.

When I was on a team we were pretty good at popping smoke and using it to move through bare patches of the woods that lacked cover. It works super well. Meaning we walked our own clouds a lot. It got us the upper hand more than once.

I still have one marine safety smoke left. They are orange steel cans and they smoke real nice for a long time. Orange smoke also. It's probably worse than an eg Haha.

[MrBarraclough]

It's technically not a new regulation. Existing regulations would actually ban these smoke grenades anyway if not for an exemption the ATF granted. This new action by the ATF is simply to rescind the exemptions for those types of grenades.

And ATF does have a certain amount of regulatory authority. They just have to follow the usual notice and comment procedures for promulgating new regs. This action isn't governed by those procedures though since it is simply the recission of a prior exemption to existing regs.

[RuleOfSines]

Is that even within the ATFs authority? I thought they were fancy police, enforcement only, not new regulation.

[JonM]

A smoke grenade started another fire at Supergame this year too.

[NONOBLITUS]

Boooo they are cool for big games. Let’s just keep banning everything that people enjoy. My son in some fun smoke

[SignOfZeta]

Good. They barely do anything but generate revenue anyway and I sort of like fresh air when I’m in the woods.

[OpusX]

[Trbo323]

Bummer. I kind of liked them at big games and it was a way for local fields to make a little more money.

Sent from my motorola edge 5G UW (2021) using Tapatalk

[bellicose]

I put out two fires at Supergame last year because of them. Got lit up while doing it. Apparently a ref holding a fire extinguisher looks like a good target to shoot at. Not of fan of them.

[martix_agent]

Ah crap. Guess no smoke grenades at Reaperball next year. If I could even talk the field owner into it.

It's perfectly legal so long as the vendor and the buyers have an appropriate license....which is most likely not going to happen.

[cougar20th]

Ah crap. Guess no smoke grenades at Reaperball next year. If I could even talk the field owner into it.

[ford]

Stockpile this fall while you can.

[jetenginekyle]

What's next? Is the atf gonna come after us for burning leaves? That makes a lot of smoke too

[Impactfour]

I'm torn on this. Like many others, I dislike regulation, but also feel the safety concerns around smoke grenades can be dismissed too easily.

Two incidents come to mind, one in which a forest fire started at a field I was at.

The other occured when I was in an enclosed bunker where the game objective was and an errant throw landed the smoke grenade inside with me. Suddenly I was choking down nasty smoke, and the only spot I could escape to was a barrage of paint and smoke, in which most players couldn't see me calling myself out. Had I been an asthmatic or someone with breathing problems it could've been ugly...

[Hp_lovecraft]

This is just dumb, and they don't actually have the authority to do it. At some point, someone will sue them over it, and they will quietly reverse.

Thank said, I work at fields for most of the 90s. We sold tons of smoke bombs.... and they were a nightmare. Not did they start lots of fires, which meant I would be getting shot while trying to put it out, it meant tons of blind firing in and out of the smoke screen. Very dangerous.

and at least once a year we would have some kid pull the pin, but not throw it right away. instead, run around with it looking for the best oppurtinuty to throw it... and it burns there hand! But... like with grenades.... the field owners loved them because it was a huge profit margin. A way to make extra money....

I think the ban was designed more for the MC-18 military style smoke bombs. People would bring them to the field sometimes, and it would set of a huge plume of sparks before shooting out the smoke, Those really were terrifying and definetly not "cold burning".