The funny thing is I had friends that brought legit bombs to school all the time. Pipe bombs were just things you made. We had one kid (who got suspended for three days) who literally threw an unlit one at a girl in the hallway in middle school between classes. That was 9am. Bomb Squad didn't show up until like 2 in the afternoon, when some twit pointed it out to a teacher. Shit, I had friends that rolled into high school with a trunk full of UXO they'd found out past the barbed wire. Knew another kid that made a 9mm single-shot derringer in shop class. I think he called it a "sculpture." Oh, wait. I didn't mean "funny."
Way back when, it seems like a million years ago, we used to go across the border into Mexico, to the construction sites to buy 1/4 and 1/2 sticks of Dynamite. Not the pussy-ass fake crap that the "edgy" kids made from The Anarchist Cookbooks, REAL stuff. The stuff they used to shatter boulders and blow up the sides of hills during highway construction. The hard part was getting the blasting caps... shooting them did not set off the explosion for example. I took a 1/4 stick to school to show some of the people who wanted to know what Dynamite looked like as they had never seen it before. So, let's recap what the world used to be like. Four white kids in a beat up old ass car, with enough dynamite hidden in the trunk to take down a building are crossing the US border. We were asked if we were drinking or carrying drugs and then sent on our way. As the drinking age in Mexico was 18, two of our friends would get a beer or two so we could tell the border patrol that we went down to drink and took turns driving. We were never searched, never questioned; I think that once I had to pull out a driver's license but that was all. I then took a stick of Dynamite to school. Think you can do that now? That is actually kinda amazing. If he did not redneck himself I bet he is one of the guys playing with 3D printers.Knew another kid that made a 9mm single-shot derringer in shop class. I think he called it a "sculpture."
He was a strange and wonderful fellow. He was building a fluid computer at 17 because he thought it would be cool - literally NAND and XOR gates using miniature hydraulics. It got him an internship at one of the machine shops at the lab when he was 17; when I needed a busted bolt removed from a cylinder head and was screwing around with easy outs, he said "lemme just take it to work and use the EDM burner." I've always harbored the notion that he was fighting a schizophrenic break, 'cuz he got kinda weird. But according to LinkedIn, he's got a Ph.D in mechanical engineering from Johns Hopkins and was a post-doctoral fellow in robotics.
My grandad was involved in bomb disposal in the RAF, he was taking a class and set them the homework task of building a bomb so they could see how it all worked etc. Well wouldn't you know, one of the students left their homework on the train and nobody noticed a damn thing.
It happens all the time now too. My school has had two pipebombs, one knife, and a drugged-out kid going to war with a security guard. We get a letter home and nobody gives a fuck.
I almost wish the kids at my school were that sophisticated. The most serious assault I remember was with a bike pedal. Or crankshaft. Or some other bike part. Teachers get an e-mail when it happens, and then students get a vague letter home the next day. Most the time though, if kids fight with security (a monthly, if not weekly occurrence), it tends to be with fists. The SRO fired his Taser once, but it didn't deploy correctly or something like that. It's weird, because I know a ton of people have knives or even guns with them, but those people tend to not get in situations with security that they would use them. No bombs that I know of though, so that's a relief.