How do you safely dispose of a dud .22lr? I haven't looked yet to see if my 'disassembly hammer' will eve hold a 22. If it does, is it safe to use on a rim fire cartridge? If so, is it safe to throw the primed casing in the trash, or should it be burned out or something first?
I just throw them into the woods. I stupidly bought a Remington value pack 500 and some rounds just loosely tossed into the box. Dang nabbit, if at least 1 of 5 rounds were duds. Outta habit, I would hold down range for a minute or so and then eject the round. Pick it up an toss away as far as I could throw. Then again, I live in the middle of nowhere in the hills.
NO--don't use a hammer style puller on rimfire. If you really feel the need to make it fairly inert, grab the bullet with a pair of pliers, twist and pull the bullet out, dump the powder, and give the case a squirt of WD-40 or whatever.
Which, BTW, makes really good fertilizer. The inertia puller, as mentioned, was never meant for rimfires, and MAY cause them to fire. Which may or may not harm you, but makes it real difficult to explain how THAT happened in YOUR shorts.
I do this too, but I use a different gun to do it with. My regular .22 plinker is my Rem 597, but I've got a pair of Rossi Gallery Gun pumps that I can more readily put the round into the chamber with my fat hands, and I can "index" the round a bit easier to hit a different part of the rim with the firing pin. One of these days I've really got to pick up one of those little Bearcats or a Single Six with the lr and wmr cyclinders to keep for just such occasions.
I've always re-fired them too. Which is why I've never had this problem in the 25yrs I've been shooting. But I tried 3 times with this one, and I would have tried some more, but the casing was looking pretty deformed at this point, so I was starting to get worried about case failure. I will try the pliers and WD-40 method. I remember having disassembled 22s as a kid this way. I didn't want to toss it in the trash, because it would be my luck that the 1 in a million event would happen and the garbage man would get injured when he crushed the trash. I don't want to add any fuel to the anti-gunners argument. Thanks all!
FYI...This was part of some ammo I inherited from my Dad. It was probably as old as I am (31 years old).
Back when I was a child, I would wrap them up in news paper light it and drop it in the burn can. But we all know that is NOT the way to dispose of them now. I would pull the lead with a pair of pliers, dump the powder, soak the case in water for a day or so then pich it in the recycle bin.
That reminds me of when my sister and I would go target practicing in high school (we were both on the marksmanship club). We were out in about 6 inches of snow one time, freezing. So we decided to build a camp fire to keep warm while we were shooting. We didn't have a match, but I had a box of 12ga. shells in the car. So I cut the cases off just above the brass, dumped the powder in our unlit fire, and touched it off with the cigarette lighter from my car. It worked great, until we (not having any use for them) through the 25 pieces of primed brass in the fire. OOPS! We took cover behind the car while they popped and launched out of the fire in any random direction they chose. I doubt they had enough force behind them to do any serious harm, but they were loud enough when they were bouncing off my car, to scare the heck out of us.
I think it is a little easier than all that. Just take the duds, put them in a tin can, and pour oil over them. In a few days the oil will seep past the bullet and contaminate the gunpowder. After that, they are inert.
Yeah well, I usually crap lightning, and $hit thunder, but...oh wait that was Rocky not me... Never mind.
Throwing them in a river takes care of it. Compared to the junk that sometimes is seen beached after the river in nearby farmland goes down, a few rounds are nothing, except to the 'Eco-Faschists' on the West Coast.
i hit them again, if that fails grab bullet with teath bend down and it pops right out. spit bullet and toss case.
well, sometimes you don't hit the powder, so i wait a while then turn the bullet and try again, if not, my range has a box for duds but if im in the woods i just chuck em.
