Smoking is ill-advised. Smoking around black powder is even more so. This was needless and tragic. - Jonah


How not to inspect a musket barrel

From the Indianapolis Star

A cigarette lighter may have triggered a fatal explosion - Dunkirk, Indiana. A Jay County man using a cigarette lighter to check the barrel of a muzzle loader was killed Monday night when the weapon discharged in his face, sheriff's investigators said. Gregory David Pryor, 19, died in his parents' rural Dunkirk home about 11:30 p.m. Investigators said Pryor was cleaning a .54-caliber muzzleloader that had not been firing properly. He was using the lighter to look into the barrel when the gunpowder ignited.