BTW, while looking for that giant potato gun image, I came across this news item which caught my eye because it took place two counties west of here, just across the Alabama state line:


Saturday, May 30, 2009
By RUSS HENDERSON
Staff Reporter

A Stapleton 14-year-old will likely lose the hearing in his right ear, and may lose the ear itself, after a misfire accident Friday involving a homemade "spud gun" with which he and two friends were playing, Baldwin County Sheriff's Office officials said.

"With summer vacation starting, some children might be using their free time to build one of these dangerous guns," Sheriff's Office spokesman Maj. Anthony Lowery said. "They need to understand that these are not toys. They can kill or injure."

The teen was taken by medical helicopter to Mobile's University of South Alabama Medical Center with non-life-threatening injuries, Lowery said.

Three boys, two of them 14 years old and one of them 11 years old, were playing with the gunpowder-powered, improvised firearm — sometimes called a "spud gun" or a "potato gun," after the ammunition often used in them. The gun was made principally with part of a long metal tube that had been used to hold up an old-fashioned outdoor television antenna, Lowery said.

They were firing rocks and other objects from the gun in the yard of one of the boys' homes on Charlie Head Road in Stapleton, Lowery said. Adults were at home, but none was nearby at the time, he said.

The gun was equipped with a breech made of plastic PVC material, which allowed rear-loading, he said.

Eventually, the gun misfired. The gunpowder explosion broke through the thin metal piping and the plastic breech cover was blasted loose, striking the 14-year-old in the head, Lowery said.

"That's why real guns are manufactured using thick, strong steel," Lowery said. Gunpowder explosions can't be reliably contained within a PVC pipe, he said.

An investigation is ongoing, but no charges have been filed, he said.

Sounds like the kid missed a great opportunity to become a Darwin Award recipient.