Think yourself lucky you ain't a brit. They go sick in the head over the most trifling idiocy. A firecracker that develops a hole, patch it up with a bit of tape to stop flashpowder leaking out? that equates to 'manufacture of an improvized explosive device' and gets you 8 months inside, that and having the paper come off some cheap ass firecrackers, again, same thing, they weren't so fussed about an ACTUAL improvised grenade stuffed with enough flashpowder to make a hell of a bang, fused and ready to use if desired, yet god help you if you repair a cosmetic bit of damage to some cheap fireworks.
At least I got to see what happens when a paedophile gets a flying dropkick to the face however.
If I'm to try and look on the brighter side, but there really wasn't much of one, plus the bastards nearly killed me, the meds I'm on can be dangerous, even fatal in some cases, if suddenly stopped, they did, I nearly bought the farm, never recovered fully even now.
The irony...if I WAS to be a terrorist, I'd be good at it, not come up with some halfbaked bloody firecracker, sulfur mustard, phosgene, lewisite, even nerve agents wouldn't be beyond my practical level of capacity IF I were inclined that way, and explosives are so old hat that I was blasting things to bits as a little kid, and I wouldn't use a cardboard cylinder with a little gunpowder and some damn sparkly bits in it if I wanted to blow something up. TNT would be more my thing, with a large Hg fulminate blasting cap, electrical ignition....fucks sake, the cops are imbeciles alright. They will take airguns and treat them like lethal weapons, yet ignore a gauss pistol with exposive-cored raufoss-style rounds, whilst looking sideways at my HOTPLATE of all things
phobia.