7 Items You Won't Believe Are Actually Legal

7 Flamethrowers

Holy Shit, Really?

Yes. There are currently no federal laws governing or restricting the ownership of flame-throwing devices. Some states have laws restricting possession of flamethrowers, with violations only considered to be misdemeanors, but 40 states have absolutely no laws whatsoever concerning flamethrowers. Only in America would a device capable of launching rivers of fire at people be less regulated than marijuana.

Careful with that pot, it looks dangerous.

Where Can I Get One?

You can sometimes find professionally made flamethrowers being sold by private buyers online, some for as little as $300. Also, if you're unsure on how to use your new device, but you want the source of your advice to be batshit insane, you could pick up Ragnar Benson's delightful read, Breath Of The Dragon: Homebuilt Flamethrowers, which we can only hope comes with a cellphone with the numbers 9 and 1 already dialed.

What Should I Do With it?

Actually using your flamethrower is somewhat more difficult than acquiring it. It seems that lawmen these days have rules about when and where you're allowed to shoot gallons of flaming fuel. We recommend making friends with someone who owns a few acres of land out in the country and then going hog wild. If you accidentally start a wildfire, don't fret: Flamethrowers are just as good at stopping fires as they are at starting them. Just burn everything around the fire to cinders, and it won't have anywhere to spread!

Holy Balls, Why is it Legal?

Cracked cannot overstate the importance of destroying the horrifying bee menace. As a potent combination of "deadly" and "too small to shoot," the Africanized Honey Bee is quite possibly mankind's most dangerous enemy. Enter the flamethrower: your first, last, and only line of defense against the black and yellow hordes. In 1968, Brazilian firefighters armed with flamethrowers defended a group of children from the onslaught of buzzing death. This is apparently not an uncommon happening in nations fighting off the advancing bee legions.

6 Salvia Divinorum

Holy Shit, Really?

Salvia divinorum is a member of the Lamiaceae family, which makes it a cousin of the mint plant. When properly prepared, salvia can be smoked in order to bring on incredibly intense, at times paralyzing, hallucinations. Most salvia trips are short in duration, but very powerful and jarring. All side effects of salvia are gone within an hour, and it doesn't show up on standard drug tests.

Depending on the amount of smoke inhaled, users of salvia may experience hallucinations on par in intensity with those caused by drugs like LSD or DMT. Since most users lose consciousness and drift off into a world of fractal shapes and green women as soon as they hit the pipe, it has not gained much popularity as a 'party' drug.

It kind of makes the world look like this for about six minutes.

Where Can I Get One?

Salvia is still legal in most US states. You can pick it up at most well-stocked 'head' shops, but the cheapest and highest quality salvia is usually found online. Make sure to check your local laws to see if you can legally purchase and possess it in your state. If not, at least you still have your flamethrower.

What Should I do With it?

Here at Cracked, the only "high" we're interested in is the natural high we get from bringing comedy to the world (and sometimes crystal meth), so we have no advice here. However there are a number of educational videos that recommend gardening, writing letters to congressmen, and driving while on salvia.

Also, we do not recommend teaching while on salvia.

Holy Balls, Why is it Legal?

Salvia is actually pretty harmless, as intoxicants go. There have been a few accusations of its involvement in causing a suicidal mindset, but evidence is spurious at best. In fact a number of scientists believe that salvia may act as an anti-depressant, and its effective use in ending cocaine addiction has been noticed as well. Dr. Bryan Roth believes the drug has the potential to help those suffering from schizophrenia and Alzheimer's and has urged the government not to ban salvia. With the potential to cure depression, Alzheimer's, schizophrenia and cocaine addictions, it's a wonder salvia isn't a mandatory side dish in high school cafeterias across America. We're going to go ahead and say that last one is a bad idea.

5 Tannerite (An Explosive Compound)

Holy Shit, Really?

Tannerite is sold legally as a binary compound, meaning you mix two harmless powders and get something that goes boom. Just apply the mixture to the object you wish to blow up and then hit it with extreme force or heat.

Where Can I Get Some?

You can buy tannerite straight from the distributor. Premade shaped charges can be bought, or you can just get huge containers of the powders. We recommend only purchasing small amounts, as the temptation to blow it all up at once rises exponentially the more you have.

This man purchased 100 pounds of the stuff and was unable to resist the temptation. The blast was heard for miles, and sent scraps of shrapnel flying almost a quarter of a mile.

What Should I do With it?

Find an old car at a junkyard or ex-girlfriend's house. Drive it out to the same remote place where you use your flamethrower. Now, coat the car with tannerite, stand very far back and shoot it with a rifle. The results should look something like this:

Note to Women: this is pretty much what having sex with a Cracked writer is like, but for hours.

Congratulations! You are now having the most fun a citizen of the United States is legally allowed to have. Now lock the guns and explosives up and smoke some salvia to celebrate.

Holy Balls, Why is This Legal?

Like flamethrowers, tannerite actually has quite a few legal uses, including avalanche control. Despite being both legally available and explosive, no deaths have ever been linked to the compound. Due to its binary nature, tannerite is perfectly safe to store and transport. Statistically, a suburban swimming pool is much more likely to end human lives.

4 Improvised Weaponry

Holy Shit, Really?

Homemade firearms. They are also known as garage guns, Chechnyan Firecrackers and scrap weapons. Most garage guns are made out of easily acquired pieces of trash and industrial debris. They can be as simple as a lead tube with a rubber-band-powered firing pin, or a fully automatic pistol made out of aluminum cans and assorted sprockets.

Garage guns vary in quality from relatively good...

... to plastic deathtraps.

Where Can I Get One?

You can make one. Improvised firearms are legal under federal law, as long as the weapon does not violate any existing gun laws. You can even make silencers and sawed-off homemade shotguns if you get the proper tax stamps. There are a variety of guides for building home-made guns available for free online. Chechnyan rebels are the most prolific creators (and users) of these guides.

What Should I Do With Them?

The same things you would do with any other gun: load it with tracer rounds and blow up cars covered in tannerite. Of course, since you'll be shooting a DIY contraption made of scrap metal and prayers, both accuracy and safety will be far below acceptable standards. We recommend getting a gullible friend (perhaps the same person whose land you're using) to fire the first few shots. If it explodes, you might need to go back to the drawing board.

We made this!

Holy Balls, Why is this Legal?

First of all, because a gun with an unrifled barrel is only accurate to a few inches. Since most professionally manufactured firearms are legal in the USA, banning homemade ones doesn't make much sense. Neither China, the gun-control capital of the world, nor Russia have been able to stop their dissident populations from building their own firearms. Since you can literally build a gun out of the contents of a trash bin, any laws made to stop self-made firearms would be almost unenforceable.

3 The Ragnar Benson Collection

Holy Shit, Really?

Really, it's nothing more than a collection of self-help books. However, rather than dealing with broken sinks, flat tires and cracked siding, Mr. Benson's books focus on things that are somewhat more... insane. If you've ever wanted to know how to build a landmine, shoot down military helicopters, survive an atomic holocaust or make your own anti-tank rifle, the Ragnar Benson collection is for you. Ragnar's works include:

Mantrapping
David's Tool Kit: A Citizen's Guide to Taking Out Big Brother's Heavy Weapons
Long Term Survival in the Coming Dark Age - Preparing to Live after Society Crumbles
Modern Weapons Caching: A Down-To-Earth Approach To Beating The Government Gun Grab
New And Improved C-4: Better-Than-Ever Recipes For Half The Money And Double the Fun.

And, for those of you who read Mantrapping and mastered its tenets, there's the ever-popular The Most Dangerous Game: Advanced Mantrapping Techniques.

Where Can I Get Some?

Loompanics Unlimited, the radical anti-establishment publishing house that published Benson's books, is unfortunately out of business. Some of them are available from Paladin Press. Almost everything Benson has written is also available for free on the Internet. We'd provide the link here, but we're fairly certain such an action would land us on even more government watch lists then we're already on.

WARNING: While Benson's books are legal in the United States, possessing or reading any of them makes you look as suspicious as your creepy neighbor who stockpiles fertilizer and blasting caps.

The average owner of Benson's books looks a lot like this.

What Should I Do With Them?

We don't advise you to actually do anything with Mr. Benson's books. While they are a fascinating read, many of things he tells you how to do are very, very illegal. If you do end up purchasing his works, we recommend setting them out on your coffee table. Imagine the conversations they will inspire!

Guest: "Mantrapping"? What on earth is this?!
You: Only the best guide to trapping and subduing human beings in the world!
Guest: Does this have something to do with all the home-made claymores in your front yard?

Holy Balls, Why is this Legal?

That pesky 1st Amendment makes it pretty difficult for the government to ban a book just because it has instructions for baking Pyrex explosives and crippling the drive system of an M1 Abrams. This is a good thing. People like Mr. Benson are a yardstick for measuring the extent of our civil liberties. As long as he can keep distributing his work, we here at Cracked won't have to worry about our right to continue mocking the government with list-based humor.

2 The Mini-Gun

Holy Shit, Really?

Quite possibly the most deadly infantry weapon ever designed. The M134 General Electric Minigun is an incredibly badass-looking gun with the capacity of firing up to one-hundred-and-sixty-six times per second. In case you haven't fully realized the power of that statement, allow us to illustrate it.

We have no idea what this is, but it was one of the first results when we did a Google Image search for '166.' Just imagine these things are almost two hundred bullets heading towards your face every second.

Where Can I Get One?

Unfortunately, there are only something like eleven civilian-legal miniguns in the USA. Most of them are in private hands, but one occasionally comes back up on the market. The going rate for your average minigun is around $400,000. But that's not the only expense you'll have. The minigun will require an extensive mounting system. Contrary to what you have heard, firing one of these by yourself would lead to severe blunt trauma, and a huge machine gun shooting wildly into the air. It's also going to be expensive to feed: one second of firing the minigun will set you back about sixty bucks. That's $3600 for a full minute of shooting.

On the plus side, Bill Gates won't have to worry about muggers.

What Should I Do With Them?

If you're asking us this question, then you are obviously retardedly wealthy. We recommend purchasing a fleet of golden limousines, coating them in tannerite and then shooting them into flames with golden bullets. Firing this weapon for any length of time is an act of such ridiculous decadence that no other behavior you engage in will seem even the least bit indulgent.

You can use this to hunt the dodos that live on your private island.

Holy Balls, Why is it Legal?

The National Firearms Act states that any fully automatic weapons constructed before 1986 are legal for a civilian possessing a Class 2 permit to own. The few miniguns that were on the market by then remained legal, and have been circulating around the country for years. No crimes have ever been reported committed by a minigun-wielding criminal, which might be because billionaires so rarely hold up 7-11's. So, until Ted Turner finally snaps, mounts a GE Minigun on his golden H2 and guns down a muffin kiosk, you can expect the 11 or so miniguns on the market to remain legal.

1 Thermite

Holy Shit, Really?

Thermite is a composite, aluminum and metal oxide based powder. When ignited, it can reach temperatures of up to 2500 degrees Fahrenheit. For reference, that's close to half the temperature of the chucklefucking Sun. Thermite is most commonly used to cut through very strong metal, like the kind you find in the frame of a skyscraper or the body of a T-800.

Where Can I Get Some?

One way would be to start your own demolitions company. If that seems a little too time-consuming, you can always just make your own. All you need is rust and aluminum fillings. Refining and mixing them properly is kind of a chore, but it requires no more equipment then an average homeowner has in his kitchen. For the curious, you can find a concise recipe here, and pretty soon you'll have one of the hottest and most dangerous 'mites known to man, next to Dolemite.

(...Who?)

Dolemite, mothafucka!

What Should I Do With It?

Thermite requires an incredibly hot flame to light it. Even a blowtorch won't quite do the trick. Magnesium is pretty much the only easily available substance that burns hot enough to set off thermite. You can find small bricks of the stuff in sporting goods stores.

Once you have your thermite and ignition source, there are a whole bunch of fun things to do. For example, have you ever had your parking space stolen by some asshole in an ugly old Yugo?

Holy Balls, Why is it Legal?

Thermite isn't explosive, and it is extremely stable. Anyone attempting to commit crimes with it would be limited to very small-scale property destruction. We suppose thermite would be useful for disposing of corpses in a clandestine fashion, but so is lye soap and a hotel bathtub.
In case, you know... you needed to know that.

More of Robert's writing can be found at TheDeadBeat.org.

For more insane creations, check out 5 Insane Devices From Kids Cartoons (That Actually Exist). Or find out some ways other than salvia to numb your brain, in Nectar of the Broke: The World's 5 Worst Ways To Get Drunk.

And visit Cracked.com's Top Picks because one of those 11 miniguns belongs to us.