Note, this is something I&#x27;ve been part of the fight against since the early &#x27;70s.<p>To my knowledge, they scavenged flash powder etc. from fireworks, although of course they could have bought smokeless powder.  Although that would very likely have looked a lot more suspicious or left a clear trail to them if by mail order, not that they were at all good at OPSEC.<p>Ah, no other country in the world has a gun culture quite like ours, I suspect our hobby of reloading is unique.  So I&#x27;ll bet the on-line recipes for these pressure cooker bombs depend on fireworks, which are a nearly universal thing, and the brothers didn&#x27;t think of&#x2F;wanted to take a chance on substituting a smokeless powder.<p>Not that it matters for a POS like Lautenberg, but it&#x27;s also the case that anyone thinking such an event would result in real action against reloaders---almost certainly a minority of gun owners---is not well connected to reality.<p>Not that this government didn&#x27;t attempt a deadly conspiracy with this aim like Fast and Furious, or hasn&#x27;t in the past with a much higher body count, Waco, but this doesn&#x27;t seem to be one.  If it was, why not e.g. have someone use an &quot;assault weapon&quot; against a crowd attending an event in a stadium (which is the beginning plot of a novel I&#x27;ve heard about).