SAWing, Shooting and Bombing

So I promised I'd get back to SAW and related things..... One of my deep interests in chemistry (besides polymers, of course) is ballistics and explosives technology. This started years ago, but was greatly encouraged when I took physical chemistry last year and had to make some kind of explosive every week. One of my first independant successes was a flare. I wasn't sure exactly what I was doing, but I mixed Potassium nitrate and sugar in equal concentrations (Potassium nitrate or potassium perchlorate are great oxidizers, and the sugar is an excellent fuel source as it burns really hot), and threw in a bit of Strontium nitrate for the red colour. I rolled it up like a cigar in a paper towel and sitting it on my lab bench, I lit it. At first just the paper towel burned and I was feeling a little disappointed.
Suddenly, there was a massive fizzing noise and it exploded into life, spinning and bouncing across the table and shooting out red flames and smoke. When it finally stopped my friend Wes and I were standing there, mouths hanging open. Wes turned to me and said, "I think you should try that under the fume hood next time."
But anyway, that is totally off the topic. What I really wanted to say, is first of all, how much the chemistry industry has influenced our quality of life. Chemistry makes possible the reality of clean drinking water, or fuel-efficient cars, of comfy vinyl seats like the one I'm sitting on, of food that doesn't spoil after one day, of medicines and cosmetics, of inexpensive polyester clothes, and of a million other things. On the other hand, we can also thank chemistry for the atom bomb, chemical gas warfare, the disasters at Chernobyl, Bhopal and Seveso; and many other things.
J. Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the Manhattan Project and a brilliant physicist, spent the latter part of his life lobbying for nuclear disarmament and regretting the massive destruction science had brought about. What should we say about that? My feeling is that chemistry, like any other discipline, is an instrument that can be used equally for good as for bad. It depends, a large portion of it, anyway, on the heart and head of the person who uses it. This is one reason why I'm passionately committed to responsible education- Happy Heather's Hullaballoo categorically supports science education for all ages.
Moreover, I also think it is important to support ballistics, explosives, and other military-related technologies. For example, ballistics technology has enabled the development of full metal jacket and hollow point bullets- full metal jacket bullets piercing right through whatever they're aimed at (including sheet metal or several people in a row) and causing minimal damage to the immediate target, and hollow point bullets mushrooming out upon contact and causing irreparable damage to the target but minimal risk to bystanders. I'll let you think about which one is more ethical, but suffice to say it is important that we pursue greater knowledge in these fields.