I mean, you really ought to be able to experiment with explosives in a free country, as long as you're not hurting anyone / planning to hurt anyone. It's obviously legal when companies in the industry do it. Why shouldn't it be for private citizens.
I think the problem is that, much of the time, there's no way to know _if_ someone is planning on causing harm with certain tools until it's too late; until they actually cause the harm. While it would be nice to allow everyone to have anything they want (as long as they're not going to hurt anyone else), sometimes it's necessary to take away some rights in order to protect the greater good. Sometimes it's necessary to make compromises, sometimes there's tradeoffs.
In this case, the judgement was to decide if it's lawful to make a damp-firework's worth of explosives even if everyone agrees there's no harmful intent, or even any realistic capability to cause harm ("small amounts to produce insignificant detonations").
You can see this in the dissenting judges opinions, where they conclude that it's unlawful when only asking about "personal experimentation or own private education". There is no mention of balancing personal freedom against risks to greater society, or evaluation of whether it might be used for harm, or if the quantities produced could ever cause any real harm to anyone.
I find the quoted summary of the dissenting opinion strange:
> “to say that something is done for one’s own private education is not a sufficient object for the purposes of the section 4(1) defence, as it does not identify the use to which the explosives will be put in order to provide such education.
> “Similarly, personal experimentation is not a sufficient object for this purpose as, although it identifies in very general terms what is to be done with the explosives, it does not identify any purpose for so doing.”
Reading that, I can't help thinking that personal experimentation is what is to be done, and private education is the purpose for so doing.
But I'm not a judge, and that won't be the whole opinion.
By that definition, car racing on public streets, running red lights and ignoring speed limits is absolutely fine, as long as you’re not hurting anyone / planning to hurt anyone.
Regulations that limit the risks people get exposed to exist for a reason: you can’t undo damage done to others by punishing the culprit. That’s why, for example, reckless driving is illegal.
Lots of things are only legal, not when companies do it, but when those doing it follow safety protocols.
For example, if you buy that C4, how does it get on your land?
If you make it yourself, how do the ingredients get on your land? Is that safe for the public? Does the process produce waste (gases, liquids) that may cause damage to neighbors or the environment?
If one of your experiments doesn’t go ‘boom’, do you toss what’s left in the garbage bin, or do you think that should be regulated?
Do you make precautions so that playing kids can’t accidentally enter the area? Do you calculate how far parts of that washing machine may get thrown away, to make sure parts don’t end up in your neighbors house?
I'm not familiar with specific laws in UK, but it's possible that the industry has to seek a license before they start experimenting with explosives.