I was kind of shocked to find that US law defines it as "any destructive device" and goes on to define that as "having an explosive or incendiary charge of more than one-quarter ounce." Which is 1/26th the explosive in an M67 grenade. 1/4oz is more like a couple of M80s stuck together.
As someone else said, this is presumably so they can charge people with terrorism for using basically any kind of explosive.
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCODE-2010-title18/pdf/...
https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim...