Board Thread:Theories and Speculation/@comment-27821571-20160915183730/@comment-734582-20160926103950

Georgio722 wrote: Plus, if they are the same thing, why do they have separate pages on Wikipedia? Black sand is sand that is black and may, but doesn't have to, contain magnetite. It also doesn't have to be magnetic. Iron sand is sand that contains iron, but doesn't exclusively have to. (IE it may contain silica, titanium etc). Magnetite on the other hand is a chemical compound, unlike the previous two which are substances.

None of this matters since Gaara's sand is just ordinary sand (and not, say, beach sand which is mostly crushed shells) and that's just ordinary silica which has no magnetic properties.

Not that that matters either since there's nothing to conclusively proof you need magnet release to control sand, as none of the sand-based techniques are listed as Magnet Release or KKG at the very least.

Ergo, sand control is just a separate jutsu. It simply seems to work by soaking sand with your chakra, perhaps not unlike how Konan miraculously controls paper.