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? They are pretty much the same thing. Black sand is sand that is black, which can be for any number of reasons. One is that it contains magnetite. Iron sand contains magnetite.

So, Black sand is sand that 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).

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 silicium oxide 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.