After all, it’s very clever: a two-shot gun disguised as a cellphone, and manufactured by Ideal Conceal, whose motto is “Because the right of self-defense is the first law of nature.” And if it happens in nature, it must be a right, no?
Here’s the gun: a .380 caliber double-barreled derringer, which is a “transformer” cellphone:
The transformation:
And it’s only $395. A pittance to buy yourself peace of mind. However, it is a concealed weapon, and to carry it you’ll need a concealed carry permit. The ad for the gun almost makes it seem that this gun evades that regulation, though it doesn’t:
The best gun is always the one you have with you.
In today’s day and age, carrying a concealed pistol has become a necessity. But what if you didn’t have to conceal?
That’s where Ideal Conceal comes in. Smartphones are EVERYWHERE, so your new pistol will easily blend in with today’s environment. In its locked position it will be virtually undetectable because it hides in plain sight. ~ Always check your State and local concealment laws.
Note the caveat in the last sentence. So what’s the advantage of this? I suppose because it isn’t obvious, and it’s slim. However, consider this: even if you agree with the nonsense that carrying a concealed weapon is a NECESSITY, there are real guns, containing up to 10 rounds, that are so small you can slip them in your pocket. If you’re mugged on the street, and this cellphone gun is all you have, I wouldn’t count on your being able remove it from your pocket (what’s a mugger going to think when you go for your cellphone?) take off the safety, “transform” it, and fire it before your assailant gets you first. Since this is not a “home defense” or target weapon, it seems unusually cumbersome.
And what could go wrong? After all, even if you leave it lying around the house, there’s no chance your kids could mistake it for a cellphone, accidentally unlock the safety, and. . . . BANG! Right?
h/t: Gravelinspector
To fire it do you hit ‘send’?!
The ring tone is way too loud!
Blanket octopus males mate with females 10,000 times heavier than they are. That’s in nature; I’d like to exercise my right to do that please.
Clearly, the intent here is to justify police shootings of anyone carrying a phone. Who’s going to be willing to film them now??
My first thought was that it IS April 1st, right?
My second thought is that Jeff J may be on to something. It will be very interesting if the next cop that shoots someone offers the “how could I know that it was just a cell phone?” defense.
Except…isn’t that exactly what they do now? “She had something shiny in her hand. How could I know that it was a baby’s pacifier?”
Everything old is new again! In the 1960s, inspired by the gadgetry in the James Bond movies, manufacturers sold “spy” toys designed to look like everyday items that “transformed” into toy guns – including a hand-held movie camera that turned into a rifle. There were lots of them. So this is just a return to an old trope. For real instead of a toy, but nothing really new.
Bring back the GetSmart shoe phone!
That was the Shoebomber
GunFail CLXXVIII. Not necessarily for the faint of heart. The one that makes me saddest/angriest is the woman who lay down to sleep with her 3-year-old grandson in her bed…and her gun under the pillow.
“He was just doing some random shooting on his property,” explained Halifax Co. Sheriff’s Major Tommy Spencer.
WTF?????
Given the accidents that happen on a regular basis, it won’t be the kid that picks it up, it will be the adult that bought it who will answer a call by shooting himself in the head. Which is a step in the right direction, most of the time they hit someone else.
“Normally, when you see accidental shooting, nobody’s ever charged, but this is different because the actions – or the negligent actions – are what caused the death,” Lt. John Griffith says.
Uhh – what? Don’t the gun-nuts say, time and again, that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” ?
If I killed someone, even accidentally, I would expect to be charged with *something*.
Yes indeedy. Given that we actually have a legal category for exactly what he did, there is nothing unreasonable about charging him with it.
For the reasons you describe, this is either a useless gimmick or the perfect weapon for nefarious purposes.
I doubt its a perfect weapon for really any purpose. Packing a derringer into a cellphone-sized case is pretty much guaranteed to make it suck as a gun.
I suspect the market for the item is paranoiacs that fever-dream about nefarious purposes but are satisfied with useless gimmicks.
I suspect you’re right.
They don’t say what size the thing is, but it looks pretty clumsy to me. Almost any of the little guns on the page Grania linked to would be far handier – and many of them are cheaper too. And 6 shots seems like a reasonable minimum to be useful. Not that I’ve ever fired a gun**, but if I was ever in a situation where I had to use one I would not feel happy with just two shots.
cr
**Never want to, I’m in the anti-gun camp, but if I had to use a gun I’d want a useful one.
Ironically, this seems like it’s meant to *circumvent* concealed carry laws. Here in Texas, open carry laws were just passed, meaning that, yes, you can walk around with a gun strapped to your waist!
So with this weird device, I wonder if you can walk around with it on your hip as well, in a smartphone holster. I would hope that that would violate concealed carry laws, though, because it’s still a gun out in the open. Not a problem in Texas though.
Why not start other way around. Take a gun and install a cell phone. I’m pretty sure that is what James Madison had in mind.
And after you shoot yourself taking a selfie, you can call for help.
There’s a variation on your idea which isn’t bad at all; install automatic cameras on police weapons that take a snapshot of the target every time the gun is fired. Basically a variation on the dashboard camera but for firearm use.
Brilliant!
Don’t you think they’d quickly learn to get a bit of gum wrapper (or whatever) accidentally stuck over the lens?
I foresee 2 categories of mistakes. People who accidentally shoot their ears off and people trying to shoot an attacker with an iphone.
I guess the term ‘selfie’ might take on a whole new meaning.
Yes, instead of – Did he leave and note? It would be – Did he leave a message?
Of course there is the popular ‘gun’ app for the iphone, complete with firing and reloading sounds.
….so if a person had some kind of injury/gunshot wound to the head it would be called a ‘selfie’
Or you could say the injury was caused by a ‘dumbphone’ Great double meaning there! I’m starting to think this might actually be a good idea! 🙂
“People who accidentally shoot their ears off”
Damn! That was what immediately leaped to mind the moment I saw it, but you beat me to the comment.
Excuse me, my gun is ringing…
cr
And a new rash of cell phone thefts….
I don’t see why these couldn’t be outlawed. Many specific types of weapon intended as hidden weapons, such as switch blades and sawed-off shotguns, are.
“However, it is a concealed weapon, and to carry it you’ll need a concealed carry permit.”
Not here in Vermont you won’t. (And yet, somehow, we’re not knees high in carnage.)
The commentators, above, who speak of the consequences of this gun looking just like a cellphone are spot-on, imo. Not a great idea. In fact, a very bad idea.
Look, this is a kind of Derringer pistol, a last-resort weapon which have been around for hundreds of years. But, man, it is ugly and doesn’t look robust enough to be a wise $400.00 investment to me. Yet, there thousands of preorders for this thing. One has to ask why?
I think we have moved into an era where angry people will buy this gun just to provokingly assert their gun ownership rights and to piss liberals off. That is the real appeal of this ugly ill-conceived weapon. It is about gun rights, not self-protection.
This is a symptom of 2nd Amendment war between gun lovers and gun haters.
I do not see the two groups as necessarily equal in unreasonableness. Primarily because according to the NRA, anyone who supports additional legal safety requirements for legal gun ownership and storage is classified as a “gun hater.” IOW as far as they are concerned, the middle is the left. Which means that the ‘gun hater’ group as they define it is filled with lots of people I’d consider reasonable, the gun lover group much less so.
“Siri, kill that guy over there.”
I like the way you think; if I can get that app, I’d be interested! (Betting a guided-missile Siri app would be more accurate than me…)
And getting your passcode wrong 10 times in a row no longer just wipes your phone. 🙂
And then Siri will kilt the guy instead, and before you know it everyone’s running around looking like renegades from a bagpipe marching band. Such a bad idea.
That is in fact a real Monty Python sketch! Only it’s alien blancmanges turning everyone into Scotsmen so the aliens can win at tennis.
“Siri, sexually excite that guy over there until he has a stroke (or can’t act on it).”
Wow. Somehow I am reminded of when Megatron led to a problem in the school rules when I was in elementary school. (There was a ban against toy guns.) Of course, this is ‘for real’, which makes it sad rather than amusing.
(The amusement was the apparent ruling that kids could bring Megatron to school so long as he stayed in robot mode …)
This has gotta be an April Fool. The website is slick but the contact email address is a gmail address.
I see a lot of people using gmail addresses for business these days. With gmail as reliable and available as it is, why not? (Or so people would say.) Doesn’t mean it is genuine, just that we can’t tell it isn’t …
It is not an April Fool’s. I first saw it last week.
Ditto. Sadly.
Supposed to be available in mid 2016, they are pre-taking orders for it, and all the pictures they have look like CGI and/or stock photos…
Not to be overly skeptical but I dont think there is much to worry about. It will probably go into ‘development hell’ and a whole mess of money get wasted on a promises of a ‘toy’ that never come through.
Surprised that the guy didnt do a Kickstarter or Gofundme thing.
Form Gun Nuts Media: “…there’s this pesky little issue… called The National Firearms Act, and if the ATF is consistent with their rulings, there is exactly zero doubt in my mind that this piece of crap will end up being ruled to be an Any Other Weapon (AOW).”
“However, it is a concealed weapon, and to carry it you’ll need a concealed carry permit.”
While still true in most states, the trend in the US is to do away with permits. At present, eight states allow concealed carry without permits, with legislation pending in another eighteen states, which many will pass before the end of the year. Such legislation often removes requirements for any sort of firearms training, also.
Gun control laws have been severely eroded over the past thirty years. In 1986, about a third of the population lived in states where there was not even a process to apply for a concealed carry permit. The majority of the population lived in states where issuance in permits was highly discretionary, and many issuing authorities refused to issue to ordinary law-abiding citizens. This is no longer the case in any state. And the trend against any sort of gun control is increasing.
If Donald Trump does become President, could you please ask him to build a big, big wall *all the way* around the USA, not just along the border with Mexico, to keep all you Americans safely away from the rest of us? Please? Sort of like ‘Escape From New York’, just on a larger scale.
We can arrange emigration procedures to allow anyone who does not want to carry a gun, concealed or otherwise, to come out and live with the rest of us.
There was a time, a few years ago, where I searched Google for “U.S. emigration statistics,” and Google reported no results.
I’m curious whether this could slip through airport security or not. This seems a possible use.
Speaking of which, would the gun from ‘The Man with the Golden Gun’ still be able to get through security? eg. Barrel was a cigar tube, handle was a cigarette case, etc. that all fitted together to form a working gun. I suspect only the bullets would attract attention.
It shouldn’t be able to if its metal. But it’s probably keeping some intelligence and threat analysts in DHS up at night. 🙂
Someone had to come up with gimmick so we can get it out of the way and move on. Given all the selection choices Americans have, no serious gun lover is going to own one of these, well, apart from it’s novelty factor.
After reading the GunFail post (Eric #5) a few people are going to lose an eyeball, fingers and worse before it goes into a lower draw for some child to find… for carnage, ’round two’
I thought the big deal with walking around with a gun was deterrence. Folks would know they better not start up anything with you around, no sir.
So the next logical product is cell phone cases which look just like guns.
Looking at it cold-bloodedly, the only serious use for a thing like this is to allow you to get in somewhere that you would not be allowed in armed to dispatch someone who is unlikely to have armed, or even competent, protection. A murder weapon, not a defensive weapon.
That’s pretty obviously wrong. It’s a more stylish and convenient concealed weapon, but no more concealed than a pocket derringer.
The most worrying thing about it imo is that it will lead to cops shooting people holding phones.
Even going along for a moment with the insanity of gun-toting…
This seems to me to raise the chances that you’d actually have to shoot somebody. Because I wouldn’t think, in a quick and likely heated situation, an aggressor is going to feel threatened by your holding what looks to be a cell phone in your hand.
Like “Stop right there, or I’ll shoot a picture!”
Lacking obvious visual threat, it seems less likely to diffuse a situation and would more likely to end up being used to kill someone.
Defuse?
Yes, that ^^^ 🙂
“In today’so day and age…”
I’ve heard that phraseyou whole life as if things are just getting progressively worse and we need to harken back to a golden era. When is this era? Prior to Civil Rights and the heyday of McCarthy ism? WWII, complete with internment camps and millions of deaths? Slavery? Witch hunts? Crusades? Gladiator games? Just what day and age are we supposed to be nostalgic about? It’s no wonder Trump is winning with his stupid motto “Make America Great Again.”
Some of those guns in the site of pocket guns are cute.
One of them looks risky, though. The Taurus Curve has a built in light. Nothing can go wrong while using your gun as a flashlight.
I’m sorry to say it, but looking over at you from the other side of the Atlantic ocean, it seems to me that USA is on some alien planet. I just don’t get all the strange ideas and laws over there. How can you permit people to carry around guns in public (of course, I know that your laws vary by state but still). It’s insane.
We also have a ridiculous number of guns over here (in Norway), but we use them for hunting. The thought of letting people walk around with guns designed to kill people is alien to me.
I’m also confused by the concept of natural law. I’ve heard some crazy objectivists argue that property right is a natural law, but I’ve never understood where they get it from. After all, in nature, territory is gained and lost all the time and no one “owns” a piece of land for long. Those same objectivists often argue that homosexuality is unnatural even though it actually IS found in nature, unlike property right.
And appearantly keeping a gun is part of natural law as well, even though guns are completely man made.
I don’t get it. Maybe someone can help me understand?
I think it’s something to do with the pioneer spirit and How The West Was Won, or the need to defend themselves from The Bad Guys (TM), or the holy and immutable 2nd Amendment to the holy and immutable Constitution, or the necessity to overthrow a tyrannical guv’ment that is one day going to take their rights away from them, or freeh-dummm, or the soon-to-occur re-establishment of the Confederacy when good ol’ Southern boys won’t have to take any more crap from them damn Yankees, or perhaps just because those bleeding-heart wussy liberals can’t understand that a Real Man needs to take his rifle to the supermarket with him in case there is a shoot-out in the aisles.
Did I miss anything?
Think religious “literalism” with the 2nd Amendment. (Note that in both cases literalism is not literally what is meant. [Ahem.])