A Minnesota entrepreneur named Kirk Kjellberg designed a gun–a two-shot .380 that more or less resembles a cell phone. Liberals got wind of the design and went ballistic:
Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton on Thursday came out strongly against a soon-to-be-released, double-barreled, .380-caliber handgun designed to look like a smartphone.
“I don’t know how we can legislate thoroughly against human idiocy. It just boggles the mind that somebody would invent something like this and then there’s a market for it,” the Democratic-Farmer-Labor governor said Thursday.
Why, exactly, is this “idiocy”? Single and two-shot pistols of this sort are rather common and are all, as far as I know, designed for concealment. This is what the gun looks like:
Dayton said he would write New York Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer, who plans to ask the federal government to investigate and potentially stop sales of the iPhone-looking guns, about the subject.
“I think this requires a national prohibition,” Dayton said.
Banning it in Minnesota is not enough!
“This is about people’s responsibility. The second amendment is a right, and with that comes a responsibility.”
Actually, in Dayton’s eyes the Second Amendment isn’t much of a right, since he thinks this gun can be banned because of its appearance. Sort of like an “assault rifle.”
The gun’s inventor, who will market it under the company name Ideal Conceal, explains its genesis:
Kjellberg said he got the idea for the phone-like gun when he was in a restaurant last summer, his jacket caught on a handle, and a young boy spotted his weapon.
“He said, ‘That guy has a gun,’ really loud,” he said. “The whole restaurant stopped for a second. Then everyone went about their business.
“I thought, ‘There has to be a better way,’” he said. “Then I noticed a guy talking on his phone. My phone was sitting in front of me. I thought, ‘That is something that will blend in.’”
Chuck Schumer has already called for an investigation:
“Just like toys that too much look like handguns should not be sold, handguns that look too much like toys should not be sold,” said Schumer in a press conference Monday.
The New York Democrat feels the gun was designed to appeal to criminal elements, and is asking the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to investigate Ideal Conceal’s handgun before it is allowed to be sold.
“It’s clearly being marketed for nefarious purposes — 4,000 people are ready to pull the trigger on this dangerous weapon,” Schumer said. “Why would we want to make it easier for criminals or terrorists like those who attacked Paris and Brussels to wreak havoc?”
This is mystifying. What is clearly nefarious about the Ideal Conceal pistol? Like all concealable single and double shot pistols, it is marketed for self-defense. How does this particular gun make it easier for terrorists to wreak havoc? It is hard to imagine a terrorist launching an attack with a two-shot pistol.
The inventor responded on Facebook:
The likely buyer would be somebody with a CCW and wants something he can conceal from the view of an attacker for self-defense. These types of guns aren’t exactly new, there are wallet holsters on the market where you can put a micro/sub-compact firearm in what looks like a wallet and shoot the gun without taking it from a wallet. These have been around for a long time, but I’ve never heard of people using them against law enforcement.
Offhand, I can’t think of any reason why it would be constitutional to ban this particular firearm. One possible concern is that someone–a child, perhaps–might mistake the gun for an actual cell phone and fire it accidentally. But in order to fire the gun, you first have to flip it open, in which case it can’t possibly be mistaken for a cell phone. Of course this firearm, like all others, should be kept in a secured manner, away from children.
Ideal Conceal’s gun won’t be available for sale for some months. At that point, the predictable result of attacks by the likes of Schumer and Dayton will be to send sales sky-high.
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