stdenisg writes: "From the website: '...a fully functional machine gun with TWELVE rotating barrels and a live action trigger. Loads 12 bands per barrel for a whopping 144 rubber bands that shoot off as fast as you can turn the handle!' This article gives some background info. Impressive..."
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not a hoax. my friend built one of these in elementary school for a 4h project. it was pretty impressive, but not too effective. the rubber bands that you have to use are so big they don't hurt much when they hit you.
Not really. When I worked at a small games shop about nine years ago, we stocked these. They were tremendous fun, and we made some sales when we started playing with them on slow days and people would walk in and see us. We had repeat customers, too, as people who decided that they craved revenge.:)
IIRC, they sold for $10-$25, the quality of the wood and ammunition capacity being primary deciding factors.
Are you sure you guys where selling these? I have seen one of these in a local gun and knife shop. They had to put it in a glass case all on it's own because it was fairly fragile. Also the cost at this mall shop was ~$350, and the website has it for over 300. $10-$25 just seems a little low.
I remember back in the olden days when we had one rubber band for the ammo and the trigger was top-mounted on the gun as a clothespin! Damn kids; they've never have had it rough...
No one will EVER blieve me, but I was ROBBED with a rubber band gun.
I am not sure if giving the details of a home made gun is legal or not, but those things were able to shoot a real bullet (a pistol, or an Israeli Thompson usually.)
This was back in africa, some of you might know what I am talking about, I will just give you some hints, and see if you can picture it.
Ingredients: 1) a cable of tire tube (American cars no longer have this, but back in africa, car tires were hollow, and they have a balloon like tube that goes between them and the rims. The tube is the black thing that some poeple swim with, if you ever been to a latin american or african beach.) You just cut an long stripe off of the tube, and this is a very hard rubber.
2) wooden skeleton (your favorite gun shape, we had ones that even had the curvy magazine of a Kalishnikov.)
3) a metal pipe. The longer, thinner, the more accurate.
4) an L shaped piece of steel, with a pointy end.
5) a long hard nail (this is curved on the wood, and used to hold the bullet.)
Steps: ------ If you arranged the above in some special way, put a bullet in the nail loop, and some how used the L shaped steel like an arrow and a bow, you would be able to shoot a real amu.
The bullet will fly straight, and the left over "butt" (what do you call it.) would be left in the nail loop (sometimes, if the nail is too weak, it would jump and hit you right between the eyes.)
Finally: -------- This is ALL finctional, and figment of my imagination. I bare no responsibilty for anything that results from following it. Grow up, and enjoy it as fiction.
Thanks SOOOO much for telling me the exact name and submiting a link. I was about to shit in my pants, after I hit submit. Totally forgot about the current climate in the US.
Now that they have seen it elsewhere, EVEN Phrack (/.ers are geeks, ya know.) I can sleep well tonight and not worry.
Big-ass rubber bands were all the rage in my old IT department, several years ago. We used to get this monster rubber bands, a foot long at rest, binding 9-track reels. Nothing promotes an arms race like the sudden discovery that one of the other programmers has a box of rubber bands in his desk drawer. These babies brough about detent and eventually peace returned to the office. Once again proving, the best defense is the threat of a massive welt.
Just a side note, in case anyone reading Slashdot attends HH Dow Highschool in Midland, MI. The paperclips embedded in the ceiling of the library magazine room are my legacy. >8^)
If you arranged the above in some special way, put a bullet in the nail loop, and
some how used the L shaped steel like an arrow and a bow, you would be able to shoot
a real amu.
Also known in 1950's and early 1960's on the streets of the USA as "zip guns". Pretty popular with the gangs back then. Basically a tube that you put a bullet in, then use the rubber band to power a makeshift firing pin.
(American cars no longer have this, but back in africa, car tires were hollow, and they have a balloon like tube that goes between them and the rims. The tube is the black thing that some poeple swim with, if you ever been to a latin american or african beach.)
American automobiles may not use innertubes any more, but American tractors and many American trucks still do. Nothing better than grabbing an innertube, a case of good beer, and floating down a river. (you hang the beer under the innertube so it keeps cold in the river)
Hey, you discovered a zip gun. I can simplify it for you too:
1 metal pipe (diamter of a bullet) 1 metal ball bearing 1 strong rubber band 1 bullet
bullet goes in the pipe, bearing rests aainst the firing pin, rubber band gets glued/ducte taped, attached in some way to the bearing and also to the pipe on either side of the bullet.
pull back the band to "cock", let go to fire, and hope the shell casing doen't hit you in the eye and make you blind.
I think 2nd am't only covers legal guns. But if there is anything protecting my write to write such things, I would be overjoyed, and probably give me yet another reason to be a proud "new" American.
If this is really true, then I am a different man from this moment.
If this sounds too corny to you, you probably are used to freedom.
It's funny, but everybody seems to forget the "well regulated militia" part of this article.
See if you can follow the steps:
1. We want a free state. 2. A free state needs to be secure. 3. A well-regulated militia guarantees that security. 4. A well-regulated militia needs to be armed. 5. Therefore, the right of citizens to bear arms is guaranteed, so that they may form a well-regulated militia for the purpose of guaranteeing the security of a free state.
Then, whenever the government cracks down on unregulated militias, these groups complain that their right to bear arms has been abridged.
And what about the National Guard? Guard units fall under the jurisdiction of the states, and certainly fill the role of a well-regulated militia.
I've seen similar models on websites, as well as demonstrations at craft shows. These things are AWESOME. Though it does take some time to load them, the payoff is worth it. I've been contemplating one of these bad boys for the defense of my desk area to keep people I don't want to talk to out of my office..
Just havn't gone through with it, for now the automatic nerf gun I've got works just as well..
Good to see some real hardwork being put to work for the playground. Of course for $395 most people will just go for the twisted elastic on the fingers and rolled up paper.
But, the advantage of getting rid of pesky kids far outweighs the cost....
It's a bird, it's a plane.... no its elastic shooting man!!!
Man lighten the fuck up. Just because we joke about something like that certainly doesn't mean someone intends to do it.
And no, shooting a rubber band at a cat isn't funny.
However...Firing a fully-automatic rubberband chaingun at a cat strikes so many comic images in one's head that you can't help but crack a smile. It's comic in it's absurdity.
I wish I had one of these guns to shoot at you, because I would do it, and I'd think it's funny.
not only that, but you know you're down and out when the article says, and i quote:
"The first time I loaded one, there was two of us working on it and it took us 20 minutes," said Mr. Toms, who lost his job a year ago as an executive in a Los Angeles-based dot-com firm.
"I applied everything I knew about running a dot-com business and merged it with my passion for fun artillery. I'm making a fraction of what I used to make as an executive, but I'm having a hell of a lot more fun."
The guns' inventor, Don Mims, 54, of Fort Worth, Texas, graduated with an aerospace engineering degree, but turned to his woodworking hobby as a career.
endquote. He was a dot.bomb exec and has an a degree in aerospace engineering, but he's selling rubber band guns. This is a guy who was willing to throw in the towel when he saw the way things were blowing, and do something fun with his life instead of bitching. Lots of/. posters could take a lesson from this guy.
> One minor detail - Don't forget to bolt that webcam to the gun, so we can all watch that guy jump each time a rubber band leaves a nasty welt on his backside.;)
Better yet, use a small wireless webcam and bolt it to the cat;-)
Actually I did shoot a BB gun at a cat once, I still laugh when I think about it. Shot the cat in the butt with my BB gun pumped once. That damn cat jumped 4 feet in the air and took off like a lightning bolt. Then he fell asleep on my bed that night, cat's dont hold grudges.
Oh yeah, and I am not a serial killer or child molestor, contrary to what psych teaches about people who torture animals;)
Hey I love your reactionary, knee-jerk observation! Allow me to make one of my own: Any poster that quotes Nietzsche in his sig and whines about harassing a cat did not get the Nietzsche he read.
The Uberman has no need for "Animal Rights", as Human rights are what the weak hide behind from Darwin.
Personally I don't harass my cat, as he would claw my face off gleefully. But that's just me.
REAL MEN [tm] eat cats. They gut 'em with only their fingernails, poke them with sticks, and cook them over an open fire they made by rubbing a pair of matches together. None of those wimpy Frying Pans for these men.
Lighten up man! Do you really take anything on slashdot seriously? Laugh! It's funny!
Heaven forbid that kids in gradeschool ever learn to make these!! I remember getting showered with rubber band bullets fired from the traditional one-shot thumb & finger rubber band launcher. Some of the really hardcore guys would bring hundreds of rubberbands wrapped arounds their wrists and ankles, plus canisters of these little paper ammo things that they spent hours making. But this would bring a new meaning to lunch hour warfare.
I was one of those hardcore kids, in middle school.
I wouldn't say "hours", but I sure knew how to make a good wasp. There were difference sizes for different occasions (range, wind if you were outdoors, allowable noise level)... rubber bands and wasps had to be concealed, because the teachers really didn't like them.
It was fun, though. Nobody ever got more than a sting, as there were certain rules. Paper ammo only, not even foil. If you inked your wasp, you were really gonna get it. No firing if it would get you or your target busted. No face shots, for the love of God no face shots! No firing at close range. No firing on declared noncombatants. There was no rulebook, but we weren't complete assholes, so those were all understood.
And it was constant warfare. In the halls, in class, on the bus... the only time a truce was implicitly understood to be in effect was at lunch or during tests.
Yep, wasps thoroughly kicked pencil-fighting's ass.
Since I seem to recall that a kid in elementry school was once suspended (expelled?) for the small crime of making a gun shape out of his hand while trying to play cops and robbers under that school's zero tolerance policy, I don't think many kids would be able to bring this gatling gun shaped item to school. (Sadly, this is not a joke: this really happened)
By the way, zero tolerance and mandatory sentencing rules suck. What ever happened to allowing the elements of the crime dictate the punishment?
I built myself a rubberband machine gun when I was in my early teens. It started when we found a bag of rubber bands at the local park, probably dumped by some newspaper delivery person. We couldn't just leave hundreds of thick rubber bands sitting there, so we hauled them all home and began shooting each other with them. I got tired of snapping them against my thumb and decided to build a gun. My dad had a decent wood shop in the garage, so I got some wood together and built myself a single-shot rifle.
This of course gave me a competitive advantage, and pretty soon everyone wanted guns. I built up a pretty little arsenal, and things were good. But I was ambitious and wanted to see just how cool a gun I could make. So I designed and eventually built a machine gun.
It was a crude weapon compared to my original gracefully sanded and curved rifle, but the results were dramatic. It was a length of two-by-four with a firing mechanism in back and a row of pegs at the business end. The mechanism was a thick dowel studded with a spiral of half-inserted wood screws, mounted on an axle perpendicular to the gun's line of fire. A small crank and ratchet controlled the dowel's spin. You loaded it by hooking rubber bands, one at a time, from the pegs at the end to the screws on the dowel, then advancing the ratchet one click. It took more work to load the more rubber bands you put on, so I was never able to load more than a couple dozen onto it.
To fire it you simply released the ratchet, and WHAM! The dowel turned in a blur, the rubber bands went everywhere, and it made this cool thrumming and clacking noise. Accuracy sucked, but that was fine; in fact once I loaded the rubber bands crossways, so that instead of being parallel to the gun's "bore" they angled back and forth across it. No need to wave the gun around that way - it would "spray" its shots automatically, a nice feature considering the gun would dump its entire ammunition load in a couple of seconds.
The gun was very impressive and frightened the other kids but I abandoned it shortly because it took too long to load. It's not much good blowing off all your ammunition in the first few seconds of a firefight when the other kids can pick up the rubberbands you've just plastered all over their clothing and fire them right back at you while you stand there for ten minutes getting ready for your next shot.
Anyway, I remember seeing this guy's Gatling at the California State Fair a few years back. I could have sworn it was the 144-shot model even then, so either I'm remembering wrong and it was actually the 72-shot model, or there's some other nutcase out there building 144-shot rubber band machine guns with a similar design.
It's all fun and games til someone loses an eye. Seriously though, i'd be dangerous with one of those things. I've almost put out eyes with my safe lil koosh ring gun! But damn it looks like it'd be a blast around the office. "You wanted what? Before I leave today? Step over there please..." (glorious sounds of pinheaded clients demanding the impossible being riddled with rubber bands, welts sprouting.. ahh.. stress relief) Wonder if I could reverse engineer this thing? *goes off in search of woodworking tools...*
Get one of these. When you see a student not paying attention in class fire one at him. When he complains fire another.
He'll duck the second one.
Now say to him. "Why did that second one not hit you?"
He'll say:"I ducked".
Now say: "And why did you not duck the first one".
He'll say: "I was not paying attention".
End with: "And who's fault was that?".
That reminds me of Calculus 101 and Dr. Spenceley's room. Dr. Spenceley had been the math department head for 30 years and had always been complaining that the chalk boards were too small, so when a new building was constructed, they made a class room just for him: it sat 50, had two doors and one small window, and all the rest of the space on all four walls were chalkboards.
Spenceley was a pretty good teacher, but still, it was calculus, and some people had been partying the night before... So eventually someone was snoring, leaned over against chalkboard on the side wall. Spenceley took an eraser and fired it 30 feet down that little ledge at the bottom of the chalkboard, smack into the guy and pushing a great cloud of chalkdust ahead.
He had an awake and alert class for the rest of the term.
I had a science teacher who, among other things, would wake up a sleeping student by swooshing the fire extinguisher under their feet. Woke them up quickly enough:)
Back then, paddling was still accepted in my high school. He had the symbolic "two jap flags" flag hanging in the corner (two big red circles, get it?)
Ahhh...if only educators could get away with that stuff these days.
I actually own one of these, it came as a demo when I purchased a variety of equipment from the manufacturer (to resell). It is by far the coolest rubberband gun ever, and while loading it does take a lot of time, it's well worth the pay off. For those of you who think this is a hoax, let me assure you, it's not.
Last time I started a cubicle war with a good stock of rubber bands I ended up with a bruise on the top of my back that was an exact outline of the continent of Australia. It lasted three days.
Authorities today installed new 'Rubber detectors' at local airports, saying that terrorists armed with new rubber band technology could have enough firepower to capture a plane...
this place [surefireproducts.com] (surefireproducts.com) sells some really nice products.
Of course, at work we have battle grouping for our elastic band wars and we've found that a good piece of card board works well as a machine gun...we've also found a hand technique which stings from 10 yards away. In fact, we did some studies of it in our friendly neighbourhood campus engineering department, and found that it has an inherent spin which stabilizes it (gyroscope).
Make a C with your index and thumb on your left hand. Hang the elastic loosely on it and then grab the bottom inside of the band and push towards your target (with your thumb). One side will be more tightly wound than the other. When you release your thumb it'll fire. No wear and tear as it doesn't hit your brace finger or cause redness (you newbies will find out what we mean when you use the two hand technique).
OK mabye I'm stupid (perhaps thats a foregone conclusion since I can't fire a rubber band) but can you explain a bit more? Like what part of the C am I supposed tohand it loosely off...
Well actually I think I got it but sometimes it hits my right thumb
Actually, the whipping around of the elastic gives it some unrequired spin (in the "gun" method). Also, after a while the back of your thumb will start to hurt. In terms of accuracy, both methods (C and Gun) are very g00d. Also, you can load 6 onto each hand (double barrel, middle, ring, and pinkie) and get pretty decent firepower (nothing scares a coworker more than 2 armed hooligans busting into your cubicle and firing 24 elastics in under two seconds at your head). But, over extended use, the C method (albeit slower) does not have the same wear and tear upon your hands. In terms of distance, the C method shoots twice as far as the gun method (you've got more lenght with the C). And of course, the spin, the elastic whipping around your thumb (in the gun) causes it to gain spin that is just plain awful (my english just got really bad). To really see the difference use small elastics or big elastics. Once you get good enough you'll notice that the medium sized ones are used to snipe, the small ones for a bit closer range but for head shots (on demand) and the big ones just hurt really bad from 20 feet away.
I'm impressed...I had to scroll down more than half the comments section to find the "i'm so fucking great for knowing about this before slashdot" post.
Then again, I guess that's a little slow for slashdot. I was banking on seeing this as the third comment.
Wonder how long I could hold off the feds with a couple of thes? Course, one DOES cost about the same as the taxes I owe, but this plan comes with free room and board!
"The first time I loaded one, there was two of us working on it and it took us 20 minutes," said Mr. Toms, who lost his job a year ago as an executive in a Los Angeles-based dot-com firm.
"I applied everything I knew about running a dot-com business and merged it with my passion for fun artillery. I'm making a fraction of what I used to make as an executive, but I'm having a hell of a lot more fun."
Now that's brilliant, he uses all his business knowledge from a failed dot-com! What next? A rubber band gatli...oh my, yes, I think that was a pig.
I built something similar to this Lego Machine Gun [silverlight.org] once, though his is far prettier than mine was! Self-loading from a gravity-fed magazine of bricks, crank power, internal rubber band.
Quote from page: "I can empty the 17-round magazine in about 1.9 seconds, which translates to a rate of fire of over 500 rounds per minute."
The Gatling rubber-band gun has been around for a while. It's now sold by the same most excellent people who made this trebuchet kit [dansdata.com], but the rubber-band machine gun isn't actually something those guys make, any more than this catapult watch [dansdata.com] is.
Surefire Products [surefireproducts.com] are the makers of the Gatling rubber-band gun; it's their flagship product, and they (and their resellers) don't actually expect to sell many (or any) of them.
Surefire's far cheaper rubber-band handguns, on the other hand, are excellent:-).
Wow, I almost forgot that I had one of these more than 10 years ago (one of the Surefire pistols). That has got to be one of my funnest toys... but it would have been funner if I had like two or three of those, so that my sister or parents could have stood a chance against me.:(
The company claims that it's star wheel that loads 12 rounds per barrel is new. Yes, I have seen gatling style rubber band guns before, but they only fired one shot per "barrel", so you got nowhere near 144 rounds. But what this company really sells, after people get done ooohing at the $395 machine gun, is 12 and 24 round "pistols" and "shotguns" at somewhat affordable prices.
Still, it would be damned nice to smuggle one of these into the courthouse and cut loose at a gaggle of lawyers...
I have seen many other rubber band machine guns. (Although none this nice, none that fire a full gross of bands, and none that are priced as if they were built by defense contractors.)
Here is another brand of rubber band machine gun. [c-zone.net] You can only load 24 bands at a time, but the clips make it rapidly reloadable. And at less than $20, you can afford to arm your entire skirmish line.
On the other hand, most rubber band fights are won or lost in the first few seconds. Brief controlled bursts are more effective than spray and pray.
Give me a couple days, I can probably crank out a Lego prototype for less. Just as soon as I'm finished with making a Lego CVT(which also uses rubber bands).
For that price, I'd buy myself another airsoft gun...
For those who don't know what airsoft guns are: think highly detailed replica guns that shoot 6mm plastic BBs at 200-300fps. Mine looks something like this [airsoftzone.com].
Full auto capability (600+ shots per minute) powered by a rechargable battery similar to those used for radio controlled cars.
I play with a group called PSAC [psac.org]. Beats the snot out of paintball on the fun scale... and much more affordable (once you make the initial investment).
Anybody who might want one: please, please, please don't do something stupid with one and get them banned. You'd be ruining a great hobby for a lot of people.
My 8th Grade music teacher was an oddball. One day, close to the summer, he decided he'd had enough with the drummers in the orchestra. They didn't do anything but bang as loud as they could on the snares and tympani. They didn't listen to anybody - they were probably all deaf at that point anyway.
Well, J.B. (the music teacher) decided to get even. He took a huge rubberband (about three or four feet long unstretched) and a six foot pole with a hook on the end. You know the kind - they're used to open high windows. He added the band to the hook, held the pole with one end and the free end of the 'band with the other.
Thus equipped, he swaggered out of his office, took aim, and winged the band full force into the side of the bass drum. It was like a thunderclap. He looked at the instigators over the top of his half-moons, said "You're next" and grinned like a maniac.
This should be interesting.. Sure it's pricey, 395$ for one of these bad boys. Hell, if I had the money for one, I'd do it... I'd happily wait the 4-6 weeks of delivery time.
But can you imagine what would happen if this Slashdot article is a success for them? I read the article late and the server was peppy and responsive, so lots of geeks are going to have time to see this.
If things go Right/Wrong for these guys that 4-6 weeks could turn suddenly into 4-6 Months.. Better order yours now;)
The use of elastic bands as the projectile usually escallates to the slingshot variant pretty quickly. In which circumstances, the bottom couple of centimetres of Mum's washing up gloves made an excellent spring for the elastic (and tech drawing compass if you had to "camofkage" the frame) powered slingshot. I understand this to be pretty universal.
However due to some of the native fauna in Oz, specifically bottlebrush whose dried up flower casings and their orientation in clumps on the branches made for easy harvesting for an excellent, and abundant,source of ammunition. They are hard and woody about 3mm "opened spheres". However the slingshot had to be upgraded to a "glove gun" as we called it. the finger of the same washing up gloves (much harder to acquire undetected) securely fastent to a piece of narrow guage PVC pipe (8-12mm). Load up a few (less than 10) of the seeds, draw back the finger tip of the glove and let rip.
That all involved still have their eyesight is somewhat of a miracle.
Of course this is all fiction and one would never suggest that anyone should try something so stupid.
I've got a gatling gun rubber band pistol that was about $15; it's a blast, but it takes forever to load all the rubber bands, and about 5 seconds to make a huge mess;-) It's kinda clever: a cylinder with 8 splines on it. You wrap a string around once, then stretch a band over each spline, repeat until you get bored or run out of string. The string is attached to a crank, and as you turn the crank, it pops off bands as it turns the cylinder. They're hard to find, but they can be had here [shaveshop.com].
"This should be OK to bring into the country. It shouldn't be a problem. We all agree it is not a firearm," said Colette Gentes-Hawn, spokeswoman for Canada Customs.
Wow. Imagine the paperwork U.S. Customs would bring if the thing was made in Canada, and had to be imported into the U.S.
Calahan: I know what you're thinking, punk. You're thinking, did he fire one hundred forty four shots or only one hundred forty three? Well to tell you the truth, I forgot myself in all this excitement. But being as this is a 144 Magnum, the most powerful rubberbandgun in the world and will blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself a question: "Do I feel lucky?" Well do ya...punk?
Actually, Gatling guns [schoolnet.co.uk] are legal in Virginia. When most people think of machine guns, they think of fully automatic guns, where the force from the first bullet firing is used to eject the casing, load the next bullet, and fire it. A gattling gun is different - a manual crank is used to load the next bullet, and usually this means that another barrel is rotated into position.
The difference is that in the fully automatic gun, all you do is hold down the trigger; in the gattling gun, you must continually turn the crank. The theory is that the user of the gattling gun is in more control - kindof like the repetitive trigger pulling necessary in legal semi-automatic guns.
Gattling guns are used in modern guns [army.mil] to generate increadibly high-volume of fire. Remember the BFG in Predator? The use of multiple barrels allows a little more time for the barrels to cool off between sucessive shots. I would also suspect that they could be built to be less susceptable to jamming because, since it's an external force driving the gun, one dud bullet won't stop the chain of events.
p.s. INAGE (gun expert). Alternate theory: gatling guns that are replicas [gatlinggun.net] of the original may be exempt under "antique" laws
I paid my subscription, I wanna see porn! Oh wait, that's our customers... (Psst,/. is free..)
This is actually the perfect technology toy for my office. Our tension breakers are rubber-band wars.. We've been using a yard stick to stretch out large strong rubber bands.. We get some good distance with those, but with 144 shots, I'd definately dominate.. I need to be able to carry it though, these are moving battles! I wonder how long til ThinkGeek start carrying 'em.:)
(BTW, anyone wondering what to buy me for xmas, this is it!)
Boy howdy! When I was in 7th grade I recalled how my sister took gum wrappers, folded them a certain way, and made links for long chains. Naturally, I took the link design, switched to heavy Xerox paper, and used it as a rubber-band projectile. It flew much further than a rubber band, and could inflict pain from 20 feet away if you got a good shot.
I wonder why the girls didn't think of that? (that was a rhetorical question) I thought it was way over the line when the delinqents in the back of the bus loaded them with bits of metal and leftover plexiglass from shop though. I think they got suspended for that.
Of course the fun never ends. A friend, who was a freshman in college at the time, obtained 30 feet of medical tubing (essentially, a huge rubber band). They flung water balloons from so far across the quad that nobody knew from whence they came.
Then of course we have all heard of stuff like "pumpkin chunkin" and so forth. So, I ain't the least bit surprised $400 rubber-band machine guns exist.
I accidentally posted this thread as a general response to the article, rather than as a response the post about shooting rubber bands at cats. If Slashdot had a delete feature, I would have gotten rid of this thread, and kept the one I later posted correctly.
We don't want to take your guns. We sure as hell don't want anything to do with them. We just hope that one day everyone's gun closets spontaneously disintegrate.:)
Very Hoaxy feeling (Score:1)
Re:Very Hoaxy feeling (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Very Hoaxy feeling (Score:2)
IIRC, they sold for $10-$25, the quality of the wood and ammunition capacity being primary deciding factors.
Re:Very Hoaxy feeling (Score:2)
Well well.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Well well.. (Score:2, Funny)
Let's see you speed-load 144 rubber-bands!!!
Re:Well well.. (Score:4, Funny)
I am not sure if giving the details of a home made gun is legal or not, but
those things were able to shoot a real bullet (a pistol, or an Israeli Thompson usually.)
This was back in africa, some of you might know what I am talking about, I will
just give you some hints, and see if you can picture it.
Ingredients:
1) a cable of tire tube (American cars no longer have this, but back in africa, car tires were
hollow, and they have a balloon like tube that goes between them and the rims. The tube
is the black thing that some poeple swim with, if you ever been to a latin american or african
beach.)
You just cut an long stripe off of the tube, and this is a very hard rubber.
2) wooden skeleton (your favorite gun shape, we had ones that even had the curvy magazine
of a Kalishnikov.)
3) a metal pipe. The longer, thinner, the more accurate.
4) an L shaped piece of steel, with a pointy end.
5) a long hard nail (this is curved on the wood, and used to hold the bullet.)
Steps:
------
If you arranged the above in some special way, put a bullet in the nail loop, and
some how used the L shaped steel like an arrow and a bow, you would be able to shoot
a real amu.
The bullet will fly straight, and the left over "butt" (what do you call it.) would be
left in the nail loop (sometimes, if the nail is too weak, it would jump and hit you right
between the eyes.)
Finally:
--------
This is ALL finctional, and figment of my imagination. I bare no responsibilty for anything
that results from following it. Grow up, and enjoy it as fiction.
--
Re:Well well.. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Well well.. (Score:2)
Thanks SOOOO much for telling me the exact name and submiting a link.
I was about to shit in my pants, after I hit submit. Totally forgot about
the current climate in the US.
Now that they have seen it elsewhere, EVEN Phrack (/.ers are geeks, ya know.)
I can sleep well tonight and not worry.
Glad to know I am not corrupting any kids
Finally, a meaningful article on Slashdot (Score:1)
Big-ass rubber bands were all the rage in my old IT department, several years ago. We used to get this monster rubber bands, a foot long at rest, binding 9-track reels. Nothing promotes an arms race like the sudden discovery that one of the other programmers has a box of rubber bands in his desk drawer. These babies brough about detent and eventually peace returned to the office. Once again proving, the best defense is the threat of a massive welt.
Re:Finally, a meaningful article on Slashdot (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Well well.. (Score:5, Funny)
I'll bet he said: "Gimme your wallet, and make it snappy."
Re:Well well.. (Score:2)
Also known in 1950's and early 1960's on the streets of the USA as "zip guns". Pretty popular with the gangs back then. Basically a tube that you put a bullet in, then use the rubber band to power a makeshift firing pin.
Re:Well well.. (Score:2)
beach.)
American automobiles may not use innertubes any more, but American tractors and many American trucks still do. Nothing better than grabbing an innertube, a case of good beer, and floating down a river. (you hang the beer under the innertube so it keeps cold in the river)
Re:Well well.. (Score:2)
1 metal pipe (diamter of a bullet)
1 metal ball bearing
1 strong rubber band
1 bullet
bullet goes in the pipe, bearing rests aainst the firing pin, rubber band gets glued/ducte taped, attached in some way to the bearing and also to the pipe on either side of the bullet.
pull back the band to "cock", let go to fire, and hope the shell casing doen't hit you in the eye and make you blind.
Re:Illegal? (Score:2)
protecting my write to write such things, I would be overjoyed, and
probably give me yet another reason to be a proud "new" American.
If this is really true, then I am a different man from this moment.
If this sounds too corny to you, you probably are used to freedom.
Re:First Amendment. (Score:3, Interesting)
See if you can follow the steps:
1. We want a free state.
2. A free state needs to be secure.
3. A well-regulated militia guarantees that security.
4. A well-regulated militia needs to be armed.
5. Therefore, the right of citizens to bear arms is guaranteed, so that they may form a well-regulated militia for the purpose of guaranteeing the security of a free state.
Then, whenever the government cracks down on unregulated militias, these groups complain that their right to bear arms has been abridged.
And what about the National Guard? Guard units fall under the jurisdiction of the states, and certainly fill the role of a well-regulated militia.
You had a gun? (Score:2)
BlackGriffen
Legit.. (Score:1, Informative)
Just havn't gone through with it, for now the automatic nerf gun I've got works just as well..
Working hard (Score:1)
But, the advantage of getting rid of pesky kids far outweighs the cost....
It's a bird, it's a plane.... no its elastic shooting man!!!
Jeepers! (Score:1)
/.tted (Score:1)
...nobody appreciates good puns these days
Seen it already, wasn't that great (Score:1)
Poke your eye out! (Score:2, Funny)
It's all fun and games until someone gets their eyes poked out with 144 elastic bands shot out of an elastic chain gun in under 3 seconds!
Re:Poke your eye out! (Score:2, Funny)
I'll take ten (Score:5, Funny)
Have you seen the price?
$395.00 !!!
I seriously doubt anybody could find a use for thi....
Wait a minute....
Here Kitty Kitty!!!
;-)
Re:I'll take ten (Score:2)
And the best part is, wooden guns won't trip the courthouse metal detectors. 8-)
Re:I'll take ten (Score:3, Funny)
$luser:I can't get to www.$flash_crap_site.com, is the INTERNET down?
Me: Say hello to my new friend!
Re:Right. Animal Cruelty is a Laugh a Minute. (Score:5, Insightful)
And no, shooting a rubber band at a cat isn't funny.
However...Firing a fully-automatic rubberband chaingun at a cat strikes so many comic images in one's head that you can't help but crack a smile. It's comic in it's absurdity.
I wish I had one of these guns to shoot at you, because I would do it, and I'd think it's funny.
sedawkgrep
Re:Right. Animal Cruelty is a Laugh a Minute. (Score:5, Insightful)
"The first time I loaded one, there was two of us working on it and it took us 20 minutes," said Mr. Toms, who lost his job a year ago as an executive in a Los Angeles-based dot-com firm.
"I applied everything I knew about running a dot-com business and merged it with my passion for fun artillery. I'm making a fraction of what I used to make as an executive, but I'm having a hell of a lot more fun."
The guns' inventor, Don Mims, 54, of Fort Worth, Texas, graduated with an aerospace engineering degree, but turned to his woodworking hobby as a career.
endquote.
He was a dot.bomb exec and has an a degree in aerospace engineering, but he's selling rubber band guns. This is a guy who was willing to throw in the towel when he saw the way things were blowing, and do something fun with his life instead of bitching. Lots of
~z
Re:Right. Animal Cruelty is a Laugh a Minute. (Score:2)
Better yet, use a small wireless webcam and bolt it to the cat ;-)
Re:Right. Animal Cruelty is a Laugh a Minute. (Score:2, Funny)
Then a
Mr. Penis
Re:Right. Animal Cruelty is a Laugh a Minute. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Right. Animal Cruelty is a Laugh a Minute. (Score:2)
Definition of cute:
A kitten in a tangle, playing with a ball of string.
Definition of funny:
The kitten strangles.
Re:Right. Animal Cruelty is a Laugh a Minute. (Score:2, Funny)
Oh yeah, and I am not a serial killer or child molestor, contrary to what psych teaches about people who torture animals
Re:Right. Animal Cruelty is a Laugh a Minute. (Score:3, Interesting)
Hey I love your reactionary, knee-jerk observation! Allow me to make one of my own: Any poster that quotes Nietzsche in his sig and whines about harassing a cat did not get the Nietzsche he read.
The Uberman has no need for "Animal Rights", as Human rights are what the weak hide behind from Darwin.Personally I don't harass my cat, as he would claw my face off gleefully. But that's just me.
Re:Right. Animal Cruelty is a Laugh a Minute. (Score:2)
Who said anything about cats?
I was referring to Kitty Dukakis!!!
;-)
Now if my previous post didn't offend you,
Check out the second row, third column [kiva.net]
Re:I'll take ten (Score:2)
REAL MEN [tm] eat cats.
They gut 'em with only their fingernails,
poke them with sticks,
and cook them over an open fire they made
by rubbing a pair of matches together.
None of those wimpy Frying Pans for these men.
Lighten up man!
Do you really take anything on slashdot seriously?
Laugh! It's funny!
Oh My! (Score:2, Insightful)
afterthought (Score:1)
The parent comment [slashdot.org] was made in an effort to be funny.
Re:Oh My! (Score:2)
I wouldn't say "hours", but I sure knew how to make a good wasp. There were difference sizes for different occasions (range, wind if you were outdoors, allowable noise level)... rubber bands and wasps had to be concealed, because the teachers really didn't like them.
It was fun, though. Nobody ever got more than a sting, as there were certain rules. Paper ammo only, not even foil. If you inked your wasp, you were really gonna get it. No firing if it would get you or your target busted. No face shots, for the love of God no face shots! No firing at close range. No firing on declared noncombatants. There was no rulebook, but we weren't complete assholes, so those were all understood.
And it was constant warfare. In the halls, in class, on the bus... the only time a truce was implicitly understood to be in effect was at lunch or during tests.
Yep, wasps thoroughly kicked pencil-fighting's ass.
Re:Oh My! (Score:2)
Since I seem to recall that a kid in elementry school was once suspended (expelled?) for the small crime of making a gun shape out of his hand while trying to play cops and robbers under that school's zero tolerance policy, I don't think many kids would be able to bring this gatling gun shaped item to school. (Sadly, this is not a joke: this really happened)
By the way, zero tolerance and mandatory sentencing rules suck. What ever happened to allowing the elements of the crime dictate the punishment?
Re:Oh My! (Score:3, Interesting)
This of course gave me a competitive advantage, and pretty soon everyone wanted guns. I built up a pretty little arsenal, and things were good. But I was ambitious and wanted to see just how cool a gun I could make. So I designed and eventually built a machine gun.
It was a crude weapon compared to my original gracefully sanded and curved rifle, but the results were dramatic. It was a length of two-by-four with a firing mechanism in back and a row of pegs at the business end. The mechanism was a thick dowel studded with a spiral of half-inserted wood screws, mounted on an axle perpendicular to the gun's line of fire. A small crank and ratchet controlled the dowel's spin. You loaded it by hooking rubber bands, one at a time, from the pegs at the end to the screws on the dowel, then advancing the ratchet one click. It took more work to load the more rubber bands you put on, so I was never able to load more than a couple dozen onto it.
To fire it you simply released the ratchet, and WHAM! The dowel turned in a blur, the rubber bands went everywhere, and it made this cool thrumming and clacking noise. Accuracy sucked, but that was fine; in fact once I loaded the rubber bands crossways, so that instead of being parallel to the gun's "bore" they angled back and forth across it. No need to wave the gun around that way - it would "spray" its shots automatically, a nice feature considering the gun would dump its entire ammunition load in a couple of seconds.
The gun was very impressive and frightened the other kids but I abandoned it shortly because it took too long to load. It's not much good blowing off all your ammunition in the first few seconds of a firefight when the other kids can pick up the rubberbands you've just plastered all over their clothing and fire them right back at you while you stand there for ten minutes getting ready for your next shot.
Anyway, I remember seeing this guy's Gatling at the California State Fair a few years back. I could have sworn it was the 144-shot model even then, so either I'm remembering wrong and it was actually the 72-shot model, or there's some other nutcase out there building 144-shot rubber band machine guns with a similar design.
-Mars
Fun & Games... (Score:2)
Seriously though, i'd be dangerous with one of those things. I've almost put out eyes with my safe lil koosh ring gun!
But damn it looks like it'd be a blast around the office.
"You wanted what? Before I leave today? Step over there please..." (glorious sounds of pinheaded clients demanding the impossible being riddled with rubber bands, welts sprouting.. ahh.. stress relief)
Wonder if I could reverse engineer this thing? *goes off in search of woodworking tools...*
Advice to teachers. (Score:5, Funny)
When he complains fire another.
He'll duck the second one.
Now say to him. "Why did that second one not hit you?"
He'll say
Now say: "And why did you not duck the first one".
He'll say: "I was not paying attention".
End with: "And who's fault was that?".
Re:Advice to teachers. (Score:5, Funny)
And then get a good lawyer :(
Re:Advice to teachers. (Score:1)
Don't know about Public though.
Re:Advice to teachers. (Score:2)
Eraser wake-em-up (Score:2)
Spenceley was a pretty good teacher, but still, it was calculus, and some people had been partying the night before... So eventually someone was snoring, leaned over against chalkboard on the side wall. Spenceley took an eraser and fired it 30 feet down that little ledge at the bottom of the chalkboard, smack into the guy and pushing a great cloud of chalkdust ahead.
He had an awake and alert class for the rest of the term.
Re:Advice to teachers. (Score:2)
Back then, paddling was still accepted in my high school. He had the symbolic "two jap flags" flag hanging in the corner (two big red circles, get it?)
Ahhh...if only educators could get away with that stuff these days.
better Advice to teachers. (Score:2)
Re:it's me again (Score:2, Funny)
Oh, the fifty-first state.
Of course, that's sixty-eight in Canadian states.
Slashdotted (Score:1)
World solution (Score:1)
Load it with condoms, take it to populated starving countries, and perhaps it can solve some over-population problems.
The Ultimate in Overkill (Score:2, Insightful)
rubber bands fights (Score:4, Funny)
So see, they're not only fun, they're artistic.
Re:rubber bands fights (Score:1)
Re:rubber bands fights (Score:1, Informative)
Read these pages. Remove the space from the links.
http://forums.nerfonline.com/Forum2/HTML/000021
http://forums.nerfonline.com/Forum2/HTML/000021
Impressive... (Score:1)
I wonder (Score:2, Funny)
better guns (Score:4, Informative)
Of course, at work we have battle grouping for our elastic band wars and we've found that a good piece of card board works well as a machine gun...we've also found a hand technique which stings from 10 yards away. In fact, we did some studies of it in our friendly neighbourhood campus engineering department, and found that it has an inherent spin which stabilizes it (gyroscope).
Make a C with your index and thumb on your left hand. Hang the elastic loosely on it and then grab the bottom inside of the band and push towards your target (with your thumb). One side will be more tightly wound than the other. When you release your thumb it'll fire. No wear and tear as it doesn't hit your brace finger or cause redness (you newbies will find out what we mean when you use the two hand technique).
Perfect sniper fire in a cubicle environment.
Re:better guns (Score:2)
Well actually I think I got it but sometimes it hits my right thumb
Re:better guns (Score:5, Informative)
The C method of rubber band shooting is quite impressive, however the description in the parent post is a little hard to follow.
For those of you interested, here is a page describing the C method in greater detail: http://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~alain/magictalk-wis dom/discussions/shooting_rubber_band.html [uchicago.edu]
--McVerne
Re:better guns (Score:2)
But, over extended use, the C method (albeit slower) does not have the same wear and tear upon your hands. In terms of distance, the C method shoots twice as far as the gun method (you've got more lenght with the C).
And of course, the spin, the elastic whipping around your thumb (in the gun) causes it to gain spin that is just plain awful (my english just got really bad).
To really see the difference use small elastics or big elastics. Once you get good enough you'll notice that the medium sized ones are used to snipe, the small ones for a bit closer range but for head shots (on demand) and the big ones just hurt really bad from 20 feet away.
Slashdot effect.... (Score:1)
meh (Score:3, Funny)
Wow (Score:1, Troll)
Then again, I guess that is a little fast for slashdot. I wasn't banking on seeing this until June at the earliest.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Funny)
Then again, I guess that's a little slow for slashdot. I was banking on seeing this as the third comment.
Cheaper One Available (Score:2, Informative)
Hah! (Score:2)
It shoots fast, but I bet reloads are a bitch :)
Let me be the first to say it. (Score:1)
GUNS DON'T KILL PEOPLE, RUBBER BANDS DO!
:)
Just over one month till taxes are due... (Score:2, Funny)
--my
Wait just a minute.... (Score:1)
"I applied everything I knew about running a dot-com business and merged it with my passion for fun artillery. I'm making a fraction of what I used to make as an executive, but I'm having a hell of a lot more fun."
Now that's brilliant, he uses all his business knowledge from a failed dot-com! What next? A rubber band gatli...oh my, yes, I think that was a pig.
A rubber band machine gun with 12 barrels? (Score:5, Funny)
Damn. I think that's gross.
Variation: Lego machine gun (Score:3, Interesting)
Quote from page: "I can empty the 17-round magazine in about 1.9 seconds, which translates to a rate of fire of over 500 rounds per minute."
Cool, but not new (Score:4, Informative)
Surefire Products [surefireproducts.com] are the makers of the Gatling rubber-band gun; it's their flagship product, and they (and their resellers) don't actually expect to sell many (or any) of them.
Surefire's far cheaper rubber-band handguns, on the other hand, are excellent :-).
Re:Cool, but not new (Score:2)
Re:Cool, but not new (Score:2)
Still, it would be damned nice to smuggle one of these into the courthouse and cut loose at a gaggle of lawyers...
These are nothing new (Score:2)
I have seen many other rubber band machine guns. (Although none this nice, none that fire a full gross of bands, and none that are priced as if they were built by defense contractors.)
Here is another brand of rubber band machine gun. [c-zone.net] You can only load 24 bands at a time, but the clips make it rapidly reloadable. And at less than $20, you can afford to arm your entire skirmish line.
On the other hand, most rubber band fights are won or lost in the first few seconds. Brief controlled bursts are more effective than spray and pray.
Lego technic version (Score:2)
10 seconds to fire (Score:5, Funny)
Danger, Danger (Score:4, Funny)
Not the only legal machine gun... (Score:2, Interesting)
For those who don't know what airsoft guns are: think highly detailed replica guns that shoot 6mm plastic BBs at 200-300fps. Mine looks something like this [airsoftzone.com].
Full auto capability (600+ shots per minute) powered by a rechargable battery similar to those used for radio controlled cars.
I play with a group called PSAC [psac.org]. Beats the snot out of paintball on the fun scale... and much more affordable (once you make the initial investment). Anybody who might want one: please, please, please don't do something stupid with one and get them banned. You'd be ruining a great hobby for a lot of people.
Bands and Rubberbands (Score:4, Funny)
Well, J.B. (the music teacher) decided to get even. He took a huge rubberband (about three or four feet long unstretched) and a six foot pole with a hook on the end. You know the kind - they're used to open high windows. He added the band to the hook, held the pole with one end and the free end of the 'band with the other.
Thus equipped, he swaggered out of his office, took aim, and winged the band full force into the side of the bass drum. It was like a thunderclap. He looked at the instigators over the top of his half-moons, said "You're next" and grinned like a maniac.
It shut 'em up for a whole day.
Triv
Re:Bands and Rubberbands (Score:2)
My question is, how'd he get all the musicians onto the hook?
...oh, that was the RUBBER band. My mistake.
Delivery time. (Score:2)
But can you imagine what would happen if this Slashdot article is a success for them? I read the article late and the server was peppy and responsive, so lots of geeks are going to have time to see this.
If things go Right/Wrong for these guys that 4-6 weeks could turn suddenly into 4-6 Months.. Better order yours now
Antipodean variant (Score:2)
However due to some of the native fauna in Oz, specifically bottlebrush whose dried up flower casings and their orientation in clumps on the branches made for easy harvesting for an excellent, and abundant,source of ammunition. They are hard and woody about 3mm "opened spheres". However the slingshot had to be upgraded to a "glove gun" as we called it. the finger of the same washing up gloves (much harder to acquire undetected) securely fastent to a piece of narrow guage PVC pipe (8-12mm). Load up a few (less than 10) of the seeds, draw back the finger tip of the glove and let rip.
That all involved still have their eyesight is somewhat of a miracle.
Of course this is all fiction and one would never suggest that anyone should try something so stupid.
DuziShot is a lot cheaper (Score:2, Informative)
Canadian Red Tape.. (Score:2)
Wow. Imagine the paperwork U.S. Customs would bring if the thing was made in Canada, and had to be imported into the U.S.
I mean, golly, you could shoot your eye out.
Hope the FAA knows about this (Score:2)
another rubber band gun site (Score:2)
E.
Calahan (Score:2, Funny)
Re:I pay tp read this stuff? Old news. (Score:1)
I don't pay a thing, and I still see it....
I notice that the vast majority of those using the 'I pay to see this?' troll are anonymous.....
Sure, they could have all clicked the 'post anonymously' box......but it still makes you wonder a little, doesnt it?
Re:Finally (Score:1)
Re:Finally (Score:3, Informative)
The difference is that in the fully automatic gun, all you do is hold down the trigger; in the gattling gun, you must continually turn the crank. The theory is that the user of the gattling gun is in more control - kindof like the repetitive trigger pulling necessary in legal semi-automatic guns.
Gattling guns are used in modern guns [army.mil] to generate increadibly high-volume of fire. Remember the BFG in Predator? The use of multiple barrels allows a little more time for the barrels to cool off between sucessive shots. I would also suspect that they could be built to be less susceptable to jamming because, since it's an external force driving the gun, one dud bullet won't stop the chain of events.
p.s. INAGE (gun expert). Alternate theory: gatling guns that are replicas [gatlinggun.net] of the original may be exempt under "antique" laws
Subscription?? (Score:2, Interesting)
Oh wait, that's our customers...
(Psst,
This is actually the perfect technology toy for my office. Our tension breakers are rubber-band wars.. We've been using a yard stick to stretch out large strong rubber bands.. We get some good distance with those, but with 144 shots, I'd definately dominate.. I need to be able to carry it though, these are moving battles! I wonder how long til ThinkGeek start carrying 'em.
(BTW, anyone wondering what to buy me for xmas, this is it!)
The double barrel repeater's the go (Score:2)
Re:ONE SHOT ONE KILL SOLUITON STILL ROCKS!! (Score:2)
Boy howdy! When I was in 7th grade I recalled how my sister took gum wrappers, folded them a certain way, and made links for long chains. Naturally, I took the link design, switched to heavy Xerox paper, and used it as a rubber-band projectile. It flew much further than a rubber band, and could inflict pain from 20 feet away if you got a good shot.
I wonder why the girls didn't think of that? (that was a rhetorical question) I thought it was way over the line when the delinqents in the back of the bus loaded them with bits of metal and leftover plexiglass from shop though. I think they got suspended for that.
Of course the fun never ends. A friend, who was a freshman in college at the time, obtained 30 feet of medical tubing (essentially, a huge rubber band). They flung water balloons from so far across the quad that nobody knew from whence they came.
Then of course we have all heard of stuff like "pumpkin chunkin" and so forth. So, I ain't the least bit surprised $400 rubber-band machine guns exist.
the multiple posting was accidental (Score:2)
I accidentally posted this thread as a general response to the article, rather than as a response the post about shooting rubber bands at cats. If Slashdot had a delete feature, I would have gotten rid of this thread, and kept the one I later posted correctly.
Re:Does Taco know you're posting this? (Score:2)