Maker of iPhone Gun: "It's Just a Pistol With a Folding Grip"
Senator Chuck Schumer: "What’s next, a gun made to look like a chocolate bar?"
New York’s Senator Chuck Schumer is one of Congress’s biggest proponents of new, far stricter gun legislation, and he has a big problem with Kirk Kjellberg’s gun that looks like an iPhone. On Monday, Schumer held a press conference in New York asking the Justice Department and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms to block all sales of the IDEAL Conceal, which went viral last week to a predictably mixed response from gun enthusiasts and gun control advocates.
Schumer told reporters that the gun should be illegal under the National Firearms Act, like other disguised weapons built to look like wallets, pens, or even umbrellas.
“This iPhone gun is a disaster waiting to happen,” Schumer said during the news conference in New York, standing next to a large printout of the gun’s design.
And later: “What’s next, a gun made to look like a chocolate bar?” Schumer said. “Enough is enough.”
Kjellberg tells Inverse that the gun does not technically qualify as a disguised weapon because it has a rifled barrel that can’t fire while the handle is closed. Other disguised weapons are classified as Title II firearms and are subject to special regulation, but the IDEAL Conceal’s design seems to circumvent this classification. Kjellberg said that the gun has internal mechanisms to prevent it from firing while closed, and that securing the gun safely is the responsibility of the gun owner alone.
Kjellberg's mockup of the gun with the handle open.
“It’s just a pistol with a folding grip,” Kjellberg told Inverse. “[I] have spoken to ATF several times and I fit with both the NFA and ATF regulations due to rifled barrel and inability to function in its disguised form.”
The gun is a two-shot double barrel .380 caliber weapon, so it won’t be subject to any of the regulations on magazine size that other guns have to abide by. Kjellberg hopes to start production on the gun later this year, and thinks finished models will sell for around $395.
Kjellberg's mockup of the gun with the breech opened for reloading.
It’ll still be subject to the same regulations handguns in general are bound under, depending on the state or municipality. In Schumer’s home of New York City, for example, getting a handgun is a complicated, difficult process, but other states have much more relaxed regulations. Despite Schumer’s reservations, it doesn’t look like the gun is currently illegal in any way.
