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..."
Re:Very Hoaxy feeling
by
k2enemy
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
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.
Isn't this meant to be something an executive has in their office to talk about when they have guests? Just like a fancy telescope. Clearly something one might use once and then just have it sit there.
Re:Very Hoaxy feeling
by
Martin+Blank
·
· Score: 2
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.
-- You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
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.
Actually a store in Lake Placid, New York that i used to hang out as a kid and play with their guns and toys(rubber band guns) used to have one like that in the shop window. this was nearly 7 years ago. way to be on top of cool news.
-- "Life moves pretty fast. You don't stop and look around once in a while,
you could miss it." Ferris Bueller
I saw something like this at a craft show (i was young and didn't have a choice) about 10 years ago. It didn't look as impressive as this one did, but it only ran about $80.
I settled for a $10 model that shot farther and was quicker to load.
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.
--
Re:Well well..
by
itwerx
·
· Score: 2, Informative
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.
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.
-- pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
(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)
-- A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
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!
I remember back in my olden days, when we had one rubber band for the ammo and the trigger was my other hand. My other thumb and index finger, to be precise.
-- Is that a real poncho? I mean, is that a Mexican poncho or is that a Sears poncho?
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.
-- "Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
I think I saw a similar thing in a movie. IIRC, it was a Charles Bronson movie.
This guy had some gadget made of iron pipes, one slightly bigger than the other. The bigger one had an end cap on it, and he slid them apart, and placed a shotgun shell into the end of the smaller pipe, then slid the larger pipe forwad hard. I assume that the larger pipe had some sort of point on the inside of the end cap to fire the shell. I thought about it, and it seems to be at least SOMEWHAT realistic, as long as you use a fairly low yeild shell, so you dont break your wrist.
"I am not sure if giving the details of a home made gun is legal or not"
If code is speech, and code describing how to illegally defeat DVD encryption is OK (as most on Slashdot here seem to believe,) speech describing how to make an illegal gun would fundamentally be no different.
I remember the days when my dad's friend built me a rubber band gun. He was good with crafting things with wood. It had a wheel with pegs on the upper back part of the gun, with which you would load several rubber bands, and rotate the wheel for each one.
I think it could load 4-5 rubber bands, and pulling the trigger shot one and loaded the next one. Not quite a machine gun, but considering that this was about 20 years ago (Damn, I can't believe I can say that!) it was pretty damn cool.
"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.."
You think you had it rough, I had to use my hand as the firing mechanism!
Had a clothespin gun, but upgraded when I was about 12 to the plastic rifle with six spindle revolver, which you could actually rotate two or three times loading well over a dozen shots.
Incidently, this is OLD news... I've been able to buy this EXACT same product at Merlo's Cutlery (national knife/gift store chain) for at least five years. However, Merlo's price tag of ~$500 made this extreme form of feline terrorism cost prohibitive.
-- Slashdot: rejecting tech news in favor of rubber band guns since 1997.
This may have been fiction, but you can kill someone with a home-made rubber band gun. They're called zip guns, and they use a rubber band to propel the projectile.
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..
Of course this is legit. I saw one of these things first hand at North Pier in Chicago about 5 or 6 years ago. Nice to see/. is current on this technological breakthrough crap. By the way, it was $400 back then too. I guess "art" is a technology that never depreciates.
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!!!
Real ASSHOLES kick cats. Real men are secure enough in their masculinity that they don't have to be cruel to animals to make themselves feel big, Nancy.
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!
In light of all the people here telling me that cruelty to animals is bad, I've had a hange of heart. I am turning over a new leaf and joining the Society for the Protection of Anything Not Human....
Just as soon as I get the poodle out of the microwave, the fish out of the bubble bath and the gerbils out of the toilet.
-- T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Cats just do what they evolved to do, lawyers have gone to school and worked hard to learn how to make so much trouble... 8-)
Actually, the farm cats that I have raised mostly make their kills fairly quickly. They know there are more mice out there, so they don't have to prolong the hunt by playing with the first mouse.
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.
we used to load our Black Widow catapults with conkers when I was 14 - you had a SERIOUSLY painful range of about 50 metres. It was quite possible to knock someone out at 30 metres - seen it happen. Hearing a conker go past you head at a couple of hundred kph was moderately sobering...
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!
by
Mars+Saxman
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
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...*
-- Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo - H. G. Wells
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?".
-- I know I'm going to hell, I'm just trying to get good seats.
Re:Advice to teachers.
by
Danse
·
· Score: 5, Funny
And then get a good lawyer:(
-- It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Never said I was a teacher.
In school I used to disrespect my teacher all the time maby if my teacher dised me back I wouldn't be using "who's" either.
-- I know I'm going to hell, I'm just trying to get good seats.
In HS I had a teacher in the Biology lab that would use the emergency eye wash hose to wake up kids that fell asleep in class. This one dolt got it 2x, although I think the 2nd time was a fake.
In College, one of my CS professors would throw chalk at sleeping students. I only got hit once.
And lastly, this one time in college, my friend behind me tried to peg me with a paperclip and missed and hit the professor in the eye. It was pretty funny since he was a small little guy and made believe nothing happened.
I had a math teacher who did that. You could always tell who was sleeping in her class because they had an eraser-sized block of chalkdust on their clothes. If you were a relatively light sleeper, though, you could dodge it, because the class always started laughing right before she thew it.
Another teacher I had used a super soaker. That was the best.
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.
Re:I pay tp read this stuff? Old news.
by
mabinogi
·
· Score: 1
no....you pay NOT to see adds...
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?
The Ultimate in Overkill
by
guamman
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
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.
rubber bands fights
by
spacefem
·
· Score: 4, Funny
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.
Read these pages. Remove the space from the links.
http://forums.nerfonline.com/Forum2/HTML/000021. ht ml
http://forums.nerfonline.com/Forum2/HTML/000021- 2. html
Re:rubber bands fights
by
appleprophet
·
· Score: 1
I take it you work at Google or something?
The last time some little twerp at the office started randomly shooting rubber bands at me while I was trying to concentrate on debugging some really fugly code...
Yeah, I guess you could call his bruises "artistic". I'd personally choose the word "incapacitating" though.
Re:rubber bands fights
by
SpaceLifeForm
·
· Score: 1
Sounds like Global Warfare.
-- You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
better guns
by
oo7tushar
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· Score: 4, Informative
this place (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
--
He who defends everything, defends nothing. -- Fredrick The Great
Re:better guns
by
McVerne
·
· 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.
Hold your main hand like a gun, pointing at the target, with your thumb sticking up and the other fingers curled up. Loop one end of the band over the tip of the pointed finger (pop it under the nail to hold it there if you want). Stretch the band around the base of your thumb and down to your little (pinky) finger. Hook the other end around the little finger to hold it there.
Now you're loaded. You can walk around one-handed like this indefinitely. To shoot, point the "gun" and release the end held by the little finger. It's quite accurate too.
Huh. It seems like my family (vicious band wars in Dad's office) has been using a variation of this technique for years - I had no idea we were close to the perfect RB release:-). Our method lacks the punch but gets points for style.
The rubberband will be firing from your right hand, but you need both to load it.
Make your right hand into a fist; now extend your pinky finger into a hook
loop the rubberband onto the "hook"
close your fist - holding one end of the rubberband to your palm with your pinky
extend your thumb vertically (into a thumbs-up) and loop the other end of the rubberband around your thumb (which will remain vertical)
point your index finger and extend the rubberband past your thumb and place the end of the rubberband on that finger.
To fire just point at your target and open your pinky.:-)
You should now have a rubberband held at one end by your pinky, wrapped around your thumb, with the other end on the end of your index finger (looking just like one of those "hand" guns we all made as children). It is possible to load up another rubberband on your left hand, or put multiple bands on each hand but that interferes with their trajectory.
Yeah, that's the classic way, but the way described above gives you better spin, therefore better aerodynamics, and energy (precious energy) is not lost when the band hits your finger. It takes an extra hand, but when the situation calls for accuracy, power, or distance over portability, it can't be beaten by the classic method.
Actually, there is (IMNSHO) a much better way to launch rubbery projectiles. It's simple.
All instructions are for righties, lefties reverse directions.
1) Holding the band dangling in your left hand, insert your right pinky through the loop. Let it settle in the first joint of your pinky. Curl your pinky down into your palm.
2) With your left hand, stretch the band around your hand, following the crease at your wrist and looping behind your thumb. Keep your thumb pointed up at all times.
3) Extend your right index finger in the standard "I'm going to shoot you with my finger" method. With your left hand, hook the rubber band on the tip of your finger. This works better if your nails are relatively short.
Voila, you now have a rubber band gun. Point your finger at your victi... um, inanimate target, and when you have a good aim, release the rubber band with your pinky. It will slide around the base of your thumb and launch off your finger in a perfect trajectory.
Variations on this are possible. I've done it on my index knuckle (snub-nose) and with two rubber bands (using the ring and middle fingers as well). However, my favorite variation is the shotgun.
Proceed as normal, but instead of hooking the band on your right index finger, hook it on your left thumb. Holding your left hand in line with your right index finger, aim it as you would a shotgun or rifle. The physics of this are the same as the pistol method described above, but the power (and pain on delivery) of the projectile increases dramatically. Bonus points for "pumping" the "gun" with your left hand and making shotgun noises before smiting your enemie... inanimate targets.
Safety notes: I take no responsability for anything that occurs because of this method being used. However, if you keep the band held tight with your pinky, even if it snaps it won't shoot off at you, it will just spin around and hit you in the hand.
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.
Another way of describing this: Make the 'gun sign' with your favorite hand. Pick up a rubber band with the other hand, hook one end over the tip of your gun hand, stretch the rubber around behind the thumb, then grasp it with one of the lower three fingers *of the gun hand*. This is a one-handed gun, the other hand is not involved in shooting.
You can also go the other way - hold one end of the rubber in one of the three fingers of your gun hand, then stretch it around behind the thumb, and hook it over your index finger.
Note that your gun hand has *three* spare fingers - you can load three rubber bands into this gun!
You make a harmless show gun. Instead of hooking the rubber *on* your index finger, pull it a little farther, and hook it *over* the finger so that it rests against the web between the index and middle fingers. When you shoot the rubber won't launch, instead it will spin harmlessly around your index finger a few times. Fun to watch.
Unfortunately, this is not a particularly *good* gun. Unless you have large hands, the rubber is not stretched to its full length, so it doesn't go very far. It also doesn't go straight either.
You may be joking, but i've seriously considered this. I've got an electronic trigger air cannon, and I've thought about building a computer controlled tripod for it. Add on a webcam, and you have yourself an automatic targetting system. The cool thing about air cannons is you can fire everything from water to a crapload of paintballs to spuds. Plus you have a great deal of control over the power, and they shoot better than any combustion one I've seen.
--
----
All of whose base are belong to the what-now?
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.
Cheaper One Available
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 2, Informative
There is a $299 one that looks the same at www.rubberbandguns.com
Re:Cheaper One Available
by
teamhasnoi
·
· Score: 1
Cheaper looking!... no self respecting rubberband terrorist would deny themselves an obviously superior product!
-- It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Let me be the first to say it.
by
Nathdot
·
· Score: 1
I'll say it now and hope that Charlton Heston will say it later:
GUNS DON'T KILL PEOPLE, RUBBER BANDS DO!
:)
Just over one month till taxes are due...
by
FredBaxter
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· Score: 2, Funny
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!
great... a post modded up to 3 for just copying the website.
Wait just a minute....
by
Daniel+Wood
·
· Score: 1
"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.
A rubber band machine gun with 12 barrels?
by
Typingsux
·
· Score: 5, Funny
Shooting 12 rubber bands each?
Damn. I think that's gross.
-- The above post is an editorial, the poster cannot and will not be held responsible for all or in part for it's contents
I built something similar to this Lego Machine Gun 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."
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.
Cool, but not new
by
Daniel+Rutter
·
· Score: 4, Informative
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, but the rubber-band machine gun isn't actually something those guys make, any more than this catapult watch is.
Surefire Products 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:-).
Big deal, my dad had a pistol-style gatling gun about five years ago. It cost him about $20. I think it had eight "barrels" and was not very prone to mechanical failure, being only three pieces of plastic and a piece of string. You could load a lot of rubber bands on the thing, though it took forever.
It worked by laying the string down across each "barrel" before stretching the rubber band across it. Then you slid the cylinder on the pistol grip, fed the string on to the crank, and started cranking. The tightening string would release the rubber bands in quick succession.
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...
Finally, a meaningful article on Slashdot
by
ackthpt
·
· Score: 1
So happy my subscription isn't wasted!
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.
--
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Re:Finally, a meaningful article on Slashdot
by
majestyk2000
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· Score: 1
When I worked at Barnes & Noble in the mid 90's, we'd get those massive rubber bands which bound up misc. parcel shipments. Those were about the size of what you describe, maybe a foot long at rest and maybe 1/2" wide. You really couldn't pull them tight even if you spread both arms.
Rather than zinging people with them, we'd have skills tests with them. I got really good at banking them off an air conditioning unit in the rafters 30 feet overhead, draping the band over a rafter, then shooting it down with a followup band. Harder than you'd think. We'd also twang Coke cans off piles of boxes at 20 paces. Those were the days (of no money).
Re:Finally, a meaningful article on Slashdot
by
ackthpt
·
· Score: 2, Funny
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^)
--
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
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. 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.
a simple engineering ruler would do it
by
vicious_sloth
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· Score: 1
you can make a very accurate 3 shot rubber band gun out of an engineering ruler (you know the one with 3 edges) i've used this quite effectivly, and its cheap! im sure everyone here must have at least one engineering ruler:)
also try loading steel ball bearings onto the grooves and fire those with rubber bands
heh
-- Sun is Warm, Grass is Green
Subscription??
by
JWSmythe
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
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!)
-- Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
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).
And they thought that was bad!
by
mrbrown1602
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· Score: 1
Teachers thought kids shooting rubber bands across the classroom was bad before, wait till those little rascals get their hands on this! It'll be hell on earth!
Generalize it to be a rubber gun
by
ndogg
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· Score: 1
Back when I was in a gun club, a guy had a real gatling gun from around the civil war era. He had all the necessary historical gun licenses of course.
He had to hand load each shell for it, it shot black powder cartridges (75mm or so?) I believe. As anyone who has shot black powder before can tell you, it makes a mess in the barrel, and you can just imagine cleaning eight barrels when you are done shooting these things.
Anyway, he was going to demo it for us, and he wanted me to tape it on his camcorder. He said he would tell me before he started shooting so I could start taping.
He told me to start taping and then he started cranking the thing right away! (That thing really makes a huge cloud of smoke BTW) The funny thing is, by the time the camcorder had wound the tape to the point of starting to record, he was almost done firing.
At the next meeting, everyone gave me a ribbing about the tape, I didn't have the heart to explain how a camcorder works to them. (They were mostly in their 60s and 70s).
-- I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
The google cache of the site is available at here for those that don't like waiting 20 min for a site to load.
No cache of the other rubber band guns, but it seems to be accessible from the link.
Re:Right. Animal Cruelty is a Laugh a Minute.
by
sedawkgrep
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· Score: 5, Insightful
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.
sedawkgrep
-- Is that a salami in my pants or am I just happy to be me?
Re:Right. Animal Cruelty is a Laugh a Minute.
by
ChiChiCuervo
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· Score: 1
A) It is.
B) Burn in hell you whiny-ass uber-pussy pinko tree hugging porcine-orgasm-inducing communist
Re:Right. Animal Cruelty is a Laugh a Minute.
by
ObitMan
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· Score: 1
it IS hilarious. Better yet is flattening out the carcasses, drying them and using them as placemats, coasters, snowshoes, etc...
-- Who run Barter Town?
Not the only legal machine gun...
by
Abraxis
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· Score: 2, Interesting
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.
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. 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.
Re:Not the only legal machine gun...
by
Abraxis
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· Score: 1
...And it's a lot faster to throw in another clip than it is to reload 300 rubber bands:)
If a few hundred dollars is too rich for your blood, you can also buy spring-powered (cock and shoot) airsoft pistols for $20-30. They don't shoot as hard as the more expensive ones, making them a little less cruel to use against your buddies in close quarters (with proper eye protection, of course!).
There's a decent selection of spring airsoft pistols here (no, I am not affiliated with them in any way).
Re:Not the only legal machine gun...
by
Mr.Coffee
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· Score: 1
Yeah, i have also played my fair share of airsoft, one of my friends mods our guns for us, so i've got a cute 'lil hk g3 that will shoot at around 450 fps.
anyway, a side project, that i've been working on for quite some time, is my Nerf dart/Paintball gatling gun, it should fire at around 6,000 Rounds/min top speed theoreticaly. please note that this project is not complete, i'm still prototyping loading and firing mechanisms. one thing is apparent, while more expensive as ammo (unless you make it yourself), the nerf darts are a better choice, for they need less air to fire, and a portable compressed air source that is capable of firing 6,000 of anything a minute is going to be sizeable.
yes, this post is offtopic....
anway, if anyone has ideas/comments/brainstorms about how to complete this project, let me know, it's currently on hold for this semester.
-- Cogito Eggo Sum, I think therefore I'm a waffle
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.
It shut 'em up for a whole day.:)
Triv
Re:Bands and Rubberbands
by
poot_rootbeer
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· Score: 2
My question is, how'd he get all the musicians onto the hook?
Actually, Gatling guns 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 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 of the original may be exempt under "antique" laws
Does Taco know you're posting this?
by
digitalcowboy
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· Score: 1
Where'd the "home-defense" dept. come from on Slashdot?
Are you a closet gun-nut, Michael?
Just last Wednesday in the Slash forum on subscriptions, someone asked Rob how he would describe himself politically. I don't quite remember all of his meandering, ungrounded answer but he ended with something like "No one should be allowed to own guns." (I tried to find a link to the forum log but couldn't.)
I can only assume that CmdrTaco is opposed to anyone defending their home and probably would not approve of this story.
(Disclaimer: I love/. and openly admire Rob's net accomplishments. I expect I would find him personable if I met him. But... anyone who wants to take my guns is violent and my enemy -- or ignorant on the issue. I suspect Rob is just mostly ignorant on this topic, just like I'm mostly ignorant of Perl so I don't really hold it against him.)
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.:)
Re:ONE SHOT ONE KILL SOLUITON STILL ROCKS!!
by
istartedi
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· 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.
-- For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Re:Yeah. Animal cruelty's a laugh a minute.
by
mthiel
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· Score: 1
You must have no idea how tough cats really are. I shoot rubber bands at my cat all the time, she LOVES it. Fact is, at about 12 feet away, your chances of actually hitting the cat are very low and instead provide a fast moving toy to chase. If I actually manage to hit her, she just shrugs it off and waits for the next one.
As a side effect of this game, I can't even snap elastic in the house without the cat running in the room, acting excited.
Strangely, the cat is terrified of the smallish foam safety discs that shoot out of those battery powered guns. Go figure...
>Alternate theory: gatling guns that are replicas >of the original may be exempt under "antique" >laws
Firearms over a certain age (50 years? I'm pretty sure the M1 Garand qualifies) may qualify for "Curious and Relics" status.
A C&R license allows a person without an FFL to send and receive qualifying firearms through the mail (normally a dealer's Federal Firearms License is required), and can allow ownership of some weapons that would otherwise require a Class III license (a Class III is required to legally own most fully-automatic weapons).
Of course, since the NFA doesn't apply to rubber band guns, this is all rather offtopic.
-l
the multiple posting was accidental
by
Schlemphfer
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· 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.
-- I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
Re:Right. Animal Cruelty is a Laugh a Minute.
by
revscat
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· Score: 1
Here's an idea: LIGHTEN THE FUCK UP. It's a cat. Being hit by rubber bands. Whaa. Whaa. Whaa.
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;)
Re:Right. Animal Cruelty is a Laugh a Minute.
by
Shadowcaster
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· Score: 1
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.;)
Re:Right. Animal Cruelty is a Laugh a Minute.
by
T3kno
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· Score: 2, Funny
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;)
Stinking rich kids, all I had was my hand and a prayer.
BlackGriffen
When I was a kid...(not TOO long ago)
by
xSterbenx
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· Score: 1
We used to take BIC pens, and take out the insides, leaving only the empty 'white' outside. We would then tape one of those thick rubber bands to the back of it, and insert the 'ink' part of the pen back in. You could fire that baby with quite a bit of punch behind it. The hard core users would take 4 or 5 of these 'pen guns' and tape those together, with just 1 big fat rubber band taped to the back to fire them all. While this was not the most accurate kid gun in the world, it sure put the fear of God into the other classmates. I guess thats better than real guns, though...
At my last (development) job, several of us used to have Nerf (r) gun fights. They were a blast, but we finally stopped doing it because we got sick of hunting for and picking up darts. Now if we had rubberbands, which are about as disposable as you can possibly ask for, well, we'd never have gotten any work done. *grin*
You know, I really miss letting out the warcry "EAT FOAM"
People, I made a continuous firing rubber band gun that held 1000 rubber bands and was fired by turning a little crank. It took about an hour to load and would empty in about 30 seconds. I came up with the design about 20 years ago and made it in metal shop when I was in 11th grade. This is nothing new.
when I was in the laser club at community college we had a guy designing a ruby neon laser - when finished it could punch holes in paper and razor blades - and if you shot it at someone it felt like being hit by a rather nasty rubber band - even had a power supply you use with it to run it off 12 volts. Funny thing is it might be cheaper (today) to build a ruby optical laser then to buy this rubberband gun. We were famous for pointing those read neon lasers (siemens tube) at computer screens in the lab across the courtyard:) - never did see anyone use the ruby laser against them though.
Re:Right. Animal Cruelty is a Laugh a Minute.
by
motherhead
·
· 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.
Where but in gun mad...
by
chris_sawtell
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· Score: 1
These guns have been around for quite some time. I used to play with the old rifle and pistol versions...and there was a gatlin gun version also, but I could never afford it:(
Good fun with friends until we figured out that tying knots in the rubber bands makes em fly faster and farther...and then someone got shot in the face...OUCH!
(FYI, local office supply stores carry different weight rubber bands...go search for the best ammo!)
Well, I guess now days we all have automatic paintball guns to fill our 'shooting' needs...
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.
-- "The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging."
Re:Right. Animal Cruelty is a Laugh a Minute.
by
brad3378
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· Score: 2
Wait a minute, Who said anything about cats? I was referring to Kitty Dukakis!!!
Re:Right. Animal Cruelty is a Laugh a Minute.
by
zerocool^
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
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.
~z
-- sig?
Re:As seen on Babylon 5
by
AndroidCat
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· Score: 1
That monster was worthy of Doctor Who.:^)
I'm not sure that using live steam to cook off the bullets would work very well.
-- One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
The double barrel repeater's the go
by
DABANSHEE
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· Score: 2
DuziShot is a lot cheaper
by
vanyel
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· Score: 2, Informative
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.
These things aren't new...
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 1, Informative
I think it is a bit too much to call the guy an "inventor". I bought a rubber band firing pistol from a stall at a country fair in the UK several years ago. They had a gattling gun that looked pretty much like the one in the article. They wanted 300ukp for it. It looked pretty cool, but my wife wouldn't let me buy it:-(
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
As for the second:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
You can read the full text to The Bill of Rights Here
-- I know I'm going to hell, I'm just trying to get good seats.
Re:First Amendment.
by
susano_otter
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
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.
--
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
I'm not even an american so I feel funny comenting on this but oh well.
It says that the intent of the law is to allow the formation of well regulated militias.
The law how ever says that citizens not just militias right to bear arms should not be infinged upon.
The well regulated militia part is one example of why citizens should be allowed to bear arms.
Not the only reason they should have the right.
Now you or I may not agree with this idea but. Thats what it says and there are no two ways about that.
-- I know I'm going to hell, I'm just trying to get good seats.
I've seen these machine guns in novelty catalogs a few years back. Sounds cool at first, but who wants to spend half an hour loading 144 flimsy, inaccurate, non-welt-inducing rubber bands for five seconds of totally harmless fun?
What you really want is the "Rubaser". (I think that's what it was called. Google had nothing on that name, though.) The Rubaser ("RUBber lASER"), sold in the late eighties in stores like The Sharper Image, was basically a glorified single-shot rubber band gun, but with some very cool differences:
It was black.
It was shiny.
It had a nice heft to it.
It fired loops of surgical tubing - much more fun than rubber bands
It was also quite expensive
This thing looked a lot like the Lazer Tag guns which were popular in that same period, but must have appealed to those who felt that blasting each other with infrared light was not physical enough. I never got to play with one of these, but judging from the manufacturer's warning labels and the welts the salesman showed me, it sounds a lot more fun than this "machine gun".
For some of the joke things people are suggesting here, the set up time is a bit too high maybe. I have never owned one of these, but loading 144 elastics into a gun sounds very time consuming..
I'd rather just do a card trick or something. Or sleep..ahhh sleep.
--
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
Nice, but... "patented"?! Gah...
by
JaredOfEuropa
·
· Score: 1
From the national post article:
The key is the patented star-shaped wheel that holds the stretched rubber bands.
So he has patented a star-shaped wheel... I could show prior art for this, even in the same application (rubber band guns), if only I had kept the blueprints for the Lego gun I built years ago.
I could have been rich now... or at least have my name in the National Post.
-- If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
I have a friend with something just like this
by
Digital_Quartz
·
· Score: 1
Only he's had it for years and it only cost him $20.
His has a wooden handle and crank, and the "barel" is an asterisk shaped plastic thing (literally asterisk shapped from the front).
You tie a piece of string a spool on the handle, and then wrap the string once around the base of the barel. Then you put a rubber band on each fin (each leg of the asterisk). Repeat 'till you're out of rubber bands. Turn the handle, it pulls on the string, which lifts up the back edge of a rubber band, and the band flies accross the room. It literally makes a cloud of flying rubber bands.
This one seems much more complex (lots of crazy gears and stuff, if you look at the photos). But all in all I'd settle for the $20, given the price difference.
I worked with someone who built a Thompson sub machine gun out of paper, dowel rods and clothes pins and rubber bands. He had it set up so that one pull of the trigger would fire between 12 and 20 BBs. This thing was so realistic looking that when he brought it in to show people the UPS guy refused to enter the office and the police came to investigate! So what is the big deal with wood?
Ok, I realize the that last example has not yet been used in an office setup, but I'm confident that, given enough bored guys and industrial quantities of beer, it will happen one day.
Just imagine the look of your PHB when you point this baby at him after he's pestered you about your daily status report. Hmmmm, maybe this is a good thing.
-- "There are already a million monkeys on a million typewriters, and Usenet is NOTHING like Shakespeare." - Blair Houghton
"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.
I mean, golly, you could shoot your eye out.
-- "I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
Nothing inflicts more pain then...
by
cre8tor
·
· Score: 1
A simple rubber band stretched between your thumb and index finger on one hand and 1/2 of a paper clip (bend paper clip apart repeatedly until you have 1/2 of the "U" and use the modified paper clip as a projectile).
It flies incredibly far and inflicts sever pain - one down side is that the small portion of metal where the paper-clip is broken apart will start to cut the rubber band after repeated firings.
Re:Nothing inflicts more pain then...
by
GigsVT
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· Score: 1
Yeah, that's how my elementary school principal claimed he lost his eye. He did really have a glass eye, but I don't know if that was just what he told us to scare us and he really lost it in the military or what. Be careful in any case.
-- I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Gatling guns that are cranked by hand are legal most everywhere in the US (I suspect CA is not kind to them, but that dosen't matter to me.). I know for sure that nearly, if all the midwestern states don't have laws specifically for hand cranked gatling guns.
Gatling guns will become a very illegal thing when you attach some sort of motor to drive it. If you go and make one (I'm planning to do this some day), and want it to be driven by a motor, make the motor modular, and never transport it with the motor to drive it.
Incidentaly, roataing barrel guns have quite a history, and are quite generalized by the name Gatling (inventor and marketeer of the sucessful version of the gun). They come in a very wide variety of sizes, shapes, rate of fire and calibers. To see how bad ass modern guns are, find some videos of the 30mm GAU (one bastard of a cartrige) on the A-10 close support plane.
Google is a great resource for those wishing to learn more about these wonderous machines of massive chaos. The link the parent provided has some neat movies of antique replicas in action, as well as some history.
-- Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
You did a bad bad thing by showing me this link!!
by
Unknown+Poltroon
·
· Score: 1
Thanks!!
-- All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
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 something like this when I was a kid. Yeah, you could unload dozens of rubber bands in seconds... Then spend a whole day reloading it! No thanks...
Re:Right. Animal Cruelty is a Laugh a Minute.
by
Tackhead
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· Score: 2
> 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;-)
I remember when I was a kid they had this exact same thing made out of wood. It had twelve barrels and you could load dozens of rubberbands on it. All you did was crank the handle and it fired like a gattling gun. Talk about nostalgia.
The Cambridge Assassins' Guild have had to learn to live with one of these owned by a player who owns a shop in the centre of town. It's nowhere near as impressive as some of the larger rubber pellet guns available because you can't draw and shoot at speed!
Especially those big-headed managers and clients..
by
megalomang
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· Score: 1
You know... the kind with the 7-meter-wide eyeballs that are worried stiff one of them might get hit with a projectile!
From the article:
The gun is accurate to within seven metres.
Re:Right. Animal Cruelty is a Laugh a Minute.
by
anonymous_wombat
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· Score: 1
I saw an ad for a gatling rubber band gun at least 7 years ago, but it had the same problem. It would take at least 45 minutes to load it. That kind of takes the fun out of it.
Dave Letterman had one of those 10 years ago
by
tyrannical666
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· Score: 1
It was at least 10 years ago, maybe 15. Dave had one on his show. Slashdot sets a new record on reporting old news....
Paper and rubber band wars
by
WyldOne
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· Score: 1
take a few rubberbands and loop together (thcker ones work well) take 8 1/2" x 11" paper torn into 1 1/2" strips wide by 8 1/2" long. Fold paper untill its 1/4" wide & 1 1/2" long. Fold in half so it forms a V. use rubber band like a bowby putting V of paper over center of ubberband streched between two finders. pinch paper together over band. pull back. Aim. fire. This a lot faster to reload than just shooting rubberbands.
--
make Linux, not Microsoft. sin(beast) = -0.809016994374947424102293417182819
Is there a date on the patent for this "patented star-shaped wheel?" I've had a 12 shot rubber band gun rifle with one of these stars for about 10 years. I got it at a state fair back in the day, and they had one of these gatling guns there too, but I was younger and didn't have the money to get one.
Anybody that really wants one of these, absolutely do not even consider dishing out $395 for it. You can find the plans somewhere for about $15(if not you can make your own plans), then another $30 for parts _maybe_. I built one about 5-10 years ago, and it's great fun. I still pull it out every once in a while and shoot down some G.I. Joe's:-P.
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?
-- "All representatives are busy. The estimated hold time is one..hundred..sixty..four..minutes." Detroit Edison, 02/01/02
Slashdot Mirror
yeah, feels like a hoax, but i could be wrong...
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...
Karma whorin' since 1999
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..
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!!!
...three-hundred ninety-five dollars for something that can't even kill someone? Yikes!
looks like being slashdotted didn't RUBBER right (the server)
:)
...nobody appreciates good puns these days
I saw one of these at a gun show a while back, and it wasn't as cool as I thought it would be, but 144 rubber bands on one gun...I was still amazed.
Why yes I am paranoid! Thanks for asking!
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!
Wow Man!
Have you seen the price?
$395.00 !!!
I seriously doubt anybody could find a use for thi....
Wait a minute....
Here Kitty Kitty!!!
;-)
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.
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...*
Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo - H. G. Wells
Get one of these. When you see a student not paying attention in class fire one at him.
:"I ducked".
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?".
I know I'm going to hell, I'm just trying to get good seats.
no....you pay NOT to see adds...
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?
Advanced users are users too!
Beacuase this site will be soon slashdotted, the google mirror is here.
Mod my comments down. It'll be fun.
Load it with condoms, take it to populated starving countries, and perhaps it can solve some over-population problems.
Table-ized A.I.
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.
So see, they're not only fun, they're artistic.
spacefem.com
The parent comment was made in an effort to be funny.
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.
internet like monkeys'
... it seems to be down already, or at least vastly slowed.
Screw you all! I'm off to the pub
wait until I get my potato cannon running linux
I'm impressed...a lame link and it's already two weeks old on "underground humor" pulse.
Then again, I guess that is a little fast for slashdot. I wasn't banking on seeing this until June at the earliest.
------
Today's Top Deals
There is a $299 one that looks the same at www.rubberbandguns.com
It shoots fast, but I bet reloads are a bitch :)
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
I'll say it now and hope that Charlton Heston will say it later:
GUNS DON'T KILL PEOPLE, RUBBER BANDS DO!
:)
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!
.sig can beat up your .sig
--my
great... a post modded up to 3 for just copying the website.
"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.
Damn. I think that's gross.
The above post is an editorial, the poster cannot and will not be held responsible for all or in part for it's contents
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."
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.
Surefire Products 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 :-).
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.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
http://crypt.silicon1.cx/shit/www.backyardartiller y.com.html
Natural-Selection Be
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. 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.
you can make a very accurate 3 shot rubber band gun out of an engineering ruler (you know the one with 3 edges) i've used this quite effectivly, and its cheap! im sure everyone here must have at least one engineering ruler :)
also try loading steel ball bearings onto the grooves and fire those with rubber bands
heh
Sun is Warm, Grass is Green
I paid my subscription, I wanna see porn! /. is free..)
:)
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!)
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
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).
Teachers thought kids shooting rubber bands across the classroom was bad before, wait till those little rascals get their hands on this! It'll be hell on earth!
...that'd be great for all your one night stands.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
The Programmer General is a programer AND a general, so watch it!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Hah! Your rubber band machine gun is no match for my Lego machine gun!
3 hours to load.
These guns should come with protective eyewear for managers/clients who come within range.
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
You know, the loudest complainers in our members-only message boards and chat rooms are the ones that find passwords on "passwordz" sites..
Yup, definately makes you wonder...
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
No cache of the other rubber band guns, but it seems to be accessible from the link.
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.
sedawkgrep
Is that a salami in my pants or am I just happy to be me?
A) It is.
B) Burn in hell you whiny-ass uber-pussy pinko tree hugging porcine-orgasm-inducing communist
it IS hilarious.
Better yet is flattening out the carcasses, drying them and using them as placemats, coasters, snowshoes, etc...
Who run Barter Town?
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.
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. 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.
It shut 'em up for a whole day.
Triv
Actually, Gatling guns 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 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 of the original may be exempt under "antique" laws
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
Where'd the "home-defense" dept. come from on Slashdot?
/. and openly admire Rob's net accomplishments. I expect I would find him personable if I met him. But... anyone who wants to take my guns is violent and my enemy -- or ignorant on the issue. I suspect Rob is just mostly ignorant on this topic, just like I'm mostly ignorant of Perl so I don't really hold it against him.)
Are you a closet gun-nut, Michael?
Just last Wednesday in the Slash forum on subscriptions, someone asked Rob how he would describe himself politically. I don't quite remember all of his meandering, ungrounded answer but he ended with something like "No one should be allowed to own guns." (I tried to find a link to the forum log but couldn't.)
I can only assume that CmdrTaco is opposed to anyone defending their home and probably would not approve of this story.
(Disclaimer: I love
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.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
You must have no idea how tough cats really are. I shoot rubber bands at my cat all the time, she LOVES it. Fact is, at about 12 feet away, your chances of actually hitting the cat are very low and instead provide a fast moving toy to chase. If I actually manage to hit her, she just shrugs it off and waits for the next one.
As a side effect of this game, I can't even snap elastic in the house without the cat running in the room, acting excited.
Strangely, the cat is terrified of the smallish foam safety discs that shoot out of those battery powered guns. Go figure...
I remember seeing one of these at a show about 12 years ago. Of course I was only allowed to get the little revolver version.
Catapultam habeo. Nisi omnem pecuniam tuam mihi dabis, ad tuum caput saxum immane mittam.
modify the gun so it "shoots" real bullets,
but doesn't actually ignite them. (glue bullets to the rubber bands)
IANAL, but I'll bet some crazy lawyer would classify it as an assult rifle. I'd do it myself just to piss off Rosie O'Donnell.
Why the poster searched google for "legal maachine guns"
What exactly are you up too?
If shooting rubber bands at cats is funny, then shooting them with bb guns must be hilarious.
.30-06 must be a fucking riot!
Then a
Mr. Penis
At least some people have a sense of humor, you seem to have misplaced yours.
-- dieman - Scott Dier
>ps, hello from CANADA!
Oh, the fifty-first state.
Of course, that's sixty-eight in Canadian states.
Definition of cute:
A kitten in a tangle, playing with a ball of string.
Definition of funny:
The kitten strangles.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
>Alternate theory: gatling guns that are replicas
>of the original may be exempt under "antique"
>laws
Firearms over a certain age (50 years? I'm pretty sure the M1 Garand qualifies) may qualify for "Curious and Relics" status.
A C&R license allows a person without an FFL to send and receive qualifying firearms through the mail (normally a dealer's Federal Firearms License is required), and can allow ownership of some weapons that would otherwise require a Class III license (a Class III is required to legally own most fully-automatic weapons).
Of course, since the NFA doesn't apply to rubber band guns, this is all rather offtopic.
-l
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.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
Here's an idea: LIGHTEN THE FUCK UP. It's a cat. Being hit by rubber bands. Whaa. Whaa. Whaa.
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
Computational Madness in a round package.
The name of the guy that wrote the linked article is Richard Morecock.
All I can say is damn. Talk about being blessed.
# rm sinep
Amusing toy or Taliban commando gear?
You decide.
My
Limekiller
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. ;)
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
(B) + (D) + (B) + (D) = (K) + (&)
Stinking rich kids, all I had was my hand and a prayer.
BlackGriffen
We used to take BIC pens, and take out the insides, leaving only the empty 'white' outside. We would then tape one of those thick rubber bands to the back of it, and insert the 'ink' part of the pen back in. You could fire that baby with quite a bit of punch behind it. The hard core users would take 4 or 5 of these 'pen guns' and tape those together, with just 1 big fat rubber band taped to the back to fire them all. While this was not the most accurate kid gun in the world, it sure put the fear of God into the other classmates. I guess thats better than real guns, though...
At my last (development) job, several of us used to have Nerf (r) gun fights. They were a blast, but we finally stopped doing it because we got sick of hunting for and picking up darts. Now if we had rubberbands, which are about as disposable as you can possibly ask for, well, we'd never have gotten any work done. *grin* You know, I really miss letting out the warcry "EAT FOAM"
People, I made a continuous firing rubber band gun that held 1000 rubber bands and was fired by turning a little crank. It took about an hour to load and would empty in about 30 seconds. I came up with the design about 20 years ago and made it in metal shop when I was in 11th grade. This is nothing new.
-- Defenestrate Microsoft!
when I was in the laser club at community college we had a guy designing a ruby neon laser - when finished it could punch holes in paper and razor blades - and if you shot it at someone it felt like being hit by a rather nasty rubber band - even had a power supply you use with it to run it off 12 volts. Funny thing is it might be cheaper (today) to build a ruby optical laser then to buy this rubberband gun. We were famous for pointing those read neon lasers (siemens tube) at computer screens in the lab across the courtyard :) - never did see anyone use the ruby laser against them though.
Read more about them - here
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.
America would anybody even think of such a thing?
These guns have been around for quite some time. I used to play with the old rifle and pistol versions...and there was a gatlin gun version also, but I could never afford it :(
Good fun with friends until we figured out that tying knots in the rubber bands makes em fly faster and farther...and then someone got shot in the face...OUCH!
(FYI, local office supply stores carry different weight rubber bands...go search for the best ammo!)
Well, I guess now days we all have automatic paintball guns to fill our 'shooting' needs...
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.
"The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging."
Wait a minute,
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
not only that, but you know you're down and out when the article says, and i quote:
/. posters could take a lesson from this guy.
"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
sig?
I'm not sure that using live steam to cook off the bullets would work very well.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
24 shots without reloading
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.
I think it is a bit too much to call the guy an "inventor". I bought a rubber band firing pistol from a stall at a country fair in the UK several years ago. They had a gattling gun that looked pretty much like the one in the article. They wanted 300ukp for it. It looked pretty cool, but my wife wouldn't let me buy it :-(
I bloded the part that you whant:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
As for the second:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
You can read the full text to The Bill of Rights Here
I know I'm going to hell, I'm just trying to get good seats.
What you really want is the "Rubaser". (I think that's what it was called. Google had nothing on that name, though.) The Rubaser ("RUBber lASER"), sold in the late eighties in stores like The Sharper Image, was basically a glorified single-shot rubber band gun, but with some very cool differences:
This thing looked a lot like the Lazer Tag guns which were popular in that same period, but must have appealed to those who felt that blasting each other with infrared light was not physical enough. I never got to play with one of these, but judging from the manufacturer's warning labels and the welts the salesman showed me, it sounds a lot more fun than this "machine gun".
People who have too much time on thier hands.
For some of the joke things people are suggesting here, the set up time is a bit too high maybe. I have never owned one of these, but loading 144 elastics into a gun sounds very time consuming..
I'd rather just do a card trick or something. Or sleep..ahhh sleep.
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
So he has patented a star-shaped wheel... I could show prior art for this, even in the same application (rubber band guns), if only I had kept the blueprints for the Lego gun I built years ago.
I could have been rich now... or at least have my name in the National Post.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Only he's had it for years and it only cost him $20.
His has a wooden handle and crank, and the "barel" is an asterisk shaped plastic thing (literally asterisk shapped from the front).
You tie a piece of string a spool on the handle, and then wrap the string once around the base of the barel. Then you put a rubber band on each fin (each leg of the asterisk). Repeat 'till you're out of rubber bands. Turn the handle, it pulls on the string, which lifts up the back edge of a rubber band, and the band flies accross the room. It literally makes a cloud of flying rubber bands.
This one seems much more complex (lots of crazy gears and stuff, if you look at the photos). But all in all I'd settle for the $20, given the price difference.
I worked with someone who built a Thompson sub machine gun out of paper, dowel rods and clothes pins and rubber bands. He had it set up so that one pull of the trigger would fire between 12 and 20 BBs. This thing was so realistic looking that when he brought it in to show people the UPS guy refused to enter the office and the police came to investigate! So what is the big deal with wood?
First, it's rubber bands and potato plug guns with a range up to 100 ft (btw, those are fun!).
Then it starts to escalate, as the potato plug guns are replaced by hand held laser-guided bolt-action aluminum SP9004 potato rifles.
In the end, you have seven inch air cannons shooting frozen chicken carcasses around the office at 391 mph.
Ok, I realize the that last example has not yet been used in an office setup, but I'm confident that, given enough bored guys and industrial quantities of beer, it will happen one day.
Just imagine the look of your PHB when you point this baby at him after he's pestered you about your daily status report. Hmmmm, maybe this is a good thing.
"There are already a million monkeys on a million typewriters, and Usenet is NOTHING like Shakespeare." - Blair Houghton
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.
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
You can get the Google Cache at http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:FjhILbysnucC: www.backyardartillery.com/machinegun/+&hl=en.
At $395 its pretty pricy though...
Orange
I would have them confiscate any cubicle warfare weapon should someone try to board a plane with one.
aptly titled rubberbandguns.com they also have a gatling gun called the devestator (sic)
E.
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It's a cool address, so it might be interesting. You can get @backyardartillery.com address free.
Here [backyardartillery.com]
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
Depends on where you live.
A simple rubber band stretched between your thumb and index finger on one hand and 1/2 of a paper clip (bend paper clip apart repeatedly until you have 1/2 of the "U" and use the modified paper clip as a projectile).
It flies incredibly far and inflicts sever pain - one down side is that the small portion of metal where the paper-clip is broken apart will start to cut the rubber band after repeated firings.
"Pissed" out of a cow? Maybe you should reconsider your choice of dairy vendors; I don't think that's milk you've been drinking.
Gatling guns that are cranked by hand are legal most everywhere in the US (I suspect CA is not kind to them, but that dosen't matter to me.). I know for sure that nearly, if all the midwestern states don't have laws specifically for hand cranked gatling guns.
Gatling guns will become a very illegal thing when you attach some sort of motor to drive it. If you go and make one (I'm planning to do this some day), and want it to be driven by a motor, make the motor modular, and never transport it with the motor to drive it.
Incidentaly, roataing barrel guns have quite a history, and are quite generalized by the name Gatling (inventor and marketeer of the sucessful version of the gun). They come in a very wide variety of sizes, shapes, rate of fire and calibers. To see how bad ass modern guns are, find some videos of the 30mm GAU (one bastard of a cartrige) on the A-10 close support plane.
Google is a great resource for those wishing to learn more about these wonderous machines of massive chaos. The link the parent provided has some neat movies of antique replicas in action, as well as some history.
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Thanks!!
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
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 applied everything I knew about running a dot-com business and merged it with my passion for fun artillery."
Maybe that's why he's only sold 3 of these so far.
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"Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief."
I had something like this when I was a kid. Yeah, you could unload dozens of rubber bands in seconds... Then spend a whole day reloading it! No thanks...
Better yet, use a small wireless webcam and bolt it to the cat ;-)
I remember when I was a kid they had this exact same thing made out of wood. It had twelve barrels and you could load dozens of rubberbands on it. All you did was crank the handle and it fired like a gattling gun. Talk about nostalgia.
~Admrlnxn
"I got your mom in my trunk"
The Cambridge Assassins' Guild have had to learn to live with one of these owned by a player who owns a shop in the centre of town. It's nowhere near as impressive as some of the larger rubber pellet guns available because you can't draw and shoot at speed!
From the article:
The gun is accurate to within seven metres.
I saw an ad for a gatling rubber band gun at least 7 years ago, but it had the same problem. It would take at least 45 minutes to load it. That kind of takes the fun out of it.
It was at least 10 years ago, maybe 15. Dave had one on his show. Slashdot sets a new record on reporting old news....
take a few rubberbands and loop together (thcker ones work well) take 8 1/2" x 11" paper torn into 1 1/2" strips wide by 8 1/2" long. Fold paper untill its 1/4" wide & 1 1/2" long. Fold in half so it forms a V. use rubber band like a bowby putting V of paper over center of ubberband streched between two finders. pinch paper together over band. pull back. Aim. fire. This a lot faster to reload than just shooting rubberbands.
make Linux, not Microsoft. sin(beast) = -0.809016994374947424102293417182819
52nd, don't forget puerto rico
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learn to teach in a way thats not boring as hell.
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Is there a date on the patent for this "patented star-shaped wheel?" I've had a 12 shot rubber band gun rifle with one of these stars for about 10 years. I got it at a state fair back in the day, and they had one of these gatling guns there too, but I was younger and didn't have the money to get one.
Wouldn't this be more properly referred to as a Gatling Gun?
Knowledge != Intelligence
Anybody that really wants one of these, absolutely do not even consider dishing out $395 for it. You can find the plans somewhere for about $15(if not you can make your own plans), then another $30 for parts _maybe_. I built one about 5-10 years ago, and it's great fun. I still pull it out every once in a while and shoot down some G.I. Joe's :-P.
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?
"All representatives are busy. The estimated hold time is one..hundred..sixty..four..minutes." Detroit Edison, 02/01/02