Gauss guns are here, and they're airsoft legal!

[Rogerborg]

By which I mean, 75 m/s / 250 fps.  Sure, that's hucking a massive steel cylinder slug (63% more bullet per bullet), but it's under 350fps so that's site legal, Reddit said so. 

Ian McCollum / Gun Jesus has been having a play.

Bit of a chat about them:

A lot of the fun is playing the game of "Well, if I made one, and I could, I'd make it better in this, that and the other ways...".  Since they're smoothbores, not spinning the slugs, and there seems to be a hard 75m/s limit on the velocity, using steel BBs than tumbling cylinders seems like an obvious tweak.

One interesting point from the chat is that the "barrel" is just there to stop the slugs from smashing into the coils, so arguably you could fling 100J of undersized "unbarreled" steel while saying "not a firearm". ?

 

[Tackle]

View attachment 85286

 

[Adolf Hamster]

lets face it i'm sure somewhere would let that thing pass chrono......

also inb4 someone tries to fire a gyrojet round out of one.....

 

[Rogerborg]

also inb4 someone tries to fire a gyrojet round out of one

Click to shrink...

But nobody would or could do that except for some sort of historical firearms buff with access to rare... wait...  ohhhhh.

Ian has apparently used this amazing abomination at an actual firearms match - I can't wait to see how brilliantly terrible the results are.

 

[Adolf Hamster]

But nobody would or could do that except for some sort of historical firearms buff with access to rare... wait...  ohhhhh.

Click to shrink...

taofledermaus? theyre the only ones afaik in modern times who've had access to og gyrogets and more importantly the ammo.

although afaik there is someone working on doing a modern repro.

Ian has apparently used this amazing abomination at an actual firearms match - I can't wait to see how brilliantly terrible the results are.

Click to shrink...

yeah that's gonna be an interesting video.

tbh though, there's still quite aways to go before this becomes practical as a replacement for good ol' gunpowder. no doubt regardless of how fast/slow development happens anything that launches projectiles at that rate will be receiving the banhammer for anywhere outside of america.

 

[Rogerborg]

there's still quite aways to go before this becomes practical as a replacement for good ol' gunpowder

Click to shrink...

I do like how the manufacturer is very clear that these are early prototypes, and they're about the least practical way of murderising someone imaginable at the moment.  However, they exist, they "work" (about 4 shots out of 10) and they're actually selling them, so kudos for that.

Legislation is going to be a pickle for the various fun sponges out there, and I imagine the AFT ATF is frantically coming up with ways to define and ban them just on general principle.  Over here, they clearly fall under lethal barrelled firearms, so it's FAC or nothing.

 

[Rogerborg]

Tech fail, but fun on the range was had.  They also have a carbine sized version that looks almost back-garden friendly, for "inaccurate tumbling cylinders of steel" definitions of "friendly".

 

[Adolf Hamster]

aye, although the little one looks like it could be outperformed by an airsoft pew if you tried hard enough.

the intro though "i seriously have to ask if anyone has a pacemaker"