Click here to subscribe today or Login.
Should a private company be allowed to make a gun deliberately designed to look like a smartphone?
Sen. Bob Casey, D-Scranton, said he believes the answer is an emphatic no, and that he will push hard to stop the manufacturing and sale of such a weapon already in the works.
“I don’t often take the time to focus on the product of one company,” Casey said during a teleconference Thursday, “but I believe this particular weapon should not get to market.”
Casey was discussing a double-barreled .380-caliber pistol being marketed by Ideal Conceal. The stock of the gun folds up to mask the trigger and present a rectangular shape resembling a smartphone.
Photos on the company’s website show a person sliding the phone-like weapon into a hip pocket, as well as the weapon snapped into a phone-like belt harness.
Ideal Conceal “hasn’t been in any way reluctant to very explicitly tell the world what they’re marketing here,” Casey said, quoting advertising material that says the gun is “cunningly designed to look like a smartphone.
“The last thing we need is a weapon people will routinely, almost in every case, mistake for a smartphone,” Casey said, raising the specter of police officers unable to be sure if a person is holding a phone or is poised to fire, and the risk of children handling such a weapon at home without knowing what it really is.
Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Ross joined Casey in calling for a ban on the weapon.
“Officers are compelled to make split second decisions all across this nation each and every day,” Ross said. “We already have instances where folks were thought to be carrying a gun and it was a cell phone.”
Putting a gun deliberately designed to mimic a cell phone on the streets would be “problematic and make officers second guess” every incident involving a phone.
Casey called for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to investigate the product and determine compliance with federal laws and regulations, and to “evaluate its effect on the public.”
A letter to Bureau Deputy Director Thomas Brandon has been sent, signed by Casey, Ross and Pittsburgh Chief of Police Cameron McLay calling for such a review.
“In a time when smartphones have become ubiquitous, the ludicrous possibility that walking down the street may soon involve determining whether the person walking toward you is firing off a text message or a .380-caliber bullet is truly troubling,” the letter said.
The letter cited statistics from the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence claiming children living in homes with loaded, unlocked guns are “16 time more likely to be killed in unintentional shootings.”
The letter also noted data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “shows that an average of 62 children age 14 and under were accidentally shot and killed each year between 2007 and 2011, and that this figure may underestimate the true number of young lives lost by over 60 percent.”
“It stands to reason that the less a gun looks like a gun and, especially, the more a gun looks like another common household item like a smartphone, the more children will lose their lives in preventable accidents,” the letter says.
Casey said he is hoping the ATF can regulate and ban the manufacture of the gun through the National Firearms Act, which covers weapons that include “disguised devices such as pen guns, cigarette lighter guns, knife guns, cane guns and umbrella guns.”
Casey called for a response from the ATF “as prompt as necessary to prevent this from getting to market,” but also promised to take further action if needed, even as he conceded he didn’t know what the next step might be if the ATF doesn’t or can’t act.
“To say this is an outrage is an understatement,” Casey said. “I am going to do everything in my power, and I think others will join us, to stop this weapon, which will cause more violence and more death.”