Optional extras
It also has an optional "Picatinny rail".. all that's missing is the ACOG TA01 4*32 and the world will learn to fear these senior "OAPerators"...
Elderly? Disabled? You clearly need a .38" Palm Pistol
In good news for US "seniors, disabled or others with grip limitations due to hand strength, manual dexterity or phalangeal amputions" wishing to pop the odd cap, the Palm Pistol .38 Special is finally available for their shooting pleasure. Two views of the Palm Pistol. Pics: Palm Pistol It's apparently taken nine years for …
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Tuesday 20th October 2015 09:54 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Optional extras
What on earth is this needed for - perhaps this has a potential use over at Dignitas? You would have to be one of the most retarded countries on the planet to deliberately let the old and infirm loose with guns! Well citizens in general really...
If any country is ever stupid enough to allow such free access to guns there will be daily mass shootings, and children regularly killing each other, mark my words!
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Monday 19th October 2015 16:07 GMT Dan Paul
Re: Nothing new @Drewc
He's right. The idea of a "Palm Pistol" has been around for a very long time. 1882 perhaps
See Wiki link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protector_Palm_Pistol
http://www.aaawt.com/html/firearms/f154.html
The antique gun is multi shot too.
The new one has some special ergonomic grip, has a thumb trigger and safeties but is single shot.
The old one was smaller, semi-automatic (It reloads the next shot) and held 7 shots.
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Monday 19th October 2015 16:12 GMT ZSn
Re: Nothing new
Actually they were usually in .32. However they were chambered to hold 7 shots. To be honest they might be more useful than this thing. Imagine it when you miss, 'excuse me while I find my glasses to reload it, you just stand there young man until I am ready to shoot you again'. Tattooed muggers will be quaking in their shoes...
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Monday 19th October 2015 17:57 GMT chivo243
Re: Nothing new
Wasn't it named after the guitarist Rick Derringer? And used by Jim West on the Wild, Wild West? I dunno know anymore ;-}
Wasn't something like this gun pawned on Pawn Stars? Or attempted
I know there was something called a zip gun in the states during the 70's, made in shop class, and fired one shot. George Carlin had a bit about them... or mentioned zip guns in a bit he did
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Tuesday 20th October 2015 10:56 GMT Alan Edwards
Re: Nothing new
> Wasn't it named after the guitarist Rick Derringer
Nope, pre-dates him by about a hundred years.
It was actually a mis-spelling of 'deringer', as in Henry Deringer. According to the Wiki page, John Wilkes Booth used a Philadelphia Deringer to assassinate Lincoln - never knew that.
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Monday 19th October 2015 14:31 GMT Voland's right hand
It has another health application - breaking wrists
I have some serious doubts about the effect of this on the wrist of a person who is having trouble holding a normal gun. It does not take a lot to break a bone damaged by osteoporosis.
On top of that, if a person is having trouble to hold a normal gun firmly, the "grip advantage" they get with this one is not that much. 9mm+ in a handgun is a hell of a kickback, they are bound to let it lose and it to hit them, again, breaking something. If a person like that is to be trusted with a gun at all (queue jokes about dementia and a firefight in the nursing home), a "glove" modification of a standard handle is likely to be significantly more effective.
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Monday 19th October 2015 20:26 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Word of the day
even if it does once again make me despair for my species...
Au contraire, I find stuff like this encouraging. I greatly admire any attempt by anyone to innovate just enough to remove themselves from the gene pool in a hopefully entertaining fashion. The only troubling bit is that they sometimes manage to take others out with them, but I agree with a poster in my office which reads:
"I'm not saying let's go kill all the stupid people. I'm just saying let's remove all the warning labels and let the problem sort itself out".
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Monday 19th October 2015 14:09 GMT sisk
A single shot .38? Please for the love of sanity don't try to use this thing for self defense. There's a good chance you're just going to piss off the guy trying to mug you with it. Seriously, look up how often people report to the ER with .38 gunshot wounds and it turns out that they need nothing more than a couple stitches because the bullet bounced off a rib or skull. .38 is not a self defense caliber. 9mm is the absolute smallest caliber you should consider for self defense, and even that's pushing your luck if you have to use it. .38 is just way too small.
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Monday 19th October 2015 14:40 GMT bpfh
Re: Metrication
Just because it's called .38 does not mean it was actually 0.38000 of an inch ! Numbers can and have been fudged for different reasons or because similar sized or characteristics bullets existed and the new caliber needed to be differenciated, for example, 5.5mm, 5.6mm, 5.56mm, .22, .222, .223 are all the same diameter and their bullets could fit all their respective barrels, but the bullet, pellet or cartridge shape are not the same, and the power of the different cartridges are totally and radically different!
From wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.38_S%26W
Bullet diameter .361 in (9.2 mm)
Neck diameter .3855 in (9.79 mm)
Base diameter .3865 in (9.82 mm)
Rim diameter .440 in (11.2 mm)
Rim thickness .055 in (1.4 mm)
Case length .775 in (19.7 mm)
Overall length 1.240 in (31.5 mm)
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Monday 19th October 2015 15:09 GMT Commswonk
Re: Metrication
A 38 Special bullet has a diameter of .357", the same as, er, the 357 Magnum but with a lot less "bang" behind it. Quite enough to stop someone provided that you hit them somewhere vital, which might be tricky with a barrel that short combined with the "palm grip". Actually aiming it would not be that easy - to stand a reasonable chance of delivering an effective shot the muzzle (if it can be said to have one) would need to be almost touching the target.
The expanding round shown in the picture would be useful in making a "through and through" a bit less likely, which would at least contain the resulting mess somewhat. Just make sure that you hit the right person...
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Tuesday 20th October 2015 06:46 GMT Voland's right hand
Re: Metrication
Actually aiming it would not be that easy - to stand a reasonable chance of delivering an effective shot the muzzle (if it can be said to have one) would need to be almost touching the target.
This is a point blank range weapon. It is useless at more than 5-10 m by design. At that range you might as well use a taser or something else which is guaranteed to incapacitate wherever it hits.
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Monday 19th October 2015 15:30 GMT phuzz
Re: Metrication
I think you mean E=1/2mv^2 ie the energy of a bullet (or other moving object) increases linearly as you increase the mass, but it increases according to the square of the velocity.
E=mc^2 is for things like hydrogen bombs, and contrary to what you may have heard, those things are not ideal for home defence.
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Monday 19th October 2015 20:21 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Metrication
"and contrary to what you may have heard, those things are not ideal for home defence."
On the contrary, since I acquired a supply of solid fuel rockets and a number of hydrogen warheads, I have not been bothered by burglars. At least, not ones I have seen coming from a distance greater than the blast radius.
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Monday 19th October 2015 17:58 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Metrication
"That's also why the less-massive-yet 7.62mm round, at 2300ish fps, is so much more deadly."
A friend used to do .303 rifle competition shooting at his Territorial Army's annual camp. The conventional bullseye target was hidden behind a sheet of steel on a narrow stand. That had to be knocked over by judicious aiming before they could start the scoring shots.
The year they changed to 7.62 rifles things did not go to plan. No one could knock the steel plates over. It was found that the bullets were just going through the steel.
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Tuesday 27th October 2015 19:30 GMT Matt Bryant
Re: John Arthur Re: Metrication
".....my calculator says that 0.38 inches is 9.652 mm?...." True, but the whole nomenclature is an historic one and has little to do with the actual diameter of the bullet in the cartridge and more to do with marketing. The original "Thirty-Eight" from the Wild West was the Colt 1851 Navy Revolver, which had a barrel of 0.36in calibre but fired a 0.38in soft, lead ball (it was a blackpowder cap'n'ball design, not the later metallic cartridge type) which was squeezed down in the barrel. When customers went to buy loads they asked for "Thirty-Eights". As reloading a revolver with the later metallic cartridges was much faster than with traditional cap'n'ball paper packets and separate percussion caps, many Navy Revolvers were converted to fire the early .38 Short Colt cartridge. The actual diameter of the .38 Short Colt bullet was 0.379in but Colt decided to use .38 so customers would still refer to it as a "Thirty-Eight". The .38 Short Colt was the cartridge that was developed to provide the more powerful .38 Long Colt and eventually the .38 Smith & Wesson Special that is the round used in the palm gun from the article.
The .38 S&W Special actually has a diameter of 0.357in (about 9.1mm) and is the most popular revolver cartridge in the World and very comparable to 9mm Parabellum (AKA 9mm Luger in Yankland). The greater popularity of 9mm Parabellum is mainly due to the fact it is used in magazine-loaded automatics which can hold more rounds than the traditional six-shot revolver (or the old Colt 1911 automatic and its larger .45 ACP cartridges), leading to the adoption of what the Yanks called the "Wonder Nines" (such as the S&W Model 59 and Beretta Model 92).
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Monday 19th October 2015 14:24 GMT bpfh
.38 Smith & Wesson is actually a tad bigger than a 9mm (parabellum|luger|9x19) (they are different names for the same round), but the .38 S&W shoots a slighty heavier bullet a bit slower. You would be better off with a 9mm, but a .38 is not to be sniffed at.
Maybe you are confusing .38 S&W with .380, which is a smaller, weaker cousin of the above mentionned 9mm...
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Monday 19th October 2015 15:16 GMT sisk
Maybe you are confusing .38 S&W with .380, which is a smaller, weaker cousin of the above mentionned 9mm...
Nope, I mean the .38 S&W. Anyone who's been around guns at all knows the .380 is useless for anything except paper targets and bowling pins, but some people actually think the .38 is a good choice for self defense. Probably because it was the police weapon of choice once upon a time.
And for the source of my info, my dad is both a gun collector and a paramedic. After 30 years of patching up gunshot victims he'll flat out laugh at you if you tell him you're using a .38 for self defense. I know because I've had that conversation with him.
Yes, the .38 can kill, but it has lacks that oh-so-important attribute for self defense: stopping power. You will not drop an assailant with a .38. They might die a few minutes after being shot, but that does you no good if they've killed you while they were bleeding out.
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Monday 19th October 2015 19:15 GMT Mark 85
I'm not sure why the downvotes, but you are spot on. There was/is a reason that the .38 was replaced by the .45 for the military in the States. Going to the 9mm was political (much as the 5.56 rifle was politics). For my money, it's the .45 pistol and 7.62 rifle if I had to make that choice.
Disclaimer: I'm in the States and do not own a firearm.
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Tuesday 20th October 2015 08:53 GMT Matt Bryant
Re: sisk
"....I mean the .38 S&W...." OK, big difference between .38 S&W, .38 S&W Special and .380 ACP. The first is a very old revolver cartridge used in US service revolvers, the Special is a different cartridge entirely with a lot more power, and the .380 is a rimless cartridge for blowback automatics (AKA 9mm Short). And before you cast aspersions on any of them, the .38 S&W killed plenty of people, as has .380 (which was also used as a service cartridge in WW2 Europe and as a police load for many years after). You would have to be a complete idiot to claim any of them are no use for home defence as the cartridge that kills the most people every year in the States is the tiny .22LR, which is a lot "less deadly" than even .380.
"...stopping-power...." Wrong in so many ways. Placement of a shot is a massively more important than stopping-power, and penetration is almost as important as placement. Stopping-power is just the myth repeated by the .45 ACP and .40 S&W brigades in their endless denials of science. There are plenty of cases of people surviving multiple hits from even the nastiest of .45 hollowpoints (one case I recall a criminal was hit in the torso with four .45 Black Talons and still managed to run over a mile before being arrested).
"....paramedic...." Well, there's a big reason he saw only the survivors - the dead go to the morgue, not the hospital. For all your old man knew there could have been a guy killed by .38s for every one he patched up. The .38 Special got a bad name after the FBI's badly planned interception of two bank robbers in 1986 (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fbi_miami_shootout) when the FBI made the .38 Special the scapegoat, leading to the awful 10mm Auto cartridge and eventually the .40 S&W. Ironically, the shots that finally ended that shootout were .38 Special +Ps fired from a revolver, but everyone ignored that in the rush to a "better" cartridge.
Double-action revolvers have a big advantage over automatics when you have a misfire - in an auto you have to stop and clear the misfire, but in a revolver you just squeeze the trigger again and it rotates the cylinder to the next chamber and you carry on shooting. And .38 S&W Special is a very good load in a revolver, not too heavy a recoil, so it is a good option for women as well as men in the typically short-range encounters of home defence. But I consider this palm gun an awful idea - if you can't handle a regular firearm then you probably won't be able to effectively use it either.
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Monday 19th October 2015 19:25 GMT Chris G
Re: Lincoln was killed with a derringer
The weapon used was a .44 cap and ball pistol, the ball would have been about 140 grains=roughly to 9 gms or a third of an ounce for merkins and oldys like me.
http://www.nationalparks.org/connect/blog/artifact-gun-shot-lincoln
With a reasonable load of black powder behind it, it would have packed a fair punch. In Lincoln's case with a short range head shot it was definitely effective. This over priced piece of junk in the article is probably less effective than multiple whacks from a decent stick. A reasonable crack to the side of the knee will drop most people leaving them open to more whacks without the need to reload.
In the spirit of openess I must confess that one of my hobbys is making rustic walking sticks and I have in the past used one to great effect on a knee belonging to a chap carrying a foot long piece of scaffold tube. The one whack was enough for him!
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Monday 19th October 2015 19:43 GMT Lynrd
It's not the size, it's how you use it.
Oh, BS. You can use a .22 for self defense....and it is a smarter weapon. True - it makes tiny holes and probably won't kill anyone (is that a bad thing?). But the report for a .38, 9mm, or whatever is going to leave you deaf at the moment you first pull the trigger - and if you missed the first shot in a darkened room - you are both blind and now deaf other than that ringing in your ears.
If I open up with a .22, I can still hear (a little) and I am pretty sure that whoever I am unloading on is at least going to have to step back and regroup a bit, and probably consider alternatives to hanging around while I plink at their knees and elbows. Minimal recoil means I am very accurate, one handed if need be.
You should not be looking for deadly force in a self defense weapon. You look to defend yourself.
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Tuesday 20th October 2015 09:23 GMT Matt Bryant
Re: AC Re: It's not the size, it's how you use it.
"....you're better off running away." Excellent advice, sir. These are some very un-gungho rules I was taught (by a Yank!) many years ago which still hold true today:
Range rule number one - NEVER point a firearm at anyone or anything you don't intend to kill, even if you think it is empty.
Self-defence rule number one - BE PREPARED, any shot is potentially lethal, even to an extremity, so if you're not prepared to kill your attacker then don't pull the trigger, and if you're not prepared to pull the trigger then a firearm is the wrong defence strategy and is likely to get YOU killed.
Self-defence rule number two - GO LOW RISK, choose the strategy that presents the lowest risk to you, including avoiding the chance of being killed by hiding or retreating, as wisely safe beats bravely dead every time.
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Tuesday 20th October 2015 10:23 GMT LucreLout
@Sisk
A single shot .38? Please for the love of sanity don't try to use this thing for self defense. There's a good chance you're just going to piss off the guy trying to mug you with it.
Well, that depends more on where you shoot them than what you shot the with. Allow me to explain.
Many moons ago I was on a friends stag do which involved a bit of paintballing. Our point man wasn’t making sufficient progress towards the enemy fort, so someone from his own side shot him square in the arse, from a distance of about 20 feet. Point man jumps up like a scalded cat, drops his gun, and grabs his ass with both hands, thereby revealing his position to the enemy, who proceed to paint him red.
Anyway, having lost the element of surprise, and one of my paint balls, I decide on a death of glory charge through the front gate. Death would, with hindsight, have been preferable. As I ran the 40 feet between our cover and the fort, over open ground, I began to debate my assumption that my mates couldn’t hit the side of a barn. Just as I close on the main gate, I notice one of their group who was previously well hidden, and begin raising my gun.
Turns out that I either have balls bigger than an average barn, or I miscalculated my mates abilities with the toy gun. One shot later, I’m sliding to a halt, face down in the dirt, clutching my knackers and wishing so hard that the world would end. Seeing my obvious pain and total incapacitation, my friends decide to offer assistance, by delivering a stunning and seemingly unending barrage of paint. How we laughed.
Anyway, the point is that two shots with a paintball gun, at distance, incapacitated two blokes who would normally (and perhaps unreasonably) have expected to fare better than average in a confrontation. I don’t know about you, but I really wouldn’t fancy a hit in the happy sacks with one of these OAP guns. I’m not justifying their creation or their use, only suggesting that given the gun is likely to be coming up, and the mugger is likely to be within a couple of feet, the primary target area may well be … lightly armored enough that calibre won’t matter?
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Tuesday 20th October 2015 17:00 GMT Scroticus Canis
@sisk - It's a .38 Special not just a .38
.38 Spl work as well as 9mm Parabellum if you hit the target. The rounds depicted are Glazer .38 Spl +P which make a rat-hole sized wound internally (±140 cc); OK it is slightly smaller than the permanent cavity wound from a 9mm +P Glazer but it's still 5 times the wound cavity of a .45 ACP FMJ. Over penetration is just a waste of kinetic energy and a risk to non-involved others.
This particular gun though is crap IMHO; a .22 LR Walther TPH or even revolver would be better if you have enough fingers to use it.
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Tuesday 27th October 2015 19:30 GMT Matt Bryant
Re: Scroticus Canis Re: @sisk - It's a .38 Special not just a .38
".38 Spl work as well as 9mm Parabellum if you hit the target.....which make a rat-hole sized wound internally...." Again, back to the discussion on "effectiveness". Wound cavity size means nothing if your opponent is still capable of firing back at you. Sure, he may bleed to death afterwards, but that will be small consolation if he has shot you full of holes in the meantime. The only immediately incapacitating wounds are to the brain stem and spinal column, everything else (including direct hits to the heart) can still give the victim time to return fire before they bleed out. Even well-trained shooters will miss a moving target at short-range more often than they will hit (IIRC, the NYPD figures are less than 50% hits for shootings at a range of less than 5 feet!), which - IMHO - makes this palm gun a pretty moot idea regardless of calibre. My advice would be to stop worrying about the size of the hole you can make and worry more about finding a gun and cartridge combo with which you can regularly and confidently place your shots on a moving target. Or just by a 12-gauge and some 00 busckshot - fifteen times as many chances of hitting the spine with each shot to the centre of mass!
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Monday 19th October 2015 14:12 GMT Barry Rueger
Green Avenger
An obvious rip-off of the design of one of my all time favourite toys back in the day - the Green Avenger water pistol.
https://img1.etsystatic.com/006/0/7099949/il_fullxfull.367502843_9vda.jpg
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Monday 19th October 2015 15:07 GMT szielins
"Medical device"?
There's a reason the manufacturer would have wanted this widget classified as a "medical device." The USA does have socialized medical insurance for the elderly-- "Medicare"-- and classifying this thing as a medical device would have opened the gates for Medicare footing the bill for them.
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Monday 19th October 2015 19:19 GMT Mark 85
Re: Fire away Grandpa
I thought that price was bit excessive myself. One could pickup a Taurus Judge (chambered to take .410 shotgun and .45 pistol) for a whole lot less money and have a better close in self-defense weapon. That damn thing looks to be more dangerous to the shooter than the target.
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Monday 19th October 2015 15:20 GMT Anonymous Coward
The design is all wrong - it should be one of those crotch guns like in From Dusk Till Dawn. If you're that old/disabled, you're probably going to miss with one bullet; so plenty of bullets is a must. It's the centre of the body, so will provide a stable launching platform for your fusillade of lead, as opposed to extremities which could well be twitchy, disabled or just plain missing. Finally -and possibly most important as a factor in daily use- you will be able to reach under your tartan blanket at any time and claim "weapon maintenance" with a straight face and in perfect truthfulness.
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Monday 19th October 2015 17:10 GMT Doctor_Wibble
Re: The thing that actually has me the most worried...
And in particular, it doesn't look like a gun, and surely it is the immediate recognisableness* of a gun-like thing that gets people to stop what they are doing when you say "stop I have a gun". If you have to explain that it's not some star trek knockoff prop then in the words of our most revered agent: "No, Lieutenant - your men are already dead."
* sorry
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Monday 19th October 2015 20:34 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: The thing that actually has me the most worried...
Does the muzzle look to anyone else like the business end of an asthma inhaler?
Well, it *does* cure asthma, as well as any other old age illness. You're guaranteed not to have any asthma after using that inhaler, so I can see where the medical device idea comes from..
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Monday 19th October 2015 15:57 GMT Michael Habel
The solution to Life the, Universe, and Everything.
Just take One Bullit (administerd orally), in the Morning, and all of your problems will go away! And you'll never need to rack your mind with such silly questions like. WTF am I doing here? And, why the bloody hell did I just blow my last paycheque on that Digital (Smart), Watch for?
Sometimes I have to wonder if entire population of this World really did originate with a bunch of Middle Management, Hair Dreesing, Bathing, Telephone Sanitizers.
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Monday 19th October 2015 18:06 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: At a disadvantage
"Society is still at a disadvantage to crims with AK-47's."
Any long barrelled gun is a disadvantage close-up. Machine pistols with needle bullets, lots of them, are presumably the most effective at short range. Something like an Uzi is much more compact than an M16.
IIRC WW2 commandos used the 9mm Sten machine gun rather than a bolt-loading .303 rifle. The Russians favoured the .45 Thompson sub-machine gun in house to house fighting.
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Monday 19th October 2015 20:27 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: At a disadvantage
"The Russians favoured the .45 Thompson sub-machine gun in house to house fighting."
I thought that this was because the US was dumping the old pray and sprays on them, not because they preferred them. Given the expected lifetime of a Soviet soldier at Stalingrad or Berlin, there wasn't a lot of point giving them very high quality weapons.
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Monday 19th October 2015 16:41 GMT Lamb0
Use the proper ammo...
and even the .380 becomes a viable defense option - for those of us who choose to accept the responsibility; and are still allowed to defend ourselves with a firearm.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LczfeWK9lHw#t=17 Ammo Quest .380 ACP: Lehigh XP Xtreme Penetrator test in ballistic gel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PDQcE-1T40 Military Arms Channel Lehigh & Underwood .380 Xtreme Perpetrator
$1,350 is too rich for my blood, and IMHO one round is not enough! I'll keep my Smith & Wesson Bodyguard. ;<)
Given time, avoidance and 911(or equivalent) are still the best options. However, much of the time some means of defense is required to buy the time. All too often less than lethal options are insufficient. YMWV
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Monday 19th October 2015 17:02 GMT theOtherJT
How on earth do you AIM it?
Or wasn't that considered terribly important?
With no sights and a barrel length of what, an inch? I see that hitting something sort of "over there... ish" When you add in the fact that the people it's marketed to are likely not to have the steadiest of hands I foresee the words "Innocent bystander" turning up a lot in news reports related to this thing should they actually sell any...
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Monday 19th October 2015 17:34 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: How on earth do you AIM it?
Aim is the least of this product's fundamental design problems.
> Not 3D printed
> No GPS
> Doesn't have a webcam or even a regular camera alongside the barrel
> No internet connection to upload shot pics (see above bullet point) to ishotwhatnow.com
> No IFF or auto-aim
> Less ammo capacity than a Nomad. Lame.
Going to stick with my steampunk Apache revolver until someone kickstarts a decent IOT personal firearm.
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Monday 19th October 2015 18:13 GMT skeptical i
And when the grandkids find them?
Most kids in Amurka know the shape of a gun, and most (I hope) are taught to stay away and notify an adult when they find one (and/or proper handling when they are old enough). Aside from "innocent bystander", I think we'll see "child" and "accident" when this goes to market.
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Monday 19th October 2015 20:33 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: suicide special
As I understand it, killing yourself quickly with a handgun is not that easy. At least one German senior officer tried it unsuccessfully in WW2. The thing is, you only get to practice once.
There are many much easier, more reliable and less unpleasant ways to kill yourself. I've researched them in case I develop Alzheimers - I will know if it happens.
Oh, and a thousand curses on the bishops and the politicians who have ensured that anybody with any sense will have to kill themselves before they become incapable. May the wrathful shade of Sir Terry Pratchett make your lives a misery.
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Tuesday 20th October 2015 08:13 GMT Michael H.F. Wilkinson
Vimes is going to go spare!!
This reminds me of the pistol crossbow from The Fifth Elephant: the one shot nobody expects. Given the short barrel you would almost need to press it against somebody to be sure of hitting him. At zero mm range, almost any ammo can cause severe damage. As such you might go along with Vimes' conclusion that it is a weapon designed to kill, not to deter, as a more fire-arm shaped object might. No doubt, if he found it, he would insert it where the sun doesn't shine.
No doubt various secret services who might find such an object useful have more Q-esque versions readily available
Biting the hand that feeds IT
