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Zip gun

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Zip gun is a term used for a crude, improvised firearm, usually a handgun. Zip guns are usually associated with criminals, although they may also be used by insurgents, who may not be considered criminals outside their own nation. Zip guns are almost always single-shot, and occasionally one shot, as the improvised construction sometimes makes them weak enough to be destroyed by the act of firing. Many zip guns use black market commercial ammunition, which is usually more easily obtained than black market firearms, but a zip gun could use improvised ammunition as well. Zip guns are usually smoothbore, unless they are built using barrels salvaged from other firearms.

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Basic zip gun designs

The most basic zip gun consists of a short length of steel tubing, into which a cartridge is placed. The cartridge is then held in place by an endcap, with a small diameter hole drilled in the rear to allow access to the primer. A nail or other thin object is then placed in the hole to act as a firing pin. A spring or rubber band can be used to propel a hammer against the rear of the firing pin, in order to fire the cartridge. Zip guns generally use .22 Long Rifle ammunition, due to its low cost, easy availability, and most importantly, its low operating pressure. Use of a larger, more powerful cartridge would require heavier tubing with thicker walls to withstand higher pressures. Since zip guns almost never have rifling, the bullets invariably tumble in route to the target, allowing even a non-expanding bullet to produce significant damage (see terminal ballistics). Shotgun shells are often used in zip guns as well. Shotguns operate at low pressures, and produce far more energy than handgun cartridges.

More advanced zip guns are often encountered. In late 2000, European police encountered a four shot .22 LR zip gun disguised as a cellphone, where different keys on the keypad fire different barrels. Because of this discovery, cellphones are now x-rayed by airport screeners worldwide. They are believed to be manufactured in Croatia, and are still being found in Europe as late as 2004, according to a report by Time magazine.

A Few Words From Harlan Ellison

In Harlan Ellison's account of his experience with zips while working with kid gangs, Memos from Purgatory (chapter four), he describes it:

"Or how about that homemade cannon, the zip-gun, about which you've heard so much? Have you any idea how simple they are to make? Not the detailed and involved weapons made by kids who only want to sport a deadly-looking piece, but the quickly-made item to be used in a killing.
"The tube-rod in a coffee percolator is the barrel. Did you know it's exactly right for a .22 calibre slug? Or perhaps it's not the stem of from a coffee pot. Perhaps it's a snapped-off car radio antenna. Either one will do the job. They mount it on a block of wood for a grip, with friction tape, and then they rig a rubber-band-and-metal-firing-pin device that will drive the .22 bullet down that percolator stem or antenna shell, and kill another teen-ager. What they don't bother to tell you is that a zip-gun is the most inaccurate, poorly-designed, dangerous weapon of the streets. Not only dangerous to the victim, but equally dangerous to the assailant, for too often the zip will explode in the firer's hand, too often the inaccuracy of the home-made handgun will cause an innocent bystander to be shot. It is a booby trap of the most innocent-seeming sort, and there are many kids in Brooklyn (or in Queens, Long Island City and Astoria, where the Kicks, another club much given to the use of the zip, roam) with only two or three fingers on a hand, from having snapped that rubber band against the metal firing pin."

Other privately-manufactured firearms

While most zip guns are single shot, multiple shot zip guns are also encountered. The simplest multi-shot zip guns are derringer-like, and consist of a number of single shot zip guns attached together. Improvised automatic weapons, in the form of submachine guns that fire from an open bolt, while not common, have been seized by police. An improvised submachine gun typically requires a significant amount of machining, high quality springs, and the ability to form sheet metal. Due to the effort involved, such a weapon would certainly not be "crude", and so generally would not be considered a zip gun. Semi-automatic firearms can also be converted, although agencies such as the BATFE restrict manufacture of easily converted designs, such as open bolt firearms, by classifying them as machine guns even if they are not capable of automatic fire without conversion. Demilitarized firearms, which have been rendered inoperable by destruction of major components and are often sold as collectors items, are a common source of parts for the private manufacture of semi-automatic look-a-like submachine guns. These are commonly simple open bolt designs such as the Sten or Uzi, and generally manufacture of a new receiver and/or barrel is required to render them operable again. A license to manufacture such a gun is required from the BATFE prior to commencing machining.

Cultural refrences

External links

 

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