The Ideal Conceal IC380 Cell Phone Pistol
The Best Gun is the One you Have with You
What would you think of a gun that you could carry in plain sight, was easily accessible in your back pocket or a belt holster, and wouldn’t attract the slightest attention? Nobody would look twice at it, even if you were in a T-shirt, with no jacket, and they were standing right next to you in the supermarket check-out line, or even if you were wearing only shorts and sneakers playing Frisbee at the park.
This invisible gun could save your life in a desperate situation, when its appearance would come as a complete surprise to an attacker. Because it’s invisible, nobody you interact with socially or professionally ever knows you carry a gun for self-defense either. In places where gun ownership is equated with crime and mayhem in the minds of citizens, this invisible gun could save its user a lot of unnecessary social friction.
This idea of an invisible gun is what got the mind of Kirk Kjellberg stewing and led him to invent a double barrel, .380 ACP Derringer with the appearance of a common smartphone. Kjellberg formed Ideal Conceal to manufacture his unique pistol.
“The first rule of gunfighting is have a gun.” This is perhaps Jeff Cooper’s best known quote. The famous lawman-turned-tactical-shooting-guru was making the point that self-defense begins with the “self.” Seems obvious, right? Yet in the recent rash of heinous mass-shooting attacks directed against innocent city dwellers in crowded public venues by deranged gunmen, it doesn’t appear that anyone on the receiving end was prepared to fight back. The police responded efficiently to these attacks, but the death and injury inflicted by the gunmen was staggering. In Dayton, Ohio, the police arrived in half a minute and killed the attacker, but not before he shot 36 people.
In the El Paso, Texas, Walmart, it took cops over six minutes to get there and the attacker shot 46 people. At the Gilroy, California, Garlic Festival, the attacker shot 13 people before he was killed by police, just under a minute after he began his rampage. At that event there was a substantial police presence for security, which apparently didn’t dissuade the attack. Nobody can really prepare thoroughly for dealing with crazy anyway. Nobody can ensure your protection and safety in a public place either, though they may try their best. Your safety is always on you.
CONSIDER WHAT MIGHT have happened in Dayton, El Paso and Gilroy, if just one good person unfortunate enough to be present at these tragic, insane murder sprees was armed and fired just one shot in response. Let’s say the good person’s single shot missed the attacker and impacted harmlessly into the wall. Might it have diverted the attacker’s attention, caused him to pause, take cover, or perhaps withdraw? It might have saved some lives, or might have cost more. We can’t know. But, at the very least, it would have been an act of active resistance, a brave attempt to bring the murderous madness to a stop.
That is not to say that any private citizen should be expected to demonstrate heroism in that type of situation, though some did, despite being unarmed. Soldiers march to the sound of the guns but ordinary citizens usually don’t. Kids, adults or elderly, whether soccer moms or welders, truck drivers or short order cooks, can’t be criticized for running like heck from a life-threatening situation.
That’s part of nature’s “fight or flight” reaction that all Earth’s living, thinking creatures share. What might you or I do in a situation like that? It would probably depend a lot on the circumstances: alone or with family, close or far from the attacker, armed or unarmed?
Fight is the other side of the survival instinct we all possess. If we must fight, being armed improves our chances of staying alive. If you assume you can maintain a calculating presence of mind in a life-threatening situation, you probably also assume being armed will figure into your choice of actions. Even if you don’t possess what soldiers call “coolness under fire,” being armed at least gives you the ability to fight back when you have no other choice. An old army colonel I worked for years ago once told me, “Even a bunny will fight when it’s cornered.” Personally, if I’m ever that bunny, I want to be an armed bunny.
The thing all these recent shootings have in common is that they took place in urban and suburban settings where a large percentage of the population holds negative opinions toward gun ownership. Just because a person lives in a thickly populated region doesn’t mean they are anti-gun stooges for the Democratic Party, but statistically they are pretty likely to be, and they’re also likely to be unarmed. That doesn’t make them bad people. They’re usually just ignorant despite the pretensions to education and refined judgment that the more comfortably situated and well-to-do ones often demonstrate.
I live in rural Kentucky, but I hear these misinformed and defenseless unfortunates on National Public Radio all day long. If you have to live and work in America’s cities and heavily populated areas, you’re stuck with the people there. You’ll want to enlighten them about responsible gun ownership and defend the Constitution’s Second Amendment, but if you do that too much, it can have real consequences for your social and professional life. I recently attended a dinner party with old friends in New Jersey who recently took up target and trap shooting with gusto. However, they warned me not to mention their interest in getting a handgun for self-defense to the other guests. What a shame that they felt they had to keep their recent epiphanies about gun ownership secret for reasons of sociability.
THE SOCIABILITY OF gun ownership was one of the factors that Kjellberg gave considerable thought to in designing his gun so it wouldn’t look like a gun at all. He made the cell phone pistol for people who don’t carry guns at all because they live and work in areas with strong social anti-gun bias. Living in a liberal suburb of Minneapolis, Minnesota, he’s observed first-hand the negative attitudes toward the shooting sports and the Second Amendment commonly held by urbanites and cultivated by their Democratic city governments and liberal news media. Kjellberg created the IC380 cell phone pistol as a means for those who want to legally arm themselves for protection, to do so with maximum discretion and avoid the ill will and social fallout of conflicts with their anti-gun neighbors, acquaintances and business contacts. It’s a niche market perhaps, but so were sword canes in the 19th century.
As a two-shot derringer, the IC380 is no Glock 43. However, that was never Kjellberg’s goal. His objective was to get people who don’t exercise their right to carry a concealed handgun for self-defense to start doing it, and just as importantly, to keep doing it.
“I don’t expect or advocate those already legally carrying more efficient and larger capacity revolvers and auto-loading self-defense handguns to switch to the IC380,” he says. “I don’t care what you carry. I just want law-abiding citizens to carry because they make us all safer when they do.”
I will admit a fascination with clever designs. A .380 ACP Derringer disguised as a smartphone is the type of thing you’d expect to see in the next James Bond movie. That’s surely part of its attraction and it caused a stir inside and outside the shooting community. Critics, pro- and anti-gun, claim it’s likely to get people killed in confrontations with police or that it’s a danger to children who are inclined to play with cell phones. Time will tell, I suppose, but I expect this to be the case. I believe that the IC380 is actually the first of many more disguised self-defense arms to come. Read the rest of the story here.
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