A homemade shotgun. Bat-shit insane, but nothing to do with this story

A man has been arrested after his wife was killed with a homemade gun in Springs on the East Rand. The gun was fabricated from legal firearm material, elastic bands, and an iron nail. This is a terrible story, and you have to feel sorry for this guy, but a homemade gun? Really?

I remember when I was in standard five I would make ‘guns’ out of elastic bands and what was in my space case. Thankfully for me I didn’t graduate to full blown nail-gun manufacturing. Apparently the couple were moving house and the Chechnyan firecracker fell out from underneath a mattress. The gun fired and struck the wife in the neck. The 33-year-old man alerted police who called paramedics, but sadly his wife died shortly after their arrival.

Why his home made gun was lying under a mattress loaded is something we will have to wait and find out. More should be revealed today when the man appears in the Springs Magistrate’s Court.

Garage guns, as they are known in the US, can be made out of easily acquired pieces of trash and industrial debris. They can be as simple as a lead tube with a rubber-band-powered firing pin, or a fully automatic pistol made out of aluminum cans and assorted sprockets. They’re pretty easy to make, but can also pretty easily screw up your life. The lesson here is, if you are going to make a homemade gun, don’t. And if you have to, don’t leave it lying around loaded.

[Source: News24]