this post was submitted on 02 Jun 2026
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I’m reminded of that dude who made bank at a gun buyback program. The program was offering like $250 per gun, no questions asked. One dude made a ton of (technically legal) single-shot shotguns out of a pipe, notched 2x4, spring, steel nail, and plumber’s strap. The pipe was basically strapped to the 2x4, and permanently held a single shotgun shell.
The nail acted like a firing pin and it would fire if you pulled the nail back and let it go. The barrel length was enough to be a legal shotgun. Reloading required undoing the plumber’s strap to get the spent shotgun shell out of the pipe. It wasn’t really useful as a functional weapon…. But it ticked all of the boxes that the gun buyback program needed, so they were forced to pay him for each one he turned in.
Basically this:
The dude made a jig to cut and drill the 2x4, cut all the pipes to length, and assembled them in bulk. He turned a few dollars in hardware store parts into thousands of dollars. IIRC, he assembled like 50 of them in a day and rode off into the sunset.