Friday, December 05, 2008
When is a handgun not a handgun?
When it's a medical device!
A company claims to have received federal approval to market a 9-mm handgun as a medical device and hopes the US government will reimburse seniors who buy the $300 firearm. The product is called the Palm Pistol. It is designed to ease firing for people who may suffer from arthritis and other debilitating conditions that may result in difficulty squeezing a trigger.
This is, in all likelihood, a publicity stunt with few actual facts to back it up. There are no end of problems with the idea legally and politically. In the latter category, consider whether FDA bureaucrats, staring into the harsh dawn of the Barack Obama administration, would not do anything within their power to avoid enraging their new anti-gun overlords.
But that does not make it any less hilarious.
3 Comments:
By 
, at
Fri Dec 05, 04:29:00 PM:
This was too funny to ignore. If you read the pdf spec available through the link, you get this gem of a marketing theory:
"Also, the increasing interest in cane fighting by senior citizens for both exercise and self-defense, suggests a large potential market"
By 
Georg Felis, at
Fri Dec 05, 05:38:00 PM:
This does look a lot like a stunt, but the idea stretches back to the old Liberator pistol.
I would suppose if somebody were serious about this there are a number of modifications on the market designed to make using guns with winter gloves easier.
By , at
Sat Dec 06, 07:25:00 AM:
I'm upset about the FDA getting into the regulation of good guns versus bad guns. This whole thing may be a Trojan Horse to get guns regulatesd as a public health issue. It's been tried before.
JLW III
