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Watch out for this flashlight gun ‘prototype’

The video below shows someone who indicates that he works for Magpul — one has to believe that this is so — demonstrating a ‘conceptual prototype’ weapon at SHOT Show 2008. This video had been sent to me no less than a half dozen times during the past couple of months, and in doing a little research I found that Magpul issued a document on the so-called FMG-9 (short for “Folding Machine-Gun 9mm”) in 2008. An Airsoft model of this thing has been on the market for a couple of years, but it appears that Magpul has not made a production model of this thing with an actual 9mm Glock.

Every time I’ve looked at this video, I’ve thought, “It’s absolutely possible to make something like this — in fact, I would bet a waist-high stack of green money that the folks in Langley already have many of them in their armory — but really, how likely would it be for your average bad guy to have one?”

Well, according to what I saw last week on the Discovery Chanel program “Sons of Guns,” such an item can apparently be purchased (under NFA restrictions) for about $1,200 — well within financial range of your run-of-the-mill BG.

I am by no means saying that the folks at Red Jacket Firearms would sell such an item to a person with malicious intent, but the fact is, weapons technology is a moving target — no pun intended — so we need to be aware of developments like this, and be mindful of the fact that these things may one day be something you encounter on the street.

Doug Wyllie writes police training content on a wide range of topics and trends affecting the law enforcement community. Doug was a co-founder of the Policing Matters podcast and a longtime co-host of the program.