Thinking About Cell Phone Guns

Reach Out And Touch Someone

By now, social media has had weeks to deal with the land rush business involved in the gun that looks like a cell phone, seen at the top of this piece.

As a marketing and advertising consultant who has worked on a sizable number of client concerns that went against my own personal beliefs, I'm not going to get into how I feel about this. As a pro, you have to take the mindset of an attorney, argue the best case in the court of the marketplace, and trust in the verdict of the public. Doing anything less limits not just your billings, but also your opportunities to learn for future clients. I've learned some truly breakthrough points from clients that I rarely discuss. It's just the way of the work.

So what's really telling here isn't the existence of a weapon that looks like something else... but that it's the first of its kind. As the market demand shows, there's a strong desire for many enthusiasts to carry a firearm without anyone knowing they have one. We've also established that due to effective lobbying, restricting the hobby is rarely a legislative possibility.

So the question isn't whether or not there will be cell phone guns. More, it's a question of when the piece will be both, and much more concealable.

But let's go further, really. Why should things that a user wants to conceal look like, well, what you'd expect them to look like? Putting the same phone tech into something that looks like a compact mirror would seem to be easy, and a natural for a younger demographic, especially in a school setting. Make it more like a tape measure with a slide out screen for hard hat types, and yes, that's another seemingly simple transformation to firearm. I'd be surprised if an adult toy that allowed for a more discrete pass through an airport security checkpoint would be a tough product to sell.

Oh, and if you can combine all of these capabilities into one device?

I want to make ads for that product.

And have equity in the company that makes it...

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