Crowdfunding giant Kickstarter has gained notoriety for promoting high-tech concepts like 3D printers and virtual reality headsets. But
Ukrainian university student Alex Shpetniy's project -- a sort of "rubber band gun on steroids" -- breaks the mold.
Rubber band wars are familiar to almost everyone who has ever set foot in a middle school classroom, but firing the bands one by one is time-intensive. So Shpetniy built a 16-barrel rubber band machine gun capable of holding (and firing) 672 rubber bands before reloading.
For all its impressive engineering, the wooden gun is actually a low-tech throwback to the Civil War era Gatling gun, a crank-operated gun that was the precursor to the modern machine gun. Shpetniy's gun features an electric motor but otherwise works in much the same way.
Shpetniy warns of a looming rubber band apocalypse, adding that with his gun "everyone can feel like Rambo, launching a rubber storm, and throwing over a pound of rubber bands into the opponent!"
As of Dec. 8, the Kickstarter campaign was almost $75,000 over its $5,000 goal. So as far as finances go, maybe actually producing the rubber band gun won't be much of a stretch.
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