Gun-Shaped iPhone Case A Good Idea For Absolutely No One

"This is a really shit idea. You know why? Because it's really, obviously a shit idea." These wise words were spoken by 28 Days Later's Jim as he prepared to enter a dark tunnel crawling with peckish zombies. But they could just as easily apply to the iPhone case shown here, which turns your innocent, pacifist telephone into something resembling a pistol. With a really weird barrel, but whatever. The one shown here was formerly available for $49 at Japan Trend Shop, a sort of Harriet Carter-meets-Spencer's Gifts, but with an added frisson of weirdness that only the Japanese can bring. The case came with an iPhone app that allows you to "play games of Russian Roulette at parties," Digital Trends reports. Indeed, that is handy, if your parties are lacking that electrifying atmosphere that only mortal terror can bring. The phone case appears to have been pulled from the site, but similar, even more realistic-looking ones are available elsewhere online.

Despite looking silly from the front, the case looks pretty deadly when sticking out of a pocket. For this reason, the police and anti-gun activists have already come out against the accessory. One former NYPD officer told the New York Daily News, “This is the stupidest, most dangerous thing I’ve ever seen.” Of course, in a country where unarmed people, especially Black men and women, are routinely killed by cops, who needs to be told not to carry this? Like the handbags that make it look as if you're packing, Jeremy Scott's machine-gun sunglasses, or Saint Laurent's pistol-shaped clutch, firearms as a fashion motif are for those naive enough to glamorize violence, not for those whose lives are defined or cut short by it. The impulse to carry a fake gun must look very strange to those whose lives are in danger just by existing. A few teenagers from the Bronx told the NYDN they'd never carry the case, explaining that "the NYPD would, of course, take action first without waiting for you to explain.”