Norwegian biathlete Emil Hegle Svendsen has developed a potato rifle, which has a firing range of up to several hundred meters. After demonstrating this “weapons” the police caught the attention of the athlete on television, because young people massively construct rifles of this type and shoot at random people. Svendsen won two world championship gold medals in Oestersund in February. – I constructed the rifle out of boredom in the free time from training. I did not expect, that the television presentation, which was a joke, it will spark such great interest in these weapons – Svendsen said, which on the TV-2 channel by shooting at biathlon targets demonstrated its precision. The rifle is very simple and cheap to build and use. It is a long pipe, to which one side is loaded small, round potato, on the other hand, to a special tray, spray hairspray is dropped in and set on fire. The range of the destruction measured by experts on Norwegian television even showed 500 meters, and the impact is very strong. One week after Svendsen's televised demonstration, one of his followers in Lillehammer severely mutilated a teenager.
– We already have information, that young people shoot potatoes from cars at random passers-by. The shot is very strong, and the first victim was injured, thankfully not life-threatening. However, a headshot can be fatal. Therefore, we considered this device a dangerous weapon, especially since all the elements needed to build it are commercially available, and the ammunition is extremely cheap – said Lillehammer Police Inspector Edmund Tofthagen. He stressed that – we have never experienced potato shooting before, and their throwing device was probably copied by users from television, and this is a dangerous precedent. The secretary general of the Norwegian biathlon federation Alf Koksik said, That – Svendsen had no evil intentions and it was just for fun. Photos and videos of the Potato Rifle were removed from its website immediately.
A Norwegian biathlete built a rifle for potatoes
