“Pipe gun” - what a bunch of bullshit. It’s a discarded length of plastic pipe with a bit of electrical tape on one end. It’s a piece of trash.
The “bullet” they claim that they found nearby (not pictured) could have been discarded years ago. I’m sure they never tried to date how long it was in the soil there.
Basically they needed to arrest someone to save face for all the billable hours racked up investigating a hole in the ground.
TFA is an amazing story and very well written. I hope the author gets some recognition or award for it. I only wish they pursued the false charges harder, because this man needs to be freed and someone should be fired. But in the end that’s not the point of the story—to clear Van Allen—but just another sorry consequence of homeless life.
Wow wow that guy should not be in jail. That is just PVC. Not only that it has 43mm stamped on it way to large to even use any conventional ammunition on it (way to large even for a 12 ga shotgun shell). Unless we are talking about grenades or a cannon, but the material would make it a suicide device.
Honestly, if he was hiding stuff by burying it in the ground it would have made more sense that it was used as a water tight storage container. It would keep the contents safe from moisture in the dirt.
What idiot officer or police force would consider that gun, this just leaves me baffled. Also how does the judge not see the insanity of the claim. Like even if the pipe was his there is no way that is an improvised gun.
I'd love to know the caliber of the bullet that was part of this, as I suspect they're a lot less common in London than in the USA. "Sure the bullet fits in the pipe, why it even fits in sideways!"
Edit: 43mm seems to be a very odd pipe size from a little digging. If it's that and measured based on the diameter, that would put a "bullet" around 1GA - a specialty shell used in mounted "punt guns" for commercial hunting more than 100 years ago.
That's what is stamped/printed on the pipe (in the images). Also punt guns would be mounted to a boat or use a the boat or earth as support for shooting them. A punt gun would also be loaded like muzzle loader. Here's video of someone loading a punt gun, and they are putting 1/4 pound of black powder in it. https://youtu.be/fg85k28b_dM
Putting the amount powder required to shoot the shot for a punt gun would just make the PVC a suicide device. So same result for anything that would fit in 43mm pvc like a grenade, mortar or cannon/artillery shell.
Edit:
Basically, my point is a punt gun never really had shells, they were muzzle loaders.
The “bullet” they claim that they found nearby (not pictured) could have been discarded years ago. I’m sure they never tried to date how long it was in the soil there.
Basically they needed to arrest someone to save face for all the billable hours racked up investigating a hole in the ground.
TFA is an amazing story and very well written. I hope the author gets some recognition or award for it. I only wish they pursued the false charges harder, because this man needs to be freed and someone should be fired. But in the end that’s not the point of the story—to clear Van Allen—but just another sorry consequence of homeless life.