Forget flyswatters and rolled up newspapers. If you’ve ever wished you could blast that annoying fly out of the air with your expert aim from far across the room, artist/designer Lorenzo Maggiore has just the solution for you. His latest project, called the Bug-A-Salt, is a Nerf-gun looking rifle that incapacitates pesky home invaders with a healthy blast of ordinary table salt.
Each shot from the pump-action rifle sends just a pinch of table salt at your intended target in a scattershot similar to a shotgun blast. According to Maggiore, the device doesn’t require any batteries; it works simply loading a small amount of regular salt into an enclosed compartment at the top of the rifle and a single pump is enough to deliver a swift, fatal blast of bug death. Once a charge is ready, the Bug-A-Salt will raise an orange site at the back of the gun so you can line of your deadly shot.
“Bug-A-Salt has truly been a journey for me,” said Maggiore. “Being a working artist I get ideas, and it was like any other — I had to execute it.”
With an initial financial backing provided by family and friends, the California artist worked with a team of engineers in China to produce and manufacture the first working prototype.
Check out the video below to see the lethal Bug-A-Salt in action. Watch for the excellent and satisfying slow motion shots of flies pinwheeling through the air after getting a full load of salt buckshot. I only wish the gun would make those firing and reloading noises too.
The Bug-A-Salt is running a campaign on Kickstarter-alternative Indiegogo, where a pledge of $30 will secure you a bug-eradicating rifle of your own. Maggiore has raised almost $25,000 of his $15,000 goal, with nearly two months still left to go. After hitting the front page of popular linking site reddit this weekend, it’s likely to see a whole new slew of backers in the coming days.
Just image how satisfying it will be to blast those evil spiders right off the end of their silky spider threads. Insects, you’ve been warned.
