So, you don’t have to pay $200.00 to own a sawed-off spud gun. : )

California attempted to outlaw spud guns by making a list of all available spud guns. Added to this, the legislature banned potato guns by “feature,” meaning you couldn’t have a spud gun with a pistol grip, or a spud gun that held more than 10 spuds at once. As always, though, cooler heads prevailed: the Court decided that you could own spud guns not on the list, now referred to as “OLS” (off-list spuds). Now Californians own many types of spud guns, but only if you need a “tool” to remove the magazine. An inventive Californian finally manufactured a spud magazine whose tool is – you guessed it – another spud.

At the federal level, you can get an FFLS: “federal firearms license / spud.” This allows

(a) Spud guns that were manufactured at least 50 years prior to the current date, but not including replicas thereof;
(b) Spud guns which are certified by the curator of a municipal, State, or Federal Tuber Museum which exhibits spuds to be curios or relics of museum interest; and
(c) Any other spuds which derive a substantial part of their monetary value from the fact that they are novel spuds, rare spuds, or bizarre spuds.

The differentiation between the OLS and the FFLS is that the first group typically paints their PVC black and attaches night vision equipment, and the latter restores the PVC to its original milky sheen and deploys a potato peeler before firing.

It is currently against federal law to own an AOS (any other spud), wherein the PVC launches incendiary spuds, tracer spuds, or it was first a long spud gun and later turned into a short spud gun.

Legislation is currently pending in 17 states requiring those without a contractor’s license to get background checks, submit fingerprints, and document lack of mental illness before purchasing PVC in lengths of over 12 inches; Costco and Sam’s Club have voluntarily preempted legal action by refusing to sell potatoes in bags over 15 pounds. Another 3 states (California, New York, and Illinois) are seeking legislative remedies by requiring homeless shelters, soup kitchens, and school cafeterias to cut their potatoes in half upon receipt, as their current stocks fall under the legal definition of an “arsenal.”

SEE ALSO
Potato Loopholes
Saturday Night Spuds
Automatic Spud Guns
Spud Actuators

What about my automatic baseball pitching machine? That thing’ll kill ya.

Mine resides in my garage, ready to blast in the next New Year, as it has done for several years now. When I first made it, my son and his friends took it off for several sessions of ballistics testing in the not-yet-developed areas of our subdivision. He used the data for a science project, and even produced a Flash animation for his class presentation. That was before I knew it was considered essentially a cannon in the eyes of the law.

Just ignore those leftover bits of potato peel on the gun, they are from years ago…..

http://daysofourtrailers.blogspot.com/2007/10/register-potatoes-now.html