It seems that ever since billionaire Elon Musk took over Twitter, there are a dozen headlines a day about the social media platform or Musk himself. Today, everybody is clamoring to comment on a photo Musk tweeted of his bedside table; its contents are what some might call odd — from the two “handguns” to a morally questionable number of empty Diet Caffeine Free Coke cans and evidence of an aversion to coasters. We’re here, of course, to talk about the “Elon Musk guns.”
Soon after he posted the photo, the web was awash in headlines like “Elon Musk Reveals He Sleeps Next to Two Guns and Doesn’t Use Coasters!” The coaster thing is real, but at least one of the guns is not, and the other is also most likely not functional, and if it were, it’s a highly questionable choice for a nightstand gun.
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Let’s go with that big toy revolver first since that’s what’s getting a lot of attention from non-gun folks around the world who think it’s real and gamers around the world who know it’s not.
The anime-looking handgun appears to be a mock-up of the Diamond Back .357 revolver: a fictional futuristic weapon first featured in the popular video game Deus Ex: Human Revolution. The revolver is also featured in the game Team Fortress 2 as a “community-created promotional secondary weapon for the Spy,” according to that game’s fan wiki page. That appears to be the version we see here.
Musk’s replica was likely 3D printed, as there are numerous patterns available online. In Deus Ex, the Diamond Back is a .357 Magnum revolver made by Mustang Arms Ad-Tech Ltd. It uses a revolving cylindrical magazine paired with a hybrid cartridge system “to combine reloading speed with reliability and accommodate multiple ammo types,” according to the game’s fan wiki page. It uses telescopic ammunition, which is a real thing, and it’s a side-break gun that can accept cylinders with 5-, 6-, or 7-round capacities. Sounds and looks pretty cool if it were real.
Above that, on the nightstand of the most controversial rich dude in the world at the moment is what appears to be a replica flintlock pistol in an open wooden case, the lid of which bears the famous 1851 painting Washington Crossing the Delaware by Emanuel Leutze.
This Elon Musk gun could very well be a functional flintlock pistol, which the feds don’t consider a firearm, but there is no flint in the jaws of the hammer, and from the look of it, it’s either another prop or a non-firing display piece, like this one being marketed as the “Denix Colonial George Washington Replica Flintlock Pistol.”
This similar non-firing replica says it is patterned after Washington’s favorite pistol that was “made in London in 1748 by Hawkins, one of the best-known gunmakers of the period, and it still survives as a national treasure.”
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That line is repeated on every site that sells the replica. In reality, Washington carried a number of pistols throughout his military career. A pair of pistols he held in particularly high regard were two English-made guns given to him by Maj. Gen. Edward Braddock in 1755, during the French and Indian War, which looks a bit like the gun on the table.
Now, Musk’s post was probably a joke, or maybe the dude likes to play with a toy gun before he lulls himself to sleep with 48 ounces of caffeine-free, fake-sweetener-loaded soda as he gazes at an iconic representation of the father of our nation.
One thing is for sure, a guy worth nearly $200 billion certainly has security measures that make the likelihood of him having to use a nightstand gun in self-defense super low. Still, it would have been funnier if that toy revolver was a Hi-Point Yeet Cannon instead.
But, Elon, for the love of all that is holy and good in this world, get off that Diet Coke; Black Rifle Coffee makes decaf, just sayin’.
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