Zip Gun Ingenuity

Are you familiar with a zip gun? If not, it’s a makeshift firearm assembled from scraps—a pipe, a firing pin, and a piece of rubber. Crude, yes, but it can be deadly.

My first encounter with a zip gun was as a probation officer in Chicago, fresh out of college and assigned to a gang intervention team on Chicago’s near south side. Assigning a skinny, pasty-faced boy-man from central Indiana to work with inner-city gangs was a progressive move well ahead of the recently axed diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) measures.  

Early one morning, Bud, a police detective, called and asked me to meet him at an abandoned warehouse on Martin Luther King Drive. The police had raided a building, the detective said, “You gotta see what we found.” That’s all he said.

Bud met me at the warehouse door and told me the police had found an arsenal of zip guns. Huh? “Zip guns!” I expected to see a chaotic mess of makeshift firearms. Instead, I saw what looked like a factory floor—an organized assembly line with step-by-step assembly stations. 

Materials sorted and a well-engineered assembly process. Impressive. Built by teenagers with limited formal education - but undeniably talented.

The police were proud to shut down the site.  However, I couldn’t stop thinking about the ingenuity required to produce large numbers of these guns — reliable weapons. 

That was my introduction not just to zip guns, but to raw, unfiltered talent — the same kind of ingenuity I’ve seen in many entrepreneurs since. 

 “Gang Leaders and Entrepreneurs: What’s the Difference?” became a popular topic for me. Often, the difference isn’t talent — it’s direction.

Let’s Talk! If you would like to explore ingenuity.