Allen Pan created a device that shoots face masks onto people’s faces. Image: Screengrab from YouTube/Allen Pan – Sufficiently Advanced
A YouTube vlogger has created a gun that shoots masks onto people’s faces in response to people who refuse to wear one amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Allen Pan showed how he made the gun and how it operates on his YouTube channel last Saturday, Aug. 15. He also noted how people in the United States protest against masks despite medical professionals stressing that wearing one can help curb the spread of the coronavirus.
“American problems demand American solutions,” Pan joked.
Pan used a pistol-like grip from a spray paint can, a CO2 canister solenoid valve and parts of a car brake line to create the launcher. He then attached small weights onto the four strings of a surgical face mask to ensure it can latch onto a person’s face.
Once Pan launches the mask, the weights tangle up behind a person’s face to keep it in place. The small weights also have magnets placed at their ends to keep them steady as they are loaded onto the device.
After a few trials on himself and a model head inside his home, Pan headed out to Huntington Beach in California, where he tested his invention since he considers it a conservative area where many still refuse to wear a face mask.
However, after having his camerawoman test the gun on himself, one of the weights attached to the mask broke off. He then removed portions of the other weights as well, to make sure each side remained equal.
Though Pan expected to see many anti-maskers along the beach, he realized that more people have actually decided to wear face masks lately. This prompted him to instead invite beachgoers to test the gun on one of Pan’s model heads.
As the video ends, Pan displays an infographic by the Associated Press that shows that the majority of Americans favor requiring people to wear face masks in public.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stated that there are over 5.3 million COVID-19 cases in the US as of yesterday, Aug. 17. More than 169,000 people in the country have died of the disease. / ra
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