Online speculators have guessed it’s everything from a Colt to a Glock.
The summer heat is in full force in Japan this week, and so Twitter user @ywmg_rcn decided to cool off with a dip in the ocean. But while doing some skin-diving, He even came up with a treasure to show for it, and not just some pretty seashell or tasty shellfish morsel.
No, what @ywmg_rcn says he found lying on the bed of the sea was a pistol.
▼ “Went skin diving and picked up this piece off the ocean floor.”
@ywmg_rcn doesn’t mention which specific beach he was at, but needless to say, this isn’t an everyday discovery in Japan. His photo quickly had handgun otaku offering their visual diagnosis as to what specific shooting instrument he’d found.
“Is that a Colt M1911?”
“The slide’s been taken off, right? But it looks like it might be a Smith and Wesson 356.”
“Might be a Browning Hi-Power.”
“Isn’t that…a Glock?”
What makes @ywmg_rcn’s reported find especially unusual is that not only does Japan have strict gun control laws, private firearm ownership is pretty much only allowed for hunting purposes, which means rifles. Bullet-firing pistols are pretty much impossible for law-abiding citizens to get their hands on, and so some commenters speculated that maybe what @ywmg_rcn found was a starter’s pistol, of the sort used for track meets, which could have been accidentally dropped into the waves during some sort of seaside athletic competition.
There’s one other possibility, which is that @ywmg_rcn found a model/replica. While the photo looks too detailed for a cheap plastic toy, Japanese retailers offer a wide variety of extremely life-life replicas in both decorative and air soft varieties, made with metal parts for an authentic sheen and heft. Some of these are difficult to distinguish from actual guns when new, and after extended exposure to saltwater, algae, and other obscuring marine effects, a replica and genuine article would likely look even more similar to one another.
Unfortunately, @ywmg_rcn is yet to provide any further details beyond his initial tweet and photo, but for the time being, it seems that Japanese beaches are operating under video game RPG rules this summer by randomly offering visitors both offensive and defensive equipment, like this legendary hero’s shield.
Source: Twitter/@ywmg_rcn via Otakomu
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