zip gun

zip gun

informal An inexpensive homemade, makeshift, or improvised firearm. The extremist group had been assembling and stock-piling zip guns in preparation for the attack. Apparently, a zip gun the man had built himself went off in his backpack, causing everyone in the building to think that something had exploded.
See also: gun, zip
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

zip gun

n. a homemade handgun. (Underworld.) The kid had a zip gun, so I didn’t argue.
See also: gun, zip
McGraw-Hill's Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions
See also:
  • pack a gun
  • packing a gun
  • Zip it (up)!
  • Zip it up!
  • zip on
  • jam session
  • zip down
  • fill (one's) hand
  • stogies
  • gathering string
References in periodicals archive
An atypical gunshot wound from a home-made zip gun - the value of a thorough scene investigation.
In comparing a 3-D printer-generated weapon to a zip gun, Guslick appears to presuppose that anyone who would choose to build one would also be likely to build the other.
Years ago, street gangs had zip guns, switchblade knives and straight razors.
(Perhaps in appreciation, when Dodd faced censure in 1967 for diverting campaign funds to personal use, NBC paid his massive legal costs.) When that sudden halt, and lack of a report, became a reelection campaign issue, he issued a personal report blaming juvenile delinquency on the availability of easily made "zip guns" and cheap, imported "Saturday Night Special" and surplus handguns.
They may also wish to draw attention to the illicit manufacture of zip guns and explosives in high schools and prisons, not to mention the manufacture by hand of revolvers, semi-automatic pitols, and submachine guns by the Viet Cong and the Pathans.
They made their own zip guns. Today they have AR15s.
"Two weapons were 'zip guns' which have been homemade."
Spring is in the air as you read this and, in our part of the country, we start to break out our zip guns anticipating hordes of ground rats popping up to begin their yearly ritual of finding girlfriends and doing what rats do.