Man arrested for carrying LEGO machine gun

Remember when you were a kid, and you’d build colourful, fragile guns out of your LEGO bricks to play with your friends? Well, there’s a good reason it’s only a memory: if you carry that habit into adulthood, when you have access to the kinds of bricks and skills that would allow you to create an all-too-authentic weapon, things are going to end badly.

Yes, that’s exactly what happened to a 19-year-old man in Ludwigshafen, Germany earlier this week, who found himself under police investigation after brandishing a machine gun built from LEGO bricks. He was apparently seen waving the gun out of his window by neighbours, who quickly reported him to the authorities, seemingly mistaking the weapon for one not made of plastic.

According to DW, police raided the man’s apartment, only to find that he and another man, aged 23, had built the gun using LEGO. The suspect has since been placed under investigation in line with Germany’s Weapons Act and the European Firearms Directive – probably not what he had in mind when he assembled it.

Still, there’s a lesson here: guns are no joke, unless they look like this. We imagine that’s what he’ll be sticking to in future…