Ideal Conceal IC380 Cell Phone Pistol
Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition!
The IC380 Cell Phone Pistol can hide in plain sight.
On several occasions in recent memory, Americans have found themselves under fire from murderers while exercising their religious freedom. Despite this, I know of quite a few pastors who discourage their congregations from legally carrying concealed handguns in church. I understand why, and I can understand why people with a CCW defer to their pastor and fellow church members who don’t want to see guns in church — church is where you cultivate fellowship, not division.
However, what if you could be armed but nobody knew? Imagine if you could take your coat off during services on a hot day because you aren’t wearing a holster, or you could kneel to pray without exposing an ankle rig. Maybe sit in the pew and not worry about a pistol printing through you pants pocket. What if your gun looked like an ordinary smart phone just riding in a common plastic phone shell clipped to your belt? Imagine concealment in plain sight.
Imagine the concealment possibilities of a gun smaller than a late-model cell phone!
James Bond Look
This is why the Ideal Conceal IC380 Cell Phone Pistol got my attention. Its novel concept would be at home in a James Bond film but with the abundance of small conventional handguns sporting larger magazine capacities and calibers, is the IC380 a solution looking for a problem? You’ll need to draw your own conclusion.
Kirk Kjellberg, the pistol’s inventor, and president of Ideal Conceal Inc., explained to me his motivation in creating the IC380 was not to get people who were already legally carrying concealed handguns to carry his derringer instead. He says, “I don’t care what you carry, I just want you to carry.”
He made the cell phone pistol for people who don’t carry guns at all because they live and work in areas with strong social anti-gun bias. It’s a niche market perhaps, but so were sword canes in the 19th century.
The pistol I tested was reliable and simple to operate, serviceably accurate and built like a tank. Kjellberg drove his mini-van over one for testing purposes with the result being some slight scratching on the gun’s black hard coat anodized finish.
The frame and hinged barrel block are machined from aluminum while the left and right frame halves nest together with a tongue-and-groove joint held in place with screws secured by blue thread-locker. The pressed in barrel inserts are stainless steel. Other internal parts are hardened steels of various types. The grip is 0.060″ thick sheet steel.
To deploy the pistol, the grip folds open readily and locks in place with a ball detent lock on each side. There is a small amount of wiggle between aluminum frame and steel grip but not enough to make it matter in rapid fire.
The grip is flat, only ¾” thick and open beneath your fingers. It is not comfortable, but thanks to the grip angle, it’s not a bad pointer and a lot better than some mouse guns. To refold the pistol, the user depresses the exposed detent locks on either side of the grip and pushes forward.
The small front sight is milled from the same block of aluminum as the barrel block. It’s not adjustable but it can’t fall off or get knocked out of alignment. The front hinged barrel block has a raised central rail along the bottom with two shallow cuts mating with a slot and matching steel recoil lugs in the frame.
Gun or phone? It’s not as versatile as a full-on .45 pistol but it’s much easier to carry in public.
The IC380 Cell Phone Gun ready for action.
Manual of Arms
To load or unload, the latch is drawn back and the barrel block springs up. The cartridges or spent cases extract by depressing the extractor slide on the left side of the barrel block then pushing it rearward. With bases popped up, the cases are easily withdrawn from the chamber. To close the action, simply press down the back of the barrel block until it snaps the latch.
The pistol is double action only with two separate strikers. The 5/16″ long trigger pull is smooth, requiring about 12.5 lbs. for the top barrel and 10.5 lbs. for the bottom barrel. The pull feels lighter because of the broad trigger shoe. When the barrel block is opened, the striker is automatically reset to fire the top barrel first. The second pull of the trigger fires the bottom barrel.
I discover the striker can be switched back and forth between barrels by partially depressing the trigger and releasing it. This is important to know because if you were to try to stage the trigger, you might switch the striker to the other barrel. This might be really bad if the other barrel was previously fired and you really needed a second shot. The lesson here is — don’t stage the trigger!
Using a consistent six o’clock hold, I found the pistol’s two barrels shot to slightly different points of impact but grouped in a similar manner. Speer Duty Ammunition 90-gr. Gold Dot hollow points were the most accurate load I tested. They were also the zippiest at an average of 949 fps. The gun averaged just under 3″ for a five-shot group fired at 7 yards from a bench rest and both barrels shot about 1.25″ to the left. When I combined the top and bottom group I got overall group spreads between 5″ and 7.5″. It’s not rifle-accurate but I’m confident I could deliver two close range shots into an attacker’s torso in less than the blink of an eye with the IC380.
The patented IC380 is a well thought out, well-made pistol which fits its intended role perfectly. There’s a good chance the smart phones of 2028 will look a lot different but even if the IC380 doesn’t look like the newest iPhone 10 years from now, it still won’t look like a pistol and therein lies the message of today’s sermon!
