Death Star 2018 Art Basel Robert Longo
courtesy artnet.com

“These automatic assault rifles, they’re basically devastating compared to a standard .38 caliber bullet that used to fit into a police revolver. It seems to be the bullet of America’s choice these days.” – Artist Robert Longo in Motivated by ‘Rage and Hopelessness,’ Robert Longo Takes Aim at American Gun Violence in an Epic Work for Art Basel [via artnet.com]

 

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

133 COMMENTS

    • Can we cut out the gay-bashing? Not only does it make us look like garbage, but it’s excluding a demographic in which we desperately need to be making inroads to secure our rights in the future. The LGBT community overwhelmingly votes in favor of gun-ban Democrats, and this isn’t helping.

      • They always will vote Democrat, and they are only about 2% of the population anyway. I couldn’t care less about the perverts.

        • In a closely-divided election, 2% can be decisive.

          Gun ownership is a right, regardless of whether or not others approve of one’s sexual orientation.

        • You are wrong there. There are many gay men and women in corporate America. Not having the worries a family can give you helps to clear the path to advancement. This is also true in the sports world, not to mention body builders, actors, and other self focused individuals.
          Open your eyes, that uncle that never got married who you only see at Thanksgiving, the old maid schoolteacher who is your great aunt, etc, could very well be gay, in the closet, or even unfulfilled gay without a partner. Or, how about Floyd, the barber?
          Believe it, they are in your life somewhere

        • Alright, dipshit, what about the huge sympathetic population that is constantly told gun owners are every “-phobic” in the book? Perhaps don’t prove CNN right by flippantly using a hot-button issue as your lazy insult of choice.

          If you think it’s not worth it to continue fighting for public opinion in this democratic system we have, then grab your balls, get out there, and start the revolution. Otherwise, grow up and try not to screw us over.

      • Wwwaaahhhh! Someone used a perjorative colloquialism that a culture decided to adopt as “their” identifying term! Let’s all be offended! Don’t be such such a fag, dude.

      • Dipshit? Look, pal, if you want to make common cause and hang out with a bunch of perverts and mentally ill freaks, you go right ahead. Just don’t expect everyone else to jump on your little bandwagon.

      • Who gives a crap? Sick of their stupid asses too. Time to take our country back from the fucking Sodomites.

      • ^THIS.
        It may be difficult to not be a hate-filled person, but it is easy not to be an a**hole.

      • You want to play along with perverts, that’s your business, but don’t ask me to compromise my Christian VALUES just to win a vote! When our second amendment rights are lost because of a majority leftist/faggot vote, we will then be engaged in a civil war, the likes of which the leftists and fags will wish they didn’t start! The streets will be littered with “rainbows”!

    • Gay used to mean joyful. . My 9 year old granddaughter and pet goat would probably cut me off if I went todays Gay. ,,, / sarc with a hint of the perverted future we accept

    • If not gay, certainly ignorant and deluded. But then, where is it that artists source their inspiration but ignorance and delusions?

    • I don’t care for alot people , but if their people of the gun their ok and we need all the help we can get. So be nice

  3. Should have used 6.5 creedmoor as it is the BEST rifle cartridge out there.
    Anything else is grandstanding as creedmoor has rendered everything else obsolete.

    • I am not trying be a smart-a but 6.5 creedmore is a clone of 260 rem which came out in 1997. Same 6.5 bullet with 260 rem having more powder behind it but not much.

      • Yes, the .260 came first and is probably superior, but 6.5 Creedmoor is the official cartridge of TTAG, so it basically sucks almost as much as .308.

        • From what I’ve read, the softer shoulder of the 260, 20º I believe versus 30º on the 6.5, wears out the chamber of the barrel quicker, which makes a precision rifle not precise. Most of the new rifle calibers have a sharper shoulder for that reason.
          But, of course, they’re all just pale imitations of the mighty Creedmoor.

      • When I was growing up I used to think that the 7mm Mauser round was totally underrated but I’m an old foggy so what do I know, growing up under Roosevelt (Teddy not that wimp Franklin)

        • You’re not wrong! It’s a fantastic round. But then I like rimmed cases and heavy for caliber cast lead projectiles at mannerly velocities, and especially the resulting indefinite barrel life. The trick is getting rifles set up properly, and spending the necessary time to develop loads.

    • Y’all hurting my feelings… I need to go cuddle my Kentucky rifle for a bit now…
      🤠

    • Don’t worry. Some socialite with more money than sense, who wants to be a “patron of the art” and “support the cause of today” probably ponied up the $10k or so.

        • Read the article dude. This is an expensive piece of art in a very high end business. Somebody will purchase the Death Star 2018 for their collection. The original article is actually quite fascinating.

    • From the linked article:
      “We had to buy casings and the tips and a loader, and we had to put the bullets together,” he says. “But we did buy 40,000 bullets, and nobody came knocking on my door, saying, ‘What are you going to do with these 40,000 bullets?’ Gunpowder’s not so hard to make, you know? I was a bit shocked that I was able to do that.”

      Not clear if he made dummy rounds or not. I think NY’s finest needs to investigate this so I can ‘feel’ safer.

      • “Not clear if he made dummy rounds or not.”

        In NYC, does it matter?

        Is possession of ammunition components illegal in NYC without a firearm ID card?

      • My takeaway from the source article: The artist knows little to nothing about guns and doesn’t know the definitions of cartridge, casing, bullet and tip.

        I wonder what brand the casings and bullets are. If they are all one manufacturer, that manufacturer should buy it and hang it in their corporate headquarters. Maybe rename it – The Hornady Disco Ball, for instance.

        • Or just build their own, so the artist doesn’t make a penny.

          I’d like to build one, scaled down, out of 9mm. I’ve got a few hundred pounds of 9mm brass and a bunch of 124gr copper plated bullets I no longer load.

        • I thought in terms the artist would understand it would be appropriate to call it the full metal jacket dandelion.

    • Wonder if he realized how much he was supporting the big bad “gun industry” buying all that ammo.

      • Squishy-head POS (D) probably got a grant to purchase the materials. Your tax dollars at work, through the worthless National Endowment for the Arts.

    • He claims it is, essentially, 1 round per “gun death” in the US the previous year. But he also claims it excludes suicides with a gun. So, basically, he doesn’t even understand the statistics he’s trying to push.

  5. Weird that the artist chose to focus on cartridges used in rifles that contribute to less than 2% of all US murders. If he was serious about making change, his “ball” would consist of handgun rounds and he’d be showing in galleries in exclusively democrat controlled cities, where the overwhelming majority of these homicides are taking place. But alas, he’s not serious, so his “work” should be summarily dismissed as such.

    • That’s probably more 5.56 (assuming) rounds than all the 5.56 rounds fired by American criminals during their crimes.

    • A ‘bullet disco ball’ that tried to accurately represent the calibers used in a given year’s homicides would be kinda interesting.

  6. Another artist who is either playing jokes on the public or is genuinely crazy. I opt for the latter.

    • Mmm, I think opportunistic would be a better bet. This is a cause celebe at the moment.

      • Actually, I suspect he did this for the money as well. That piece will sell to a wealthy collector.

        • Which is why I said I thought he was being opportunistic.

          It’s much easier to sell a big piece if the piece relates to the cause of the moment.

  7. “….38 caliber bullet that used to fit into a police revolver” ???

    Didn’t the cops get the note that .38 was supersized to 6.5 Creedmore and to upgrade their revolvers?

  8. I’m a semi-auto guy so forgive me if I’m not up on the latest. What happened to all the revolvers that their ammo doesn’t fit anymore?

    • That is what happens when you launder your S&W revolver in very hot water. Those cylinders shrink something awful.

      Seriously, is there anyone out there that picks a firearm because of the way the ammunition fits? Only a completely ignorant person would ever make such a statement. A firearm is a precision mechanism and as such terms like fit regarding the ammunition are, well, just silly. After all, a 5.56 NATO round will fit in a .300 blackout chamber, but I wouldn’t attempt to fire it. Something about creating a grenade in front of your face just gives me an aversion to such things.

    • bryan1980 says:

      June 12, 2018 at 08:19

      This is way too much stupid for this early in the morning.
      ************************************************************
      That is a sobering thought.
      The problem is there is pretty much unrestricted stupid going on
      all day long now. I believe the official title for that is CNN/MSNBC/Democrat Party,
      and 90 percent of the non-conservative press and speech heard, written and spoken
      going on in America these days.

      Never before has so much stupid come from so many and made so little sense –
      to paraphrase Winston Churchill. I’ve been around more than 60 years and people in
      the first 50 of that used to prize truth, fact, and reality. The past decade though, it seems
      we are fed an endless stream of lies and propaganda from the mouths of the talking
      heads, and as unbelievable and illogical as they are, a disproportionate number of people
      are in agreement with those fools.

      With artists like this crackpot leading the way, the lemmings of conformity are marching
      toward the precipice of ignorance and the worst part is if you try to inform them that they
      are living a fantasy despite the dangers ahead of them, they will shout epithets in you face
      and tell you that you are the one who is wrong. About the same time as this wrongheadedness
      came into fashion, so did the disrespect for authority, and the abandonment of principles that
      would deny these idiots the platform for them to speak lies and half truths to support their poorly
      though out and erroneous assumptions about how the world is and about how to behave in a
      civil society.

      “When, oh when, Lord, will it be our time? “, from the movie Glory, spoken by Morgan Freeman, in a prayer
      before battle where the Union troops of the 54th Massachusetts – previously untested in battle – knew that night might be their last. Yet they went willing to fight for their cause. That is in short supply now days. I don’t believe the general population of this country is capable of defending the Constitution except for the under 2 percent who still volunteer for military service today.

      It seems no one really cares about freedom, justice and liberty anymore. Maybe I am wrong, but would any of you trust the average person today between 18 and 35 to step up and fight if it became necessary to do so?

      These people throw terms like death, guns, and violence around with about as much care and understanding of the concepts involved as they do about whether deciding do the laundry today or next week. That is one reason I find it difficult to take them and what they think and say with any degree of seriousness. Everything is superficial and there seems to be no motivation other than self interest – no giving or sacrifice made for the greater good. I am really tired of listening to their false morality arguments and hypocrisy.

      I’m not saying my generation as a whole was free of this kind of thing, but it is becoming the dominant view and that is a sad statement on the human condition in this time. This is not progress, but it is progressives who are bringing it and claiming to be elite and so much better than what came before.
      I for one, disagree.

  10. If he thinks that’s scary, he’s gonna wet himself when he finds out how much energy 6.5 Creedmoor delivers at 1,000 yards.

    • Don’t trouble him (or his patron) with facts, please. It disrupts the artistic process.

      (I know some genuine artists who work in several media. They follow where their art leads them, and make an effort to get to know as much as they can about their subjects, rather than following the whim of the day. They make less money that way, but they are very happy doing it their way … and they’re good enough that it pays the bills.)

      • He did a smaller version many years ago. Always easy to tell who doesn’t read the source articles. Read the article.

        • How original, just copy your old idea but make it bigger with inflated stats. 260 rem

  11. Once again, Grandpa’s “hunting rifle” was designed to humanely drop a 1,500lb bull moose at 500 yards with one shot. Is that supposed to be a love-tap?

  12. Well NOT in commie kalifornia. Where AMMO sales are restricted, controlled, monitored. Yes, expensive.
    Now criminals and nut jobs have no ammo. LOL LOL LOL.

  14. 40,000 of them, to be more precise—roughly one bullet for each gun death in the US last year

    a harrowing sequel to an earlier, smaller piece created in 1993 that bore a nearly identical title

    The original Death Star—today held in the collection of Buffalo’s Burchfield Penney Art Cente—comprised a mass of only about 18,000 rounds of ammunition, symbolizing the roughly 18,000 American gun casualties the year before. (Longo excluded gun suicides from both Death Stars.)

    So there were 18,000 non-suicide “gun deaths” in 1993, and 40,000 non-suicide “gun deaths” in 2017? The 1993 number sounds plausible. The 2017 figure sounds like it exceeds ALL “gun deaths”, including suicides.

    Lying liars gonna lie.

    • Even Everytown.org with their known over estimates claim the US has an average gun death of 13,000 a year.

      I am sure that includes suicides and gang violence.

      So 40K would be quite a feat.

      CDC says 64,000 people died in the US in 2016 from drug overdoses
      and over 40,000 died from auto accidents in 2017

      So…. there’s that……

      All of these are preventable deaths by the way….

    • Who was that liberal asshole again, who made the claim that 2 million Americans are killed per day from gun violence?

    • According to the National Safety Council, in 2016, there were 38,658 deaths via firearm in the US. 22,938 of those were suicides. 495 were accidents or negligence. 14,415 were criminal/assaults. I’m not sure which group contains all the justifiable homicides, probably the assaults. According to the CDC, about 80% of those criminal homicides are gang related. So for Americans who are not suicidal, and aren’t affiliated with a gang, the firearms death total is about 3300. That’s a rate of 0.92 per 100k. Lower than any country in Europe. Maybe we should focus on our gang problem?

      For a different perspective, about 40,000 Americans died in auto accidents that year, and 64,000 died of drug overdose. And of course 400,000 died of heart disease, almost 500,000 died of cancer, and 250,000 died of medical mistakes.

    • You are completely misinformed. The original death star was blown up a long time ago in a galaxy far far away.

  15. another liberal asshole who can’t make a living except working for the destruction of the bill of rights, sort of like the Quisling baby Hogg!

  16. Is Longo volunteering to be a live test subject for cartridge effectiveness?

  18. Do we any thing to fear from this death star, I want to raise the public alarm right, this must stop for the children

  19. Now that Disney owns the Starwars franchise, is he gonna be in trouble over the copyright?

  21. Aw c’mon It would be cool.if it wasn’t anti-gun BS! A pro-gun “sculpture” could be identical but called “I luv BOO-LITS” and you’d gush…

    • No, I’d think it was just as much a waste of components if Jack O’Conner’s ghost had done it with .270s;-)

  22. I gotta admit, it looks kind of cool. It reminds me of a dandelion. That said, the author of the article and the “artist” are as full of shit as a Christmas goose. FTA ” Whereas the 1993 bullet ball consisted of blank rounds for revolvers, Death Star 2018 takes shape from the shells fired by AR-15s and other commercially available assault rifles” and “According to the artist, the bullets used to create the two Death Stars are a similar caliber, meaning they have tips about the same size.”

    • I noticed that bit in the source article referencing caliber also. Either he doesn’t comprehend that 55gr .224 is substantially smaller than 158gr .357, or he thinks the range of calibers is so large that the .133 inch difference is negligible, or he has conflated size and power, or he is noticing that the base of a .223 cartridge is a similar diameter to the base of a .38, or he just has no idea what he is talking about.

  23. He thinks a .38 Special/.357 Magnum is better to get shot with than a .223?

    I think there is very little difference at close range and being hit in the same spot.

    So, can we build an AR for .38/.357 (or is there already one?)?

  24. I would just like to go on record as saying I am disappointed that the 6.5 Creedmoor has not received the recognition it deserves. I ask that a GoFundMe be set up in its honor and that all able bodied citizens unite in this fight to bring back the honor and respect this cartridge rightfully deserves, if the great John Moses Browning were alive today he would be placing this scared cartridge in his beloved 1911 where it would continue to save the free world.

    That is all.

    • Should get a monument on the National Mall. Maybe a giant brass cartridge a foot taller than the Washington monument. I’d chip in $5 for that.

  26. Maybe God could do us a solid and have that ball roll over on the dude? That guy’s another one that’ll bitch about nobody shooting the muslims that are dying to throw him off of a building.

    Ya’ll better hold fire.

  27. Well, if someone gets their money honestly (without theft) and xe wants to waste it on shit like this, have fun.

    What a waste of components, though.

  29. So, 13,000 people are the CDC average.

    Seems like a lot….

    325 million people in the US in 2017…

    So the percentage of the population death by firearm related fatality in 2017 is roughly

    0.00004% of the population, or about 4 people per 100,000

    Doesn’t sound like a lot anymore….

    64,000 illegal drug related deaths a year, 61% being from heroin.

    Maybe guns aren’t our biggest problem?

    Heroin is killing more of your children and neighbors than guns.

    Maybe spend my tax dollars there. Oh and heroin isn’t protected by the constitution. So….

    • Nitpick…

      0.00004% of the population

      13,000 / 325,000,000 = 0.00004

      Which is 0.004%, not 0.00004%.

      When representing a number as a percentage, we have to shift the decimal point two places to the right.

      • Yea, I caught that as well, too late to edit. That’s what I get for surfin the interweb while working 🙂

  31. .260, 6.5 MM and on and on and on. All secretly wishing they could be as versatile and venerable as the godfather,… 30-06.

    • We all know the 270 Win is far superior to the 30.06 and yet gets zero fame and glory.

      Think of it as the 6.5 Creedmoor Magnum.

      270 Win for the Win.

  32. It’s a high capacity / evil assault sculpture!!

    Let’s start a movement to ban them!!!

  33. Did he have a FOID card or ask our watchers(government)if it was ok to buy all that ammo? He’s probably on a watch list for having a massive cashe of bullets. Who needs that much ammo😩. I DO!!! I’m jealous. That would be one fun weekend

  34. As a Transammosexual I am deeply offended by this sex toy sculpture.

  36. its a massive waste of ammo but it does look pretty cool just wish it functioned like a spike grenade from halo

    imagine if they used tracers then just let it off in the middle of nowhere at night that’d be one cool firework

  37. What a waste of reloading components. Even if it does look kind of cool. Doing their part to keep the price of brass and boolits up.

  45. I want one with factory ammo. I want to hang it in my entry way and I want to treat it like a bullet tree where I just grab some rounds off as I head out the door to the range. Can I get one in a chandelier for the dining room table because, why not?

  46. How about12 gauge shotguns “they’re basically devastating compared to a standard .38 caliber bullet that used to fit into a police revolver” and they predate 38 Special revolvers as well!

  47. I wish I had the money this thing cost to make. Between the aluminum core sphere and the components attached to the thing, he has some serious coin invested in this. The article says this thing weighs 2000 pounds.

Comments are closed.