Elon Musk's The Boring Company will soon do 'pickup parties' for flamethrower buyers

LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- Elon Musk's The Boring Company recently sold 20,000 flamethrowers and will soon be holding pickup parties so customers can get their hands on them.

"I thought it was a joke, quite frankly," Assemblyman Miguel Santiago said.

When Santiago realized Musk really was going ahead with it, Santiago wrote a bill attempting to limit the company's sales.

"We found out that anybody can market a flamethrower so long as it's less than 10 feet, no matter how wide the flame is, and there's absolutely no regulation for it. We can just go ahead and do this and that's what alarmed us," he said.

But the gun lobby, among other groups, objected to the bill even though flamethrowers - despite the name - are not firearms. The bill was soon watered down, requiring only safety labels. But even then the bill ended up shelved.

"Our bill right now is in the appropriations committee in the suspends file," he said.

When Musk debuted what his company called "not a" flamethrower, he wrote a tongue-in-cheek Instagram post.

While police and firefighters supported Santiago's bill, he now just wants to make sure people don't get hurt or start the next big wildfire.

"In a perfect world, I don't see any reason why anybody needs something like this out of a legitimate commercial use," Santiago said.

There is nothing regulating the sale of the flamethrowers and since the bill has been held up, there will be no safety warnings on it.

The Boring Company will be holding a pickup party in Los Angeles on June 9.