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How a 3-Year-Old Can Open a Gun Safe
New submitter bupbin writes "We are providing a detailed report and analysis of eleven different popular gun safes produced by Stack-On, GunVault, and Bulldog to warn the public of the dangers inherent in some of these products because the manufacturers nor their major retailers will do so. In that report you can view eight different Stack-On models, one produced by Bulldog, and one manufactured by GunVault. A similar design defect is demonstrated in an inexpensive safe for storing valuables that is sold by AMSEC, a very reputable safe manufacturer in the United States. Unfortunately, their digital safe with their claim of a 'state-of-the-art electronic lock' can also be opened (literally) by a three-year-old because of a common mechanism used in the industry that is subject to circumvention."
Umm... the StackOn, etc. aren't safes. They are locking steel boxes, kinda flimsy, no fire rating, not UL listed, etc.
Compare with products from Liberty, Cannon, etc.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
That's like saying the best way not to die in a car accident is to bike to work.
It's a safe whose dimensions and interior is specifically designed for storing firearms.
I've always heard that all serious safes are rated in "minutes" - meaning that's how long they'll delay a serious attacker from penetrating it's security.
Given the cheap and shoddy (and imported - Yes imported. The lighter and thinner the construction the cheaper it is to ship) nature of pretty much all appliances marketed to the general public nowadays I'm not surprised that the new metric is "minutes against a bored 3 year old"
My sister and I were picking pin tumbler locks when we were 6 and 7, getting us into all sorts of trouble as most people on /. could guess. A lot of electronic locks, can be bypassed by sharp jarring. Which is exactly what this appears to be, not a real surprise. Even mechanical locks that they use in hotel rooms can be bypassed using this manner.
Beh, the most elegant designs are usually defeated by the most simple solutions.
Om, nomnomnom...
So the best way to avoid car accidents is to not own a car?
Seems a bit impractical.
Be sure to also avoid going to a movie theater to see Batman.
Why was it loaded?
In what world can owning a car be compared to owning a gun? Quick reminder: one is designed to go from one place to another, the other is designed to kill other people.
~~~ Paf. Le chien.
the other is designed to kill other people.
The other is designed for various things. It doesn't have to be used solely for killing people.
As a father of young children, I given thought to having a gun in the home. I've concluded that if your reason to have a gun is for safety or defense, then if you can't sleep with it loaded under your pillow it probably can never be used in time to be useful. The problem is that you cannot do this with young children in the home; therefore, what are the alternatives? Some I've come up with, with debatable usefulness might be:
- A dog
- Martial arts training
Of course this is if you don't have the option of moving to a more peaceful location..
When I was in middle school (many years ago!), after earning the riflery boy scout merit badge, I managed to convince my very-reluctant parents to buy me a BB gun. It was not in a safe, but I purchased a trigger lock from Master Lock to prevent my little sister, who was in elementary school at the time, from getting into trouble with it.
One day when I was away, she picked the lock with a pocket knife. She was not particularly mechanically adept, either.
Fortunately, nothing came of it--she just went out back and shot some soda cans--but there's a real problem here.
QUOTE: "Ed Owens began voicing concerns about the security of these containers and that every other officer within the Department might be at risk. As a result, he was subsequently fired after fifteen months for allegedly violating department policies."
Oh yeah. Hide the problem instead of facing it head-on and dealing with it. Damn politicians.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Not correct.
A gun is designed to kill other things, not explicitly people, though people are often the target.
This is something that gets me very unhappy with the gun control crowd. A pistol *IS* an indispensable farm implement.
(Ever tried to shoot a pack of coyotes eating your spring calves using a bolt action rifle? You tend to get only one of the bastards, and then you end up losing another calf the next night. Something more rapid fire and quick to handle is required for effective pest control.)
Short version: The locking solonoid mechanism can be mechanically disrupted into an open state by applying a sharp vertical acceleration. The three-year-old used in testing achieved this by picking the safe a few inches off the ground and dropping it. The mechanism design is common across models and manufacturers.
An obvious countermeasure is to use the bolts usually supplied to securely attach the safe to a wall or floor. If it cannot be lifted, there is no way to apply the jolt needed to knock the mechanism open.
If only we had a consumer group that could protect children from getting into their parents guns... Oh wait, we do, and they are more worried about kids swallowing small magnets instead.
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
What does poor safe design have to do with guns??
That's like saying the best way not to die in a car accident is to bike to work.
Well... yes actually that is what it's saying. If you don't own a gun, you are safe as you can reasonably be from gun accidents. If you don't own a car, you're as safe from them as you can be.
You can still get run over or shot when you're outside. So really staying in your basement is the only answer to complete safety, unless there's a flood, or tornado... or radon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implied_warranty
Those safes are not fit for their intended purpose.
Start suing.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I own no guns designed to kill other people. One is designed to kill small game, another to kill turkeys and another for deer.
What sort of guns are you buying?
I compare them because they are both deadly in the wrong hands.
I'm reasonably sure that all of these are supposed to be installed by bolting them down (mine certainly is) which would prevent that kind of tampering. You'd reasonably also want to install these boxes where a child will not normally be able to reach as an additional precaution. Oh and don't keep shims lying around to pop locks with, apparently that happened in the house the video was shot...
How is this really news for nerds?
It doesn't specify compter nerds, does it? There are plenty of gun nerds out there.
In any case, it follows up yesterday's story about hotel room door locks nicely - same theme (poor physical security measures), different instance.
In what world can owning a car be compared to owning a gun? Quick reminder: one is designed to go from one place to another, the other is designed to kill other people.
Wait, guns are designed to go from one place to another?
-- a battle-weary cyclist
Not really parallel because...
Yeah, in the modern US, communities are mostly planned and constructed on the assumption that people will use cars for basic tasks like travel between home and work, travelling between home and places to by food and other necessities, etc. So its often impractical to get through daily life without a car.
Guns...not so much. That's not to say that there aren't people who legitimately need them, or at least live/work/etc. in circumstances where the benefits of having one outweigh the risks such that it is rational to own them. But its not really parallel to automobiles at all.
That's like saying the best way not to die in a car accident is to bike to work.
Sadly, if you live in America, taking a bike to work will *increase* your odds of being killed in a car accident.
I know her... Anne, right?
A pistol is not the right tool for this job.
You want an SKS or if you have more money a Mini-30. Coyotes are small enough that even cheap FMJs are quite effective.
But lock design is news for nerds.
Remember the Stack-On press release that touted the fact that their containers met “TSA airline guidelines” as if this endorsement is added evidence of the security of their products? We tested these containers, and the reality is they can be opened in a variety of ways including with a tiny piece of brass by a three year old.
That pretty much says it all right there. The TSA approves something because it can be opened by a three-year-old, meaning their own employees might have a 50/50 shot at it.
Locks are designed by engineers. (Nerds)
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
There are a ton of guns that are designed specifically for target shooting or hunting. A Walther GSP is designed to kill people about as much as an Indy Car is designed to take kids to soccer practice.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Replace gun safe with general-purpose safe and maybe you'll understand? Much irony in this post.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
A gun is designed to kill other things ...
No. They can also be designed or used for putting holes in pieces of paper, knocking over or pinging metal plates, breaking pieces of clay, etc. Shooting is also a sport. Given that slashdot seems to be on a current events theme I'll add that shooting is an Olympic Sport.
(Ever tried to shoot a pack of coyotes eating your spring calves using a bolt action rifle? You tend to get only one of the bastards, and then you end up losing another calf the next night. Something more rapid fire and quick to handle is required for effective pest control.)
Stupidest thing I've ever heard right there. You want accuracy and you want quick reloads. Coyotes aren't going to let you get close enough for a pistol to be effective. Smart farmers use semi-automatic rifles and if you'd prefer a safer weapon and are willing to take your time shooting, a pump action or lever action gun. Pistols and handguns have one purpose: shooting humans. They offer neither accuracy nor shorter time between shots -- in fact the recoil on the pistol is greater than on a rifle so your aim is worse. Handguns are used for their ability to be concealed and portability -- distinctly non-farm traits that are instead better suited for shooting other humans at close range.
I'm not aware of any age limit in the Constitution. 3 year-olds should have the right to carry guns too. What if there's a shooting at the kindergarten? An armed 3 year old could conceivably end that tragedy. Stupid libs and their gun safes.
what's the next story going to be? "How a 2 year old opens drawer full of kitchen knives"?
Seriously, it doesn't matter what you get, there will be a cheep version available. You get what you pay for. No news there.
That's like saying the best way not to die in a car accident is to swim to work.
Fixed. For Amsterdam and Venice, anyhow.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Apparently not gun safe locks. Those appear to have been designed by circus clowns.
Guns owned by private owners mostly kill or hurt innocent animals or people.
Leaving aside questions of innocence, that is most certainly false. There are more rounds of ammunition expended, more man hours of gun handling, and likely more total guns involved, in the Knob Creek machine gun shoot, than over the course of all hunting seasons in the US combined, along with all homicides involving firearms. Let along other shooting event like the hundreds of GSSF shoots, the Grand American Trap Shoot, etc etc etc.
But thinking more broadly, there are many millions of people on the earth who will never ride in a car in their lifetimes and certainly don't use one for a commute. They are luxury items meant for rich people. Why is their indulgence worth the thousands of lives lost every year? And what about computers? Most, in private hands, are used for dinking around on the internet and largely pointless communication. And hacking. So why not eliminate hacking by banning privately owned computers? It isn't like we will lose much.
Ah, the joy of killing things.
That locking mechanism is just atrocious. They thought using a single solenoid which when actuated retracts to allow the bolts to be withdrawn was a secure design in a safe the size of a shoebox? Add in that because it is battery powered it can't have a strong return spring and of course it will be easy to open by giving it a small physical shock. FFS even something simple like a bolt driven by a small stepper motor and a worm gear would be orders of magnitude better.
That the company and distributors are refusing to admit there is a problem is disgusting, but understandable given how large the potential liability is in this situation.
Locksmiths have been using these exact techniques for 20 years to open safes. This is nothing new nor secret. What's next, a video of a security consultant picking a deadbolt in 20 seconds?
First off, safes (which store anything) should be bolted into the foundation of your home. Therefore the pick-up-and-drop method is ineffective. A sturdy strike from a hammer may open some of them, but not all.
Second, none of these are real "gun safes". A real gun safe weighs 300 lbs. and cannot be opened using any of these methods. You need a large drill and a schematic of the inside of the door. These lock boxes are intended to be hidden somewhere (back of a closet, behind a bed) and allow for quick access (15 seconds to open) in the event of an emergency. Kids should not know where they are, nor be able to reach them. A real gun owner would know this.
sudo make me a sandwich
More stupid non-gunowner talk right above me.
You do realize they sell handguns for hunting right?
Large frame revolvers are well suited to such a task. If the recoil is so great as to be a problem the shooter has selected a round to large for them to safely handle.
Pump actions nor lever guns are any safer than a large single action revolver.
> Well... yes actually that is what it's saying.
Then you are dumb. The odds of my being killed by a gun have almost no relationship to whether I own one myself. Assuming I'm not the sort of idiot who is likely enough to shoot myself by accident to raise those odds out of the statistical noise of course. The odds of dying by gunfire are mostly driven by how popular they are in crime and how much crime I'm likely to be experience.
Since you are dumb you probably should not own a gun, you might be the sort of idiot who would shoot themself. You probably should not vote or reproduce either but alas you probably do those things.
Ths whole article is just about the general topic of security theater, most 'security' products are rubbish and locks only stop the honest. If you think a $36 product is actually a 'safe', again I have to conclude that you should not reproduce. They sell them because, exactly as the article notes, people buy them to check off a box.
Democrat delenda est
The trick is to teach kids how to handle the gun so that you take away the mystery. When I grew up we had guns in the house and not locked up at all. My dad's shotgun and hunting rifle generally were leaning up in a corner. No trigger locks. If he'd been hunting earlier that day they may very well be loaded.
It was like that from birth till I moved out. Wanna know why me and my siblings didn't die horrible deaths? Because we didn't feel a need to secretly "play" with the gun. If I wanted to go out and shoot it all I had to do was ask and my dad would take me out shooting. Not only that, but during those shooting sessions he taught me exactly how the gun worked, how to safely load and unload it, and how to handle it. Even if I HAD handled the gun while he was gone I was perfectly capable to doing so safely.
As they say: if you have a pool in the backyard, which do you think would be more effective: Putting a fence around it, or teaching your kids to swim?
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
That's like saying an apple is an orange.
Not being in a car does not magically make one immune to the other eleventy billion imbeciles on the road.
Not having a gun in the house kind of makes it hard for a kid to shoot himself in the face with your non-existent gun.
I think the fundamental problem is that any safe that protects your kid from a gun, will also prevent you from swiftly retrieving it should you ever need to protect yourself. Or did you think that half-bred gang member was going to wait a few minutes to give you a fair fight ?
-Billco, Fnarg.com
if you had wanted to stray from the point further, you might even have mentioned water guns.
In what world can owning a car be compared to owning a gun? Quick reminder: one is designed to go from one place to another, the other is designed to kill other people.
No. At Boy Scout summer camp we used guns designed for putting holes in pieces of paper and breaking pieces of clay. Check out the Olympics, you will find guns used for similar things. Shooting is a sport, that it the most common usage of firearms.
Ever tried to shoot a pack of coyotes eating your spring calves using a bolt action rifle?
You are obviously part ghost and/or quite a marksman. Sneaking up on coyotes to get within effective pistol range is quite a feat. Equally impressive is the fact you are out-shooting a rifle with your side-arm, at running coytotes. Perhaps you're using an Uzi?
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The sooner we stop responding to timothy posts the better.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
Well, if you look at the numbers, cars kill an amazingly larger number (absolute and per capita) of individuals than privately owned guns. So, if you want to talk about societies obligation to mediate needless death and carnage - you'd better at least consider what is near, if not the, leading tool of sudden termination. By comparison - guns aren't even on the chart.
In what world can owning a car be compared to owning a gun? Quick reminder: one is designed to go from one place to another, the other is designed to kill other people.
In this world. Comparisons are made about things that are not identical, silly.
Every end has half a stick.
I'm always amazed how many pro-gun nerds there are on Slashdot. When I read their postings coming to the defense of the 2nd amendment, I have this chilling image of a thirty-something programmer polishing his Glock and recalling the memory of an atomic wedgie whilst staring at the heavily circled calendar date of his high school reunion.
Sadly for your point, death by computer still lags far behind death by shooting.
Since when was knowing how to pick a lock not a part of a young nerd's rite of passage?
It is like taking clocks apart or building "spy gadgets".
Let me guess before I read the article. They used the brute force technique, right?
Ah, the joy of eating.
Unlike you I have not yet learned to live from only water and air so things have to die for me to live.
Pump actions nor lever guns are any safer than a large single action revolver.
You should probably go back to your gun safety training class (if you ever took it). The mere physics of how easily it is to unintentionally point a handgun makes them more dangerous to their owners and flat out less safe. The safest guns require a mechanic action in between shots and effort to point the gun in any direction.
Try committing suicide with a lever action Winchester. Now try committing suicide with a large single action revolver. Notice any differences?
Indeed. I have found more low-cost safes than not can be opened merely by dropping them on the floor at an appropriate angle. Granted any electric safe that uses a spring actuated solenoid can be opened in such a manner.
Usually this is not a problem for most applications, but when the payload is a loaded handgun this is a disaster.
Ever tried to shoot a pack of coyotes eating your spring calves using a bolt action rifle?
You are obviously part ghost and/or quite a marksman. Sneaking up on coyotes to get within effective pistol range is quite a feat. Equally impressive is the fact you are out-shooting a rifle with your side-arm, at running coytotes. Perhaps you're using an Uzi?
Agreed, that part about killing coyotes with a handgun is downright hilarious. He's either stupid, a liar or both.
The most effective thing to do would be to do both.
Which is what my parents did. Safes for the guns, ammo in another place and plenty of range time for the kids.
Guns owned by private owners mostly kill or hurt innocent animals or people.
You are mistaken. Target shooting (paper, clay pigeons, metal plates, etc) is far more common.
Because most bikers don't use the bike lanes/paths.
This is more FYI than trying to niggle with you, but most gun deaths are suicides, not crime or accidents. So it is pretty related to whether there is a gun in the house. We could have a discussion about whether you're more likely to succeed in a suicide attempt in a house with a gun, but that's for another day.
Its related to security and the idea that "apparent security" and "actual security" are two distinct concepts.
There are a TON of parallels with the software security industry, where sometimes a vendor simply refuses to respond to a notification of an exploit, which leaves the researcher to go to the media and perform a full disclosure in order to force the vendor's hand so to speak. In this case, the researchers reached out to the manufacturer and walmart, and got no response, so they are spilling the beans to the public.
It is a particularly good submission because its not an anti-gun or pro-gun screed; its legitimate research about a legitimate issue that is being handled irresponsibly by the vendor, and now its up to the news-reading public to bring that vendor to task by avoiding their products until such time as they take responsibility for and address these kind of "vulnerabilities".
but those are those scary "assualt rifles"! Don't you know how "assault rifle" is defined here in the states?
Mini-30
SKS rifles
But would you suggest using one of those for say, euthanizing injured stock? (Say, your cow bugs the shit out, and disembowels itself on the barbedwire fence. It is dragging itself around in the lot dragging several meters of intestines behind it. Doesnt need to be a cow either. Sheep get themselves fucked up like that too.)
Not to take away from your sentiment about the OP blaming the tools, but some areas it is indeed necessary... however, in the absolutely, unfathomably larger vast majority of the population it is not. I'd honestly be surprised if people in the USA for whom it's absolutely necessary to shoot animals to live was a percentage higher than .000001. So trying to use that as 'not just recreation and self defense' is stupid. That's like trying to equate the number of people that absolutely need to specifically canoe to work has a bearing on how the rest of the population gets to work.
Which as a gun owner can tell you is not really any different from normal safes or locked cabinets. Yes there are companies that specifically cater to that market, but the technologies arent any different.
Best way to comment on American politics is to understand the foundational documents. I might recommend the Bill of Rights, for starters.
How is this really news for nerds? Seems like gun stories are here only to spark the inevitable flamewars over gun control.
Cue up the comments that have nothing to do with this story and use it to further their own political agendas.
If your firewall doesn't protect your servers you have to turn to guns.
or lasers on sharks
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
They're cheap sheet metal locking boxes. A SAFE, a real safe, first of all a three year old couldn't lift and drop on its corner.
A real gun owner would know this.
1) The guy whose kids got into the lockbox was a cop.
2) The lockbox had been issued to him by his police department.
They taste good too.
As long as you have a license to carry...yes
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
if you have a pool in the backyard, which do you think would be more effective: Putting a fence around it, or teaching your kids to swim?
Politicians would force you to hire a lifeguard.
sudo make me a sandwich
Yeah I noticed since the lever action is longer I pushed the trigger with a stick. Other than that nothing.
I have taken many, and you mechanical action between shots is why I said single action. Pointing a gun at anything you do not want to shoot is FAIL right there. I don't care if you are pointing a howitzer or a pocket pistol.
Yes, but can you imagine how much harder it would be to properly secure laser-toting sharks??? A gun safe is easy by compairson, as you do not have to provide water, oxygen, food, temperature regulation, etc.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
That's not really a problem since according to TFA they can be opened in seconds. Your 3-year old can even retrieve it for you!
~~~ Paf. Le chien.
My brother does it all the time.
Course, He also practices regularly on various targets.
Simply because something is "hard", does not mean it cannot be done, nor that it is not done regularly. Just ask the hacker space.
He elaborately describes what happens when you leave responsibility to commercial
enterprise in an environment of competition.
That is not news here, but apparently it is a shock in the USA.
What you need is rules and regulation, no matter how fierce commercial enterprise is against it.
They cannot act responsibly on their own, no matter how often they claim it.
I used to bullseye womp rats in my T-16 back home. They're not much bigger than coyotes.
Change the Headline to "How a 3-Year old can get in your Macbook Safe"
And now it's important.
Priorities you know.
As they lack full-auto fire they cannot be assault rifles.
I would say they would be fine at such a task. Any shot to the head will get that job done.
I hope that is not your SKS, that sort of tacti-cool should be reserved for AR and Glock owners.
Because an unloaded personal defense weapon is as useful as a brick. You don't see many people carrying concealed bricks or with bricks next to their bed for a reason. It's worthless.
Since we are discussing safes then we are discussing storage. In storage guns should be unloaded. The anti-gun crowd doesn't often have the facts or technical details on their side, but in the case of storing a gun loaded they do have it right. A loaded gun in storage is more likely to cause an accident than to be necessary for self defense. To expect that there will not be enough time (3-5 seconds) to load the 12 gauge is truly paranoid, probably delusional. Is there an incident where that was the case, sure, but there will be far more instances were the seconds were available and far more instances where a kid found a loaded gun.
Not if you include obesity.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Storage Wars on A&E here in the US shows how when they find safes in the lockers they in a lot of cases just throw them at the ground and pops them open. This is nothing new or special. If it was bolted down or was a very heavy duty type safe, that needs welding torches and drills having a 3 year old opening them with no tools would be int interesting. Although I understand the story and it is said that the makers of these safes don't tell people, or do they? I don't know what the documentation of the safes say.
http://www.aetv.com/storage-wars/
http://youtu.be/JMN30huZLxk
http://youtu.be/hdR2v5kVNLQ
sorry to say I can't find them opening up the smaller fire safes. They just toss them to the ground.
Paul: Father... father, the sleeper has awakened! - Dune
i'm sure you kill small animals only for survival reasons. not at all because you enjoy killing small animals.
(Ever tried to shoot a pack of coyotes eating your spring calves using a bolt action rifle? You tend to get only one of the bastards, and then you end up losing another calf the next night. Something more rapid fire and quick to handle is required for effective pest control.)
Stupidest thing I've ever heard right there. You want accuracy and you want quick reloads. Coyotes aren't going to let you get close enough for a pistol to be effective. Smart farmers use semi-automatic rifles and if you'd prefer a safer weapon and are willing to take your time shooting, a pump action or lever action gun.
Semi-auto rifles, yes. (Or carbines, around here -- farms are too small to need a rifle.) Unless you're on a tractor -- long 357 revolver with shotshells is good snake medicine. Or if you don't have your rifle/carbine handy when you're out in the field and spot a coyote.
Carbines when you're setting out to deal with a known varmint problem, handguns for the rest of the time.
Pistols and handguns have one purpose: shooting humans. They offer neither accuracy nor shorter time between shots -- in fact the recoil on the pistol is greater than on a rifle so your aim is worse. Handguns are used for their ability to be concealed and portability -- distinctly non-farm traits that are instead better suited for shooting other humans at close range.
Concealability, sure. Portability? Setting aside the obvious farm uses for a portable gun I mentioned, are you suggesting that hikers in bear country should just deal with the weight of a long gun, so you can enjoy the convenience of a nice black-and-white worldview?
They sell handguns under the guise of hunting. From an absolutely practical point of view, a handgun is about the worst possible firearm you could use to hunt game. It was initially designed and created to kill people.
In all honesty, the best thing for hunting game would be a bow of some sort, because it's silent. It may not have a mushrooming head, but at least you won't scare away all other game within a kilometer radius.
I don't care if you are pointing a howitzer or a pocket pistol.
Right because the amount of effort is not considered when evaluating what is statistically safer? But I'm just a stupid "non-gunowner" right here. I guess my Remington Fieldmaster 572 and Savage 212 don't exist.
Pointing a gun at anything you do not want to shoot is FAIL right there.
Right, well this discussion wasn't about FAIL versus not FAIL. It's about which guns are safer than others. Handguns are at the bottom of that list if you have any common sense.
I tend to agree, but if we eliminated all of the potential flame-fest topics on Slashdot there would probably be a heck of a lot less articles to read. Honestly, for topics like this that I know are going to be a landmine sometimes I'll just read the article and skip the discussion. In this case, I wanted to say something to cancel the unintended moderation I made on this post, lol.
Account -> Discussions -> Disable Sigs
the short, squat boxy safes are not designed to hold rifles. gun safes are typically tall cabinets with rifle shelving. images.google.com - search "gun safe" and see for yourself.
insensitive clod overlords obligatory xkcd car analogy russian reversals whoosh pedant fanbois ftfy in 3...2...1..PROFIT
Similar story: I slept under the gun rack at my grandparents. People talk about sleeping with a pistol under the pillow, but I had more firepower and ammo with nearly the same convenience.
Yet I never touched them. I was told not to and that was that. My brother and I weren't allowed to handle guns until late teens (probably because Granddad didn't want to have to clean them after firing them). But we were taught proper gun handling any time we had a cap gun or water pistol.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Fail #3,
There is no such thing as a safe gun. Only a safe operator.
The odds of my being killed by a gun have almost no relationship to whether I own one myself.
Actually, they do. People with guns in the home are around twice as likely to be murdered and 10 times as likely do die of suicide as people without guns (source). People carrying guns are about 5 times as likely to get shot as people who aren't carying guns (source). This is not even considering accidental shootings. You say you're "not the sort of idiot who is likely enough to shoot myself by accident," and I hope you're right, but I doubt many accidental shooters thought they were either.
The caliber of stories is really down overall. Can't imagine what triggered this story. They're really shooting blanks some days. Or maybe I'm just going off half-cocked. Who knows?
I deserve every down mod I get.
Most "safes" that you see in your average retail store are just locked cabinets. Well, they usually have fancier locks, but a hasp and padlock would work better.
I'm giving someone one of my old safes. It looked similar to the first one, so I decided to try the drop test. It didn't open. They need it to keep a single firearm, and some papers, away from a 3 year old. I found it oddly coincidental that this story came up now. The one I'm giving away is sitting on my floor waiting for me to take it over and mount it.
When I was reading reviews on the "economy" safes (like anything under $200), quite a few are easily defeated. Some can be opened by just jiggling the handle until it opens (about 3 seconds). Some take a screwdriver to pop the dial off (combination lock).
I want a nice rifle safe. After look at the prices, I'm tempted to build my own. If you have welding and machining skills, you could craft one pretty easily. Double layer steel (inner and outer shell), with a few inches of concrete make for a respectable vault. Then you have to make the bolt mechanism, which takes a little more thinking.
Jamming the bolt mechanism so it won't open, is the hardest part. You can't exactly use a residential deadbolt. There are plenty of ways to open those in seconds with little skill. (lockpick gun, bump key, lockpick rake, etc).
It would take me time, but I could build something that would normally cost thousands.
I picked my first lock when I was about 8 years old. I had a toy that needed a key to open a panel. I had lost the key long before, so I got it open with a paperclip and small screwdriver, acting as a rake and tensioner.
I know people who want to keep guns in those cheap moneyboxes. They change their mind when I show them that I can pick the lock in seconds, or force it open with a screwdriver. Come on... Why protect a $600 gun with a $15 lockbox?
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Doing both is more effective than your "or": taeching your kid that gun are dangerous and putting it out of their way is the safest route. In fact I knew somebody like you , which was taught by his father about rifle and handgun. He still nearly killed a friend because he tougth he knew enough (just like all kids do).
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
TFA isn't about American politics. Neither was my comment.
~~~ Paf. Le chien.
Nope--Lindsay. Apparently it's a common story.
Fail #3,
There is no such thing as a safe gun. Only a safe operator.
So what you're saying is that a fully automatic uzi is just as safe as a bolt action rifle?
It shouldnt matter what material the lower reciever is made out of. ABS plastic, Wood, fiberglass--- Doesnt change the normal operation of the device, unless it is something radically unsafe.
That was actually why I picked the "Ooooh! Scary plastic stock! oooooh!" pics, instead of the far more common (and prettier) finished wood ones.
... in the same way and tell me that no other kid would ever do something stupid with a loaded gun. Like most accidents, stupid shit often happens because more than one thing went wrong. Your dad was called away at an emergency, you had some friends over but had to go to the bathroom... this is why most "safe" designs require a two point failure on top of a system designed with best practices. Leaving a loaded gun around is a single point of failure with a lot of assumptions built-in.
You live in a pretty black-and-white world that allows for no statistical variation. Humans, if anything, do not all act exactly the same under the same circumstances.
Create a gun lock called "Homework" and place near the kids toothbrushes...it will never be touched!!
It is no a guise, these revolvers and single shot pistols have no other use.
A handgun is far easier to make followup shots or even shoot beyond 40 yards as opposed to a bow. I also bowhunt, they are not the best hunting tool by far. A gunshot will not scare away all game for a kilometer, turkeys can be called back to the same place you just shot at them for example.
There are other places than the United States in this world.
but most gun deaths are suicides, not crime or accidents.
More so when you realize that almost all fatalities "while cleaning his gun" are suicides, not accidents. It's an official fiction beneficial to society in many places even today, but it does muck with the statistics.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I did not mean that it meant they were more dangerous, or assultish only that their owners were probably tools.
I never met anyone who did the whole tacticool who was not a tool.
just as long as you don't want to borrow one of mine when you realize you totally need one I'm fine with that. You made your choice, and as long as you're willing to live with that decision when the time comes and not ask for a mulligan, I can respect that. The only issue at stake are the electronic safes based on this article. If you aren't going to have one for self-protection (such as a collector etc) then theres no issue with storing ammo in a completely different location or for that matter kept in a more traditional mechanical strongbox. its the quick acting ones that seem to be the trouble. Ive had the old gunvault one with the finger combination for 10yrs but had never seen the 'pry the cover off and use a paperclip' application till today. I doubt thats something that would be discovered accidentally, and I am certain his 3yr was trained how to do it for the video. However, those lift/drop exploits I could totally see a kid stumbling across. Most of my weapons are stored in a 5ft high stack-on cabinet with a traditional cam style locking mechanism at which I have several cans of ammo in the bottom which weighs the crap out of that cabinet. No one would be able to do any lift-drop on that one even if it had that vulnerability (which it does not). Could it be forced open with a crowbar by a burglar? Probably, but the point of the article was to point out death by accidental exposure to a gun, not intent to destroy the container to get to it.
In the proper hands, Yes.
The question is if the hands it is in are proper or not.
I currently do not own any guns, but I come from a family of hunters and gun owners. I have been through gun safety training. At some point in my life it is highly likely that I will inherit guns from family members or purchase my own guns. I'm not into hunting, but I do enjoy target shooting and skeet. My father always kept his guns in a large combination lock, fire rated, etc. gun safe. It was a 1,000 pound monster of of thing. OK, possibly exaggerating, but it was huge, solid, and heavy and not something that can be moved without at least a heavy duty moving dolly and at least two people.
I would never store a gun in a lock box. A lock box is for transporting your gun from your home to the range or other place of it's use. Properly storing your gun means a quality gun safe that is bolted to the floor (for smaller safes) or a full on monster of a safe (for rifles, shotguns, etc.) that is not easily moved should a thief (or multiple thieves) enter your home. Even with my guns were in a safe, I would also have trigger locks on every one of them with the keys stored in a separate, smaller safe, again bolted to the floor.
Now this is my own opinion of proper gun handling based on personal experience, information from experts, as well as a dose of personal paranoia. I have a 3 year old child who will someday be instructed by myself or my father in proper gun safety, because she will be exposed to guns in our family. This is not optional. If she shows interest in joining her family in target shooting and hunting she will also go through gun safety courses before participating. Also not optional.
So I find it very irresponsible that these are being sold to meet the federal requirements. I do appreciate the opinion of gun owners who feel this type of law is infringing on their rights, but my personal opinion is that this is simply putting good, common sense into law, and that while selling these lock boxes does meet the letter of the law, it completely skirts the intent of the law.
That a law enforcement agency issued these defective by design devices to it's officers is very concerning, and the reported response to being shown that they are flawed devices is even worse. It is equally concerning that at least some of the officers in question didn't secure their weapons in the first place and that this wasn't a policy of the department before a member of the department was hit with personal tragedy. The sheriff department should expect their officers to show a good dose of common sense when it comes to their service as well as personal weapons, but in the world we live in common sense is no longer sufficient.
I'm going to go back in my box and will think within the limits of my box: MS Sucks Linux Good I read too much Slashdot.
I include the folks who bolt knives onto glocks and maglights onto ARs in this.
I see you have no clue about the US "assault rifle ban". It was indeed "scary looking guns" that were banned - any rational definition of "assault rifle" would be unrelated to that law, and to the joke GPP was making.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Cue up the comments that have nothing to do with this story and use it to further their own political agendas.
Like, er, yours?
How is this really news for nerds? That's an easy one: it's about three year old hardware hackers! What I'd like to know, is what idiots moderated that useless comment "insightful?" You could probably get more insight from a three year old hardware hacker!
This isn't a "guns are bad, mkay" story, this is a "some engineers really fucked up" story.
Free Martian Whores!
This just shows why we need to radically change gun laws, as in ban all guns!
You must be mistaken. Accidents only happen to other people. And accidents only happen to idiots.
~~~ Paf. Le chien.
Then you are dumb. The odds of my being killed by a gun have almost no relationship to whether I own one myself.
Before you call someone dumb you should actually look up your assertion.
lack of needed "bike" paths in the US is a big problem in fact im sure that a number of folks live in areas where there ARE NOT EVEN SIDEWALKS. Of course the presence of a sidewalk would not stop somebody from driving on said sidewalk or running a red light but ...
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
This is false.
You seriously think you can teach that level of understanding to a 3 year old?
"Putting a fence around it, or teaching your kids to swim?"
And if they have trouble swimming still? Neighbor kids wandering over?
Or maybe because I enjoy meat that has not been raised in a cage all its life.
Actually I would say the actual death of the animal makes me far less likely to waste the meat or take it for granted. Unlike so many that buy meat at the grocery store.
And often have a lock that's supposed to be quicker to open, even in the dark.
Truth is though, aside from the big, proper vaults... those little pistol safes are almost all garbage. Like, worse than a hotel vault. There's also a video floating around from an old HOPE conference or something where a guy goes through all the different models he's opened.
I find articles about widespread, easy-to-exploit security flaws quite interesting, thank you very much. And it goes to show that all of the electronic security in the world is pointless when there's a flaw in the physical security. The fact that it was centered around something marketed as a gun safe was basically irrelevant to me; it just as easily could have been a document safe with $10M of easily stolen cash inside. Or using a coat-hangar to open many office doors.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
the term 'assault weapon' was stolen and redefined to be anything that 'looks' like a battlefield weapon.. pistol grip, folding stock, semi-automatic, doesnt even matter if the damn thing was a .22LR rimfire. A true 'assault rifle' fires either fully automatic or 3shot burst. Its fed by a bunch of sheep that think that the ONLY way to kill someone is by using a gun, and if we pass a law to make these guns illegal, people will stop killing people. Telaviv has great gun control, sure does a lot of good to everyone who died from a suicide bomber. Timothy McVey (oklahoma city bomber) didnt use assault weapons to mass murder. People have been killing people for thousands of years, it didnt just start after they invented rifles and muskets.
Quick reminder: one is designed to go from one place to another, the other is designed to kill other people.
...And yet, the former unintentionally kills 32 thousand more people per year just in the US alone.
I know which one I feel safer around.
/ Note that cars also kill about 5k more people in total as well - But while the accidental fatality rate for guns comes out to under 3% of all deaths, for cars you have nearly 100%.
People buy these "safes" because they are cheap and appear to be effective. The average consumer can not be expected to know that they are nowhere near as secure as they are advertised and commonly assumed to be. Given that, there is no free market and a responsible community would see to it that such snake-oil was taken off the market and, better yet, a standard caused to exist against which such products could be evaluated. But no. A dead kid or two is way better than "more gubbamint regulation". Right?
There are a huge number of cyclists killed in car accidents. It's more like saying the best way not to die in a car accident is to eliminate all cars.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
No contest, I agree entirely.
I was merely pointing out that many people would look at the "Oooooh! Scary!" version with its totally unnecessary stock choice, and say "Oh, that gun makes me feel scared! I need to feel safe! It needs to be banned!"
Much like they do when they see a pistol designed for hunting small animals. "Oh, dont shoot me!"
(rolls eyes)
Especially if you ride like the jackasses around here: ignoring all traffic signs and signals and in the middle of the lane.
Or he just does silhouette shooting for funs, as many people do. Hitting a coyote-size target is expected at 200 yards for a large-bore pistol, or 100 yards with other pistols.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
So to "break in" to one of these safes you have to be able to move/drop it? Guess its a good thing mine is bolted to a 300lb (including contents) gun locker. Anyone with any sense could tell you upon seeing one of these safes that they wouldn't stop a determined individual. They are intended to prevent casual/quick access, and if properly secured (mine came with all of the necessary hardware to do just that) they will apparently do so. Should the locking mechanism be redesigned to be more tamper resistant? Of course. Are people being duped into buying insecure safes? Only the idiots who think $39.99 will get you an impenetrable super secure safe....
As they lack full-auto fire they cannot be assault rifles.
So what you are saying is the M16, the main weapon for US military troops is not an assault rifle?
Wow, I'd like to see how you hunt for your vegetables with a gun.
Sadly for your point, death by computer still lags far behind death by shooting.
However child deaths by swimming pool exceeds child deaths by firearms. So there must be a need to ban swimming pools.
Blasphemy!@#
These are all images that came up in the search. Try again. again THE TECHNOLOGIES BETWEEN SAFES AND "GUN" SAFES IS NO DIFFERENT.
http://www.gunsafereviews.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/gunvault-mv500-std-microvault-pistol-gun-safe.jpg
http://d260svfu9a9tyc.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/gunvault3.gif
http://plasticstorageboxesinfo.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/HOMAK-Bestselling-Biometric-Gun-Safe.jpg
http://biometricgunsafereviews.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/locksaf-biometric-gun-safe.jpg
According to the risk data, taking a bike to work INCREASES your risk of violent death on the road, but DECREASES your risk of death from coronary heart disease, et cetera. It turns out that, for all but the most reckless and foolish cyclists, the improved health benefits outweigh the increased risk of violent death, by a large margin. In other words, if you are the sort of cyclist who often rides the wrong way against traffic, in dark clothing at night without a light, runs stop signs, and otherwise does everything WRONG, your average lifespan will be shortened. For all other cyclists, despite the slightly elevated risk of violent death on the roads, the health benefits of cycling will increase your average lifespan.
Incidentally, the best thing a cyclist can do to become safe is to sometimes ride with an organized cycle club. The riding habits this will instill reduces your death-per-distance-traveled risk rate below that of the average car driver. This is based on AMA data collected as part of a 20 year study.
After watching the video in the article, I have to say "what lock design?" 2 were unlocked by simply jarring the safe, the 3rd has an easily accessible pin that pops the top open.
If those videos are true to what they show, that safe manufacturer is in for some hefty lawsuits.
The trick is to teach kids how to handle the gun so that you take away the mystery.
3 year old kids?
More than enough kids have killed themselves or someone else by accident because they knew how to get to a gun.
While I'm glad you and your siblings survived, it's bad public policy to encourage the not-storing of loaded guns.
As they say: if you have a pool in the backyard, which do you think would be more effective: Putting a fence around it, or teaching your kids to swim?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attractive_nuisance_doctrine
I'm going to go with "Putting a fence around it" if you want to avoid being sued out of house and home if someone else's kid drowns.
In most jurisdictions, you'll start racking up daily fines if you refuse to put up a fence around any attractive nuisances on your land.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
"From an absolutely practical point of view, a handgun is about the worst possible firearm you could use to hunt game" Tell me that again after lugging a heavy rifle on a 30 mile plus hiking/hunting trip like my family used to go on.
Website Just Down For Me? Find out
I agree with everything you said, hence why I included "locked cabinets" in my comment. But my other comment holds true, there is no difference in technology between "Gun" safes and normal safes.
And, they are Olympic sports.
But then, the 2nd amendment isn't about Olympic sports or duck hunting....
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
Care to elaborate hot shot? I own a liberty and 2 stack ons.
Um, those statistics are idiotic. Perhaps people that are about to commit suicide go out and buy a gun? Perhaps people that live in high murder rate areas buy and carry more guns?
And of course, the #1 - gang members are the majority of gun murders, both giving and receiving. And, of course, they carry guns.
Uncontrolled statistics do not convey useful information.
while (sig==sig) sig=!sig;
I don't even think the standard US army M-16/M-4's have full auto any more, only 3 round burst.
[citation needed]
That was my experience on the farm as well. I routinely carried a semi-auto 22 with just iron sights (much faster aiming)... however that mostly got used for obtaining dinner since my dogs proved to be a much bigger deterrent to animal raiders :)
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop
Not quite. For your translation to be accurate, the GP would have had to have claimed that the best way to be gun safe is to only carry knives [substituting one weapon for another, as you translate one mode of transportation for another]. If you were accurately mocking the GP's statement, you would have said "That's like saying the best way not to die in a car accident is to have no car." Maybe then we could debate the merits of having no gun/car, and whether there are acceptable substitutes.
Less snark, more fidelity, but just as pointless to the discussion about faulty gun safes.
M16 is select fire, Rock and roll. M4 only has 3 round burst.
AR15 is only semi.
On point the M1 rifle is not an assault rifle or assault weapon (don't ask the defenders at Normandy or Inchon).
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
You missed:
3) An oxymoron
Not everything that can be measured matters; Not everything that matters can be measured.
...no need for a gun-safe.
And a lot of money saved.
Just saying.
(posted from a country where guns are very controlled and in which there are ten times less deaths per capita by firearms than in U.S.A.)
Sigh. Some people never learn to deal with the while cause vs effect thing. People in low crime environments don't usually carry, people who do live in areas with crime do, people who have previously been a victim of a violent crime tend to carry more than those who haven't.
And for the record, I don't carry. Why? Because I live in a very low crime area. I do own a firearm but it stays in a case up on a high enough shelf in my bedroom that any visiting grandkids will be in serious trouble long before they plunder that far into places they know they shouldn't be.
That leaves suicide. Not a problem. If I ever decide that I need to off myself a firearm is probably the best and quickest way so why wouldn't I use the correct tool for that job? Better that than jumping into a wood chipper or something else messy. There are times when that really is the answer ya know. Not many, but there are some.
Democrat delenda est
This sounds a lot like the study linking air temperature to shark attacks. In much the same way that people don't get attacked by sharks in whether too cold to swim, it seems people who's lifestyle render's gun ownership pointless are less likely to get shot.
Is this where we say "correlation is not causation"? I'd imagine that people who live in areas where they're likely to get shot are more likely to buy guns for self defense.
On the other hand, there's this.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Without all the emotional bull crap, and just cutting to the chase on how the safes fared? I know how important it is that (most of) my kids not be able to get to my guns. I don't need the 6 o' clock news version of this story.
I know people who want to keep guns in those cheap moneyboxes. They change their mind when I show them that I can pick the lock in seconds, or force it open with a screwdriver. Come on... Why protect a $600 gun with a $15 lockbox?
Depends on what you're protecting it from - obviously it's silly to try to protect it from theft that way, but then a lockbox generally isn't going to do all that much to protect against theft anyway. On the other hand it wouldn't actually be terribly difficult to make a $15-$50 lockbox that would be virtually impossible for a young child to open, and completely impossible to force open without leaving conspicuous evidence. Lockpicking is a whole different issue, and requires a whole different grade of engineering to fight, so yeah, most any cheap lockbox will fail that test, but then most children don't know how to pick even a simple lock.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Yet plenty of "normal" safes use the exact same methods and technologies. The only difference if whats inside the safe. If I take a normal safe and put a gun in it is it suddenly a gun safe? If a "Gun" safe has no guns in it is it still a "Gun" safe?
In the proper hands, Yes.
The question is if the hands it is in are proper or not.
You know when they give cars safety ratings? That's what we're trying to do here. You've demonstrated that you're not the greatest at thinking but try this mental exercise: every one in the United States is issued a fully loaded gun. Half the population randomly gets uzis and the other half gets bolt action rifles. What do you think the statistics will show?
Do you have kids? 3 year olds don't always listen the first time. It only takes one time to shoot themselves.
the other is designed to kill other people.
It's just a tool. I own 4 "assault" weapons and I can guarantee you that most people who will ever read this comment have committed more acts of violence during their lunch break today than have ever been committed with my firearms.
Targeting the tool and not the action is foolishness.
im ok with ammo in another place as long as its not one of those 'completely separate room in the house' kind of ideas.. after all its only useful if you can actually use it when an emergency arises.
Google bicycle gun. Or there's always this. Be sure to scroll down to the last picture.
The response he got from the manufacturers and retailers is unbelievable!
I'm not an exec at a big corporation, but if I saw a video of a 3 year old opening a lock box that I was marketing and selling as a "gun safe", I'd at least stop selling new ones. The bean counters would coldly calculate the cost of a recall vs. the cost of settling a few lawsuits for the items already in use, but what motive would they have to keep selling the same junk? I suppose the retailers could just point the finger at the manufacturers of course, but it still makes no sense.
I'm going to forward the source article to the NRA, and I encourage others (esp. members) to do so. Hopefully we can get permission to re-print parts of it in American Rifleman. The last F*&^%!$ thing we need is firearms accidents in cases where people are trying to do the responsible thing by keeping the weapons locked up.
How is this really news for nerds
if this had been a defcon presentation rather than a forbes article there would be no question. They're talking about the ability to compromise locks (including electronic ones) by basically banging the safe a couple of times. As an exercise in technical security it's some combination of hilarious and terrifying.
Believe it or not, I think there's a lot we can philosophically grasp from this. What is the legal obligation for a company that sells a product that isn't even kind of secure, while claiming it to be? None. Security that can be compromised by a 3 year old will be, and that probably applies as much to computer security as it does safe security. etc.
The most obvious is a testament to 'obscurity is not security', a 3 year old, who isn't really capable of understanding safe design, and therefore faces complete obscurity can still open a safe by basically trying to pick it up, and then dropping it.
On a bike you are supposed to follow all the rules of a motor vehicle, and that includes riding in the middle of the lane.
Score one for diabeetus!
Right. I don't think anybody is saying that the ratio of good and bad usages of a car is the same as good and bad usage of a gun, just that it would be ridiculous to impose further bans and justify them by saying there's no good uses for guns when there are good uses for guns. I'm all for permits, but outright bans just don't work.
True, but in a corporate environment the associated savings in employee severance packages may make up the difference.
Not to mention the advantages of holding vendor negotiations in the glass-floored room over the tank - in which case a conspicuous trap-door mechanism under the vendor representative's seat is usually good for at least a few extra points off the final costs.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
However, compared with control participants, shooting case participants were significantly more often Hispanic, more frequently working in high-risk occupations1,2, less educated, and had a greater frequency of prior arrest. At the time of shooting, case participants were also significantly more often involved with alcohol and drugs, outdoors, and closer to areas where more Blacks, Hispanics, and unemployed individuals resided. Case participants were also more likely to be located in areas with less income and more illicit drug trafficking
Sounds like carrying a gun doesn't make you more likely to be shot, the likelihood of being shot makes you more likely to carry a gun.
I mean, someone breaks into your house, what are you going to do, ask them to please wait while you turn on the lights....run to the safe (assuming it isn't next to your bed)...fumble through the combination...get the gun out, and if you're the cautious type...have to fucking load the thing???
Not me...I keep my handguns loaded with one in the chamber, in various parts of the house, so I can almost always be near one.....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Try again. Your average American will be around dozens, hundreds, even thousands of cars each day.
How many guns in use will most people see in a year? I haven't even heard a gun being fired in so long I can't remember, but I could hear a car with ease.
Correlation does not equal causation.
Non-sequitor.
The people shot with the uzi VS the Derringer are just as dead.
a "Safer" gun, is one that does not explode and kill the operator. However, there is still no such thing as a safe gun. Any gun that fires a projectile is potentially lethal. Even a flaregun can kill you.
That was the point, which both myself and H4rr4r were trying to get across to you. You simply DO NOT POINT OR DISCHARGE YOUR FIREARM, UNLESS YOU INTEND TO FIRE.
The safe operator does not handle the device except to fire it, clean it, inspect it, or transport it. There are proscribed processes for each of those activities, intended to reduce the risk of fatality.
Your statement is a nonsequitor, because it places firearms into the hands of improperly qualified persons. I wouldnt trust such people with a gun loaded with rubber bullets any more than I would trust one with blanks, or with live ammo. they are an unsafe operator. They should not be operating firearms.
I qualified my statement with the assertion that qualified persons are the only effective solution. Handing uzzis VS derringers out to QUALIFIED PERSONS will have similar results: The firearms will be placed into storage, and not handled.
I concur.
I was going to buy a gun safe for my sister as a baby shower present, but her husband finally bought one as soon as he found out she was pregnant. Now I am re-thinking that. He bought a large cheapo safe, I was going to buy a new Liberty for myself and give him my old one (I need more space as I have added some non-gun related stuff to the house that I want locked up). I haven't ordered the new safe yet (another of the same I have). So maybe I'll order the larger one afterall and give them the smaller one.
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
Wilford Brimley, is that you???
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Problem solved: Don't let kids in your house.
Works for me!
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Try committing suicide with a lever action Winchester. Now try committing suicide with a large single action revolver. Notice any differences?
Yeah - it was easier with the revolver since I'd already killed myself with the Winchester.
Not everything that can be measured matters; Not everything that matters can be measured.
And here's why that source is flawed.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2866589/
You are clearly ignorant of the now defunct 1994 Assault Weapons Ban as well as many individual state laws.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Assault_Weapons_Ban
Those SKS's were, and in some states still are, "assault weapons".
Seems like gun stories are here only to spark the inevitable flamewars over gun control.
If a three year old can get at your gun, then you don't have gun control.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
No it really isn't. Guns are designed to kill.
True
By owning a gun you are declaring that at somepoint you intend to kill *something* (or someone).
Not true. Though a guns main purpose is for killing something, many people own guns for a different purpose. Many people buy cars but don't drive them. Though the car is designed to be driven, many are garage queens that are looked at as works of art. Similarly, guns can be used for other purposes like target shooting, or just plain collecting.
I have a friend who lives a half mile down a dirt path in a swamp.
When it rains, you have to wade a half mile through that swamp.
A pistol is very much the right tool for protecting against moccasins.
I used to live in rural Montana. A (large) handgun is the right tool for defense against bears.
If a three-year-old can open a gun safe, then a six-year-old can open two gun safes.
Saints preserve us.
Has anyone else confirmed this?
"which at least in part could be directly due to what we believe was the security-defective design of a gun safe produced by Stack-On"
LMFAO....seriously? Stopped reading right there.
Same here, in our family we had BB guns, bows, shotguns, etc all sitting perfectly accessible in the living room (in a display Cabinet, the key always in the lock). We could retrieve "our guns/bows" whenever we wanted, and could ask to shoot the "grown up guns" whenever we wanted. Worst I ever did was accidentally shoot out a window in the front porch with a BB gun trying to kill a pigeon. But we knew that if we ever touched the "grown up guns" without permission we wouldn't be walking straight for a week. Locking up firearms AND teaching kids about them is probably the wisest thing to do, but I think teaching them is far more important than locking them up. If you only lock them up you have to absolutely positive that the firearms are secured 100% of the time (which is impossible in the real world), if you teach you only have to take reasonable precautions (keep them out of easy reach/unloaded, don't let them be handled unsupervised, etc)
But would you suggest using one of those for say, euthanizing injured stock? (Say, your cow bugs the shit out, and disembowels itself on the barbedwire fence. It is dragging itself around in the lot dragging several meters of intestines behind it. Doesnt need to be a cow either. Sheep get themselves fucked up like that too.)
I'm intrigued by this. Are you trying to say you've really seen this before? I'd like to subscribe to that news letter.
Didn't you hear about the massive epidemic of 3-year olds opening gun safes?
My other UID is three digits.
Fail #3,
There is no such thing as a safe gun. Only a safe operator.
So what you're saying is that a fully automatic uzi is just as safe as a bolt action rifle?
No, what he's saying is that an inanimate tool is only as safe as the human handling it.
Not a difficult concept.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Most of my weapons are stored in a 5ft high stack-on cabinet with a traditional cam style locking mechanism at which I have several cans of ammo in the bottom which weighs the crap out of that cabinet. No one would be able to do any lift-drop on that one even if it had that vulnerability (which it does not).
Sounds like it is vulnerable to tipping, either intentionally or by an earthquake. Which might not open it, but could crush any kid who was messing with it.
But you just know someone's going to link to this the next time someone mentions buying a gun vault as being part of responsible ownership.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
They sell handguns under the guise of hunting. From an absolutely practical point of view, a handgun is about the worst possible firearm you could use to hunt game. It was initially designed and created to kill people.
In all honesty, the best thing for hunting game would be a bow of some sort, because it's silent. It may not have a mushrooming head, but at least you won't scare away all other game within a kilometer radius.
Someone has obviously never encountered a wild boar...
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
"As they say: if you have a pool in the backyard, which do you think would be more effective: Putting a fence around it, or teaching your kids to swim?"
You should teach your kids to swim. But since you can't control whether the neighbors teach their kids to swim, you should still have a fence.
Same thing applies to guns in the home. Even if your kids are perfectly safe around the guns, you need to be cognisant that their friends may not have the same education. You really don't want to find yourself in the position of saying "it's not my fault that the neighbor kid accidentally shot himself with my gun, his parents should have taught him gun safety". Not only will the jury not be very interested in that argument when the parents sue you, but I imagine you'd feel bad if the neighbor kid killed himself with your gun. (Even if you would believe it wasn't your "fault", I imagine you'd still wish it hadn't happened.)
If someone breaks into our house, a gun is not the best defense for us.
I can walk blindfolded through my house. I know where everything is. He does not. And even if he did, a gun is not the best solution if the goal is to keep my family and our possessions safe.
I keep guns - handguns and long guns, but I'd never store on with a round in the chamber, and I'm fine with them locked in a safe. Like I said, I don't keep them for self-defense because for me, they are not the most effective and reliable self-defense.
You are welcome on my lawn.
You will never really respect your meat until you kill it yourself.
You won't respect your vegetables until you have grown them either.
Your dinner does not naturally come in a microwavable box.
And 3 year-olds, apparently.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Cue up the comments that have nothing to do with this story and use it to further their own political agendas.
Pot, meet kettle.
What what is a better means of defense? Ill take any of my pistols over a baseball bat any day.
Maybe he just chose to live in an area where you don't need to fear someone break into one's house and doesn't need loaded firearms all over the place just to feel safe?
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
To follow up on that, you state those with guns are more likely to die by gun fire and commit suicide as to those that done. Fine. But there are also statistics out there that people with concealed carry permits (which means they actually carry guns most the time, and are not felons, and passed a background check) die at a 1/5 to higher rate than those that do not have a permit. Please read up on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lott for more stats. The issue is more that people who are licensed, and pass background checks (not just carry guns) are less likely to get killed by gun fire. Plus other crime rates go down as well.
I say it's a "Fun" safe!
The sooner we stop responding to timothy posts the better.
... he said, responding to a timothy post.
Because luckily, having no gun in the first place makes it impossible for an armed attacker to enter your home.
My other UID is three digits.
Everyone always knew where to go if there was a family fight or if they became seriously depressed.
Happens more frequently than you know...
Doesnt need to be barbed wire either, or even a domesticated animal.
Take for instance, this fence.
You can find gutted deer, antelope, elk-- Depends on your area. They get in the fence, they get entangled or pierced by it-- They suffer.
A handgun is an essential tool, and is merciful.
You can't teach a very young child to swim because it doesn't float (bad bone/fat ratio). I wonder if the rest of the post might be just as insightful...
By owning a gun you are declaring that at somepoint you intend to kill *something* (or someone).
I bought mine for target shooting, because it's fun. I have no intent on using it to hurt or kill someone, ever. It's not even assembled right now. I guess that rules out most of your arguments.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Did you know that red cars get into more accidents? No, really, statistically they do.
So if you want to be safer, and you drive a red car, repaint it today. It will surely help.
People who live in dangerous areas are more likely to carry guns (to defend themselves). People who live in more dangerous areas are more likely to be attacked in the first place. I thought slashdot was supposed to be filled with science-minded people, and yet you can't even figure out something so basic here?
My other UID is three digits.
I allow neither guns nor kids in this house, so I'm practically invincible!
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Know it may sound crazy to you guys on the other side of the pond, but really, you would be much safer if you banned guns.
Statistics plainly doesn't support your argument. Also, you are aware that there are plenty of guys on your side of the pond that have guns, right?
All of you guys act like the gun safe shouldnt be openable by anyone with the key or combination. In reality (thats where some people live where they understand things for what they are) we know that a lock is only meant to keep out honest people. A thief can and will defeat any and all locks anytime they want or simply circumvent them. A lock just keeps out everyday people and nothing else.
People with big gun safes are hillarious anyway at how they waste so much god damn money. But I guess a gun safe gives people the sensation of having a giant vicarious cock to store their other powerful penis extensions in. Only place you would need a gun safe is in the ghetto or low rent housing and chances are if you live there you cant afford a gun safe anyway. If you keep your guns hidden away (and not in a giant metal box that screams "expensive stuff in here") and dont fucking going around blabbing about your guns then they wont get stolen and you wont need to spend a lot of money on a gigantic safe. Whats funnier is people put these giant safes in their homes and then think they need to bolt them down as if they think someone is going to come in the middle of the night and carry out a 500lb safe filled with 200lbs of guns. You guys are funny.
Ive lived 40 years and ever since I was a kid I kept all my guns in the closet. Never had a gun stolen or anyone break in because I practice discretion with my guns, my items worth money and what I tell people.
While you say you don't have irrational fear of dying by a gun, but also say 100% certain that you won't die by a gun. While I applaud your thought process, I disagree with your premise. You are telling me the police, military, border patrol do not have guns? You are telling me that there has not been a single armed robbery in your country since you put those restrictions in place? There has never been a police standoff where criminals had guns and shot at police? Your argument is flawed in the fact that you are stating you wont be killed by a gunman who is not a criminal, or government official who has access to guns. That you can be almost 100% assured of.
Also, I would like to point out the other thing. In this country, we have one of the most corrupt governments on the planet. The fear of a well armed citizenry has been one of the things that keeps the government at bay. We had a revolution once, and one day, that might occur again. I would rather be well armed, than sitting back and taking what those fat cats and slime balls in Washington DC dish out. And before you say vote them out, guess what, I cannot vote them out as I am one of 200 million votes, and the systems are rigged so that only people who are "desired" by the parties can run. Thus those people have to be part of the government establishment prior to even being allowed to run. To quote Futurama "You can either vote for Jack Johnson, or his clone, John Jackson."
or don't you read Pratchett?
- "History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men" -- Blue Oyster Cult, 'Godzilla'
The original safe was probably designed by engineers. The final product was commoditized by circus clowns, as in management, marketing, and legal.
They can have my command prompt when they pry it from my cold dead fingers.
One for self-defense. Do you think cops should be forced to carry guns designed for small game, or should cops carry guns designed to protect them from human criminals? How about our troops?
My other UID is three digits.
Additionally security concerns tend to appeal to nerds of all walks. I myself am both a computer and a gun nerd, so I enjoyed the video.
Thats why all my network traffic comes through on fiber optic cables with the outter shells stripped off in a dark room. I wait and watch the pulses of light and fire into the cable with a .38 special. I take special care to only hit the packets with the evil bit indicated however, im not some kind of barbarian after all.
...or much of an actual internet connection.
I haven't had a virus in years!
I have to disagree with you. A rifle is a long range weapon that you can use to hunt game. It is ideal for distances where said game us unlikely to be aware of your presence. A pistol is a medium to short range weapon. It is good for defense. So, if you have shot your deer and are tracking it and get charged by a the injured animal, or a different animal that you come across, then a pistol is a much more quick and effective weapon (instead of having to bring your rifle to bear) and more likely to stop the animal before they reach you (you will probably be carrying a higher caliber pistol than rifle). And these same features make the pistol good for shooting humans as well. And I don't know whether a pistol was originally designed to kill people or to kill animals, but it doesn't matter. To say that it has no use in hunting is disingenuous.
Well that's remarkably narrow-minded.
I don't live in the ghetto, and I keep loaded firearms in my home. Do I fear someone breaking in? No... but that doesn't mean it can't or won't happen. If it does, I'm prepared.
The most dangerous gun in one's home is the unloaded one. That is, of course, assuming education and not ignorance.
Well for a pistol the thing to have is one of those rings that lets you and only you shoot it. Those big gun safes I doubt any 3 year old could open but if you have a 3 year old about, keep the ammunition and the guns separate. If you have to keep one loaded get one of those ring safeties added.
http://www.tarnhelm.com/magna-trigger/gun/safety/magna1.html
Be safe with your gun or don't own one.
Guns are for nerds too.
What do you mean "if those videos are true to what they show"? I don't think you can get much clearer than those videos. Each safe had multiple penetration vectors that were all easy to manipulate. I'm particularly concerned about how easy it is to gain access with simple things like paper clips and straws. Those are exactly the sorts of things that children would shove into openings. Having been a child once I can validate that I stuck paper clips into many things that I probably shouldn't have.
It was initially designed and created to kill people.
It sure is nice that some of us have found other uses for them then. I mean, nuclear devices were designed to kill people. So were knifes... and we let all kinds of people use those on a regular basis. Pesticides are designed to kill... not people, but they are designed to kill and people can be killed by them. Sharp sticks can be designed to kill too. Because of this, should we strip the rights of people to carry sticks or shoot sticks from bow like devices (that were designed to kill, but are used to keep most vehicles ride soft)?
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Why protect a $600 gun with a $15 lockbox?
Security through obscurity: a $600 gun doesn't need any lock if it's in a closet and you don't have a sign out front saying "Gun is hidden in closet!" or kids.
And, aren't there some areas where legally you need to lock up your guns, even if you don't have kids and aren't too concerned about it getting stolen?
This is what I am working on with my kids. The oldest is 3 and has become aware of guns at a surprisingly young age (I don't think I knew about them until 1st or 2nd grade) from other kids at preschool who "play" guns. As I have firearms he has been introduced to the concept of them and has seen what they are capable of (milk jug full of water meets 12 gauge slug). As I don't want him to have an innate fear of them I have also started teaching him about them and how to handle them even though he is still too small to hold one himself. He already understands the basics of proper handling such as point in a safe direction, only point it at something you want to shoot, always treat it like it is loaded, etc. He has seen me use my target air rifle (.22 cal 1200 fps) to take out yard pests. When he is big enough to actually handle one I will get him his own BB gun to learn with and then move up to a real firearm once he has mastered that. All of my guns (1 shotgun, 2 rifles, and 1 air rifle) are kept in a real gun safe (cost more than all 4 guns combined) along with other valuables for the protection of my kids as well as for the protection of the firearms
Time to offend someone
I was agreeing with you. :)
I was actually surprised that the little "safe" I just picked up is actually a pretty sturdy safe. Judging by my back pain from moving it, and that was before I tossed the ammo into it, it's not going anywhere. :) All I "need" is a locked cabinet to keep a stack of AR-15 and pistol magazines in. I just need it, because if I'm going to the range, I don't want to load a few hundred rounds into the magazines. If the day ever comes that I need it, I doubt anyone will agree not to attack while I load up my weapons.
The little one that I mentioned was what I stored it in. Technically, I could be around the actual locking part in about 5 minutes, with a good pair of tin snips, and a power drill. (drill for the starter hole, snips to make a big hole). It's not really for security though. It was to keep them out of sight, and to keep casual hands off of them. I just didn't like it, because I couldn't really see into it when it was open. I knew the inventory in my head. I'd reach around until I felt something like what I expected. The new one, I can clearly see everything with the door open.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
But when comparing Apples to Oranges you have to use your terms properly.
Thick skin? Not so valid as nutrition.
On a bike you are supposed to follow all the rules of a motor vehicle, and that includes riding in the middle of the lane.
If we are talking a regular pedal-powered bike, that is certainly not universally true.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
I have watched the video and (full disclosure) I have worked within the banking industry. I know for a fact that safes with solenoid unlocking devices are widely used. Either with a biometric or electronic numeric keypad method of unlocking. I also know that as one of the persons (formerly) responsible testing these devices, that this attack vector never occurred to me. And I'm talking about the picking up and dropping of it, primarily. Mostly because the safes in question are several hundred pounds and had to be delivered to my testing area on a forklift. And partly because if I did so the people of the floor beneath me would have freaked out and I would have had a talking to by my boss. But I'll bet you anything that you could lift up a corner of one of the small bank safes and drop it the same way. I would be surprised if that *DID NOT* work. Mostly considering that the companies that make those safes are as equally negligent in testing as the ones in the Forbes article.
kill or hurt innocent tasty animals
there fixed that for you.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
I include the folks who bolt knives onto glocks and maglights onto ARs in this.
Who the hell would bolt a knife onto their Glock?
Use duct tape!
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
I guess you missed the part where I figured out how to pick locks when I was 8 years old. I didn't know anyone who knew how to do it, and there was no Internet back then to teach me. I just took the time to look at it, figure out how it works, and get in. As I recall (it's been a whole lot of years), I had locked a hotwheels car in it, and wanted it out. :) It had the same style lock as most cheap lockboxes, cabinets, and desk drawers. 3 or 4 loose pins, and almost as useful as a piece of scotch tape over the latch.
Maybe I'm brighter than most children, or I was more determined to get in, and we only got 3 TV channels, all of which were horrible. Well, and 2 PBS stations that came in about 25% of the time. Oh, how I don't miss OTA TV broadcasting in rural areas. :)
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
How is this really news for nerds?
Failure of technology to do what it should? I've seen those style locking boxes sold for protecting valuable data ... and they are just as easy to open as the gun dispensers..
The whole point of the article, I think, is to show that there are a lot of so-called "child-safety" locks and safes that are appallingly bad. Following a few links deeper show that it's not just the electronic lock boxes.
Trigger lock? Drop the gun on a hard surface. Lock often breaks right off.
Cable Lock? Cheap $1 tumblers, and the cable can be trivially defeated with a pair of pliers
Lock box? Well, watch the videos.
More than anything, if it can't do the job it's advertised to do, than it's a problem. The cable locks are required in many states - you'd expect the thing to do the job it was designed to do.
So more than anything, I think this is a great case of educating the customer - that if you want such a safety mechanism, there are products to avoid.
The problem is, the idea of gun locks are an abomination to many gun owners - enough that many magazines are afraid to review them to not "upset" loyal readers. So where can the good devices be found, to those interested?
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
I never said what guns cops or soldiers should own, just the ones I own.
I completely agree, and was just talking to my wife about the same thing a few weeks ago.
My dad collected guns (though he wasn't a hunter), and always had at least a few in our basement, sitting in a wooden gun cabinet. They were readily accessible, but I never touched any of them because he made it clear they had to be handled safely/properly. When I was old enough, he bought me a BB gun to practice target shooting with in our back yard. (We had a big hill in back which made the perfect backstop for the BBs.) He taught me some of the basics of gun safety at that time, and I wound up becoming interested enough in target shooting that he bought me 5 or 6 other BB and pellet pistols and rifles over the years, after that.
I never really did get that interested in shooting anything other than those BB and pellet guns, but I did eventually upgrade to "competition grade" models similar to what's used in Olympic target shooting.
But really, the problem I see today is with so many "anti-gun" households around, you can practically count on the fact that your kid has at least a few friends who have NOT ever learned a thing about gun safety. That plus a little peer pressure could lead to some bad scenarios, and you can't pretend you're capable of teaching everyone he/she pals around with how to treat guns with respect.
That's one reason I don't have any firearms in my home today. I like the idea of having at least one for personal protection/home defense, but until the kids are older, I just don't like the potential risks involved. And locking everything down in hard-to-open safes makes it rather worthless in an emergency where you need quick access to it.
As a gun owner and a father of a 4 year old, I have to plead that if you're going to own a gun, you MUST properly train your children, no matter how young, in Gun Safety. If you are not going to, or you do not trust your child to do what they are trained to do, do not keep a gun in the house. Period. Gun safety is the only way to keep your kid safe. A vault is there to keep out buglers, not children with indefinite amounts of time on their hands. What's the proper training for someone that's 3? If you see a gun, ANYWHERE, tell an adult immediately. Every time they see one and tell you, you give them a treat. Basically, every time my kid sees a cop he gets an M&M. It gets irritating, but that's the price you pay.
As far as the safe goes? It's supposed to be bolted to a concrete floor you morons. You've got a loaded gun, in a safe that's not bolted down, you're really lucky the gun didn't just go off INSIDE the damned safe while the kids were bumping it around. And no, the safe probably wouldn't stop the round. Read the directions next time.
I would call myself a nerdish sort, and I also have a gun safe, that is very secure as it predated the high-tech combination, biometric, digital nonsense. My safe is over 40 years old and has two cylindrical key locks (odd size, limited blanks, non standard pin configuration). It has served me well, it is a fairly small unit, screwed securely in the back of a closet, behind the cloths.
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
Just about anywhere in the US, if a child takes your weapon and does something with it, you are liable. There was a huge push for all gun owners to buy locks, locking cables, or safes.
Really, if someone walked into my house, found that I kept a loaded firearm in my nightstand drawer, and did anything with it, it'll still come back to me. If the someone is 5 years old, and shoots himself or a friend accidentally, I would be in serious trouble. If the someone were a burglar and committed another crime, I'd be questioned, but eventually found innocent.
BTW, that wasn't a hint to where I keep my weapons. My nightstand doesn't have drawers. :)
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Understand what he said... He is advocating an "all of the above" approach but he is saying that it is MUCH more effective to educate (teach a kid to swim) than block (build a fence). Besides, education lasts a lifetime, where that fence may not be there all the time. Personally it only makes sense to do it all. My son and daughter have both been to the gun range and know how to properly and safely handle various weapons. Guns are stored with trigger locks in a locked cabinet separately from the ammunition. In my view the *education* effort (taking them to the range) buys me more gun safety than all the locks.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
From here it sounds like paranoia, to be honest. I think in this country home invasion isn't even defined as a separate crime because it has happened only a few times since WW2.
But well, to each their own. I don't even have any ammo at home for my Makarov because I haven't been shooting for quite a while.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
exactly. for example my uncle bought a antique rhinoceros safari gun. as far as i know he has shot it all of once and that was to make sure it was working. the reason he said he bought it was because they make it. it now is displayed in his gun room/office. will he ever go hunting with it no. will he ever go shot someone with it not likely. it is an art piece, a piece of history, and collectors item. there are lots of reason to own guns not all are to kill people or hunt.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
It is true in the majority of the US, where bike and traffic laws are generally (but not completely) standardized across the country.
A sane, rational, gun owner, is still a potential killer, no matter how you try to dress it up.
Every person is a potential killer. More people have been killed throughout history without guns than with. More people are killed every year by non-gun means than with a gun. Guns are not the leading killer, even in the "gun happy US". There are murders where you live, right?
A claim of 'but I only have it for self defence!' is still saying that you'd be prepared to kill someone, someday, in the right circumstances.
Are you claiming that you would not use lethal force to defend yourself, your spouse, or your kids if you were facing imminent grave danger, or would you fight to save them? Maybe you are prepared to kill someone, in the right circumstances?
I have no desire to use force on someone such that they may die, but that does not preclude me from using force on someone such that I, or those that I care about, may live.
I know it may sound crazy to you guys on the other side of the pond, but really, you would be much safer if you banned guns.
What you don't seem to know is that the genie does not go back inside the bottle. How many people on your side of the pond have guns? Let's cheat and give you the answer: a large number. Here is a hint on the demographics: it is not the people you want to meet.
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Any offense taken to this post is at your sole discretion.
Statistics plainly doesn't support your argument.
Well, for example, if you look at this wikipedia page you would see that in the US there are 4.14 deaths by homicides with guns for every 100,000 pop, while in France, where there is strict gun control, there are only 0.44/100,000. I suspect there are a lot less police-related deaths too since French police do not assume everyone has a gun and therefore should be less likely to use their own weapon. In Germany, in 2011, police shot a grand total of 85 bullets, with 6 fatalities...
~~~ Paf. Le chien.
In all honesty, the best thing for hunting game would be a bow of some sort, because it's silent. It may not have a mushrooming head[emphasis mine], but at least you won't scare away all other game within a kilometer radius.
Clearly not a hunter. In most states, you are legally required to use a broadhead arrow point which is at least 7/8 inch across. Some of these DO expand on impact, opening up to be a couple inches across.
An appropriate handgun can be quite effective as a hunting tool. In some part of the country it's a necessity to carry some kind of gun for defense against wild game -- you may not be the highest animal on the food chain.
I take it you don't live in the US?
I hear about home invasions fairly regularly on the national news....and not uncommon on the local news....
If someone breaks into my house, I'll have to assume them mean myself, family and possessions harm...and I have no compunction against unloading a magazine into them, and I'll not even bother to see if they're still twitching...till I've likely shot a couple more from the 2nd magazine....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
From here it sounds like paranoia, to be honest.
"Chance favors only the prepared mind." - Louis Pasteur
Do you have insurance? That sounds like paranoia. Do you look both ways before crossing the street? Definitely paranoia.
It's not paranoia to simply be prepared for something in the [unlikely] event that it happens. "Paranoia" and "preparedness" are different words for a reason.
I think in this country home invasion isn't even defined as a separate crime because it has happened only a few times since WW2.
What?
you don't respect your water unless you dug your own well. you don't respect your milk unless you squeezed it out of your own respected cow yourself, with your bare, manly hands.
Not only that, but most uses of firearms are not "reported" to the authorities and don't end up in these sorts of "studies". Kleck's research is the best starting point.
Do you have ESP?
No matter you arguments, there is still a greater likelihood of hurting someone you love, then foiling a burglery.
Cheap storage VM.
For starters, why would you care about homicides by guns in particular? The relevant statistic is overall homicide rate, since the victim doesn't really care if they die from a gun, a knife, or in some other way.
You might also want to look at other violent crimes, such as rapes. In UK, for example, there are fewer homicides per capita than in US, but 4x more rapes. And rape is far more common than murder, so the difference in absolute count per capita is even more pronounced.
The other problem is that comparing countries like that is pretty meaningless, since there are many more differences between France and US than just gun laws or the number of guns per capita. This actually becomes evident once you bring more countries into the picture, and don't use US alone as a poster child of gun liberalization. Switzerland has a far higher per capita rate of gun ownership, for example, and those are mostly guns stored at people's homes, but they have low crime rates and, so far, not a single shooting spree. Czech Republic doesn't only have liberal gun ownership laws, but they also liberal carry laws - quite similar to those in majority of US state - and their murder rate is pretty average for Europe.
It's more interesting to see how crime rates change in the country after it adopts stricter gun laws, compared to before. This is still not very accurate since other changes may have occurred in the same period that affect the outcome, but it's certainly more accurate than comparing two different countries. And the track record there is pretty bad - in UK, for example, all categories of violent crime rose after they banned private possession of handguns in 1997. This includes murders. Ironically, this also includes the aggregated category "crimes committed with the use of a firearm". Same thing happened in Australia. About the only country I can think of where there was a marginal decline in violent crime rate after a gun ban was Canada.
All in all, the studies that have actually asked that question have found that gun ownership rate does not strongly correlate with anything other than the number of suicides by gun. On the other hand, what crime in general, and murders in particular, do correlate strongly with, are socioeconomic parameters that correspond to "welfare state". In other words, countries where more people are poor, where Gini coefficient is large, and where social mobility is low, have more crime regardless of guns. US is one such country.
I could not be bothered to look up more than 2 states, since I don't live in the US. For both of them, California and Texas, bicycles have to ride as close as practicable to the right-hand curb.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Interesting comment. I'm not trying to be a an ass, I'm genuinely interested ... do you have a source for that?
M16 is select fire, Rock and roll. M4 only has 3 round burst.
No. The Marines redesigned the M16 for burst in the 90s. Most M16s and M4s are burst, a few of each are full-auto and are only issued to very specialized troops.
People can and do teach less than one year old infants how to swim.
and incompetent?
News at 11.
Real Gun Owner, try government appointed gun owner. As with anything, a true hobbyist knows how to do it right and strives to do so, give someone a title and your doubtless going to find they don't feel obligated to live up to the ideals.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Vietnam-era M16 had full auto. The A2 (Desert Shield/Desert Storm-era) and later models all have 3-round burst just like the M4 carbine. AR15 is only semi. I've fired them all.
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
Nope, I don't live in the USA. And this is why I think that this particular problem cannot be solved by firearms. It is like doctoring on symptoms instead of the actual illness.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Well, by that logic I ought to prepare for a meteorite strike, zombie apocalypse and alien invasion as well.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
You should teach your kids to swim. But since you can't control whether the neighbors teach their kids to swim, you should still have a fence.
You can get Swimming made a part of the public school curriculum. Then the neighbors kids will know how to swim.
there's only a handful of the small safes in the first five hundred+ or so images, so when i say TYPICALLY the image search kinda backs me up. to answer the question of what's different from a normal safe is that a gun safe TYPICALLY (there's that word again, pay close attention) are tall cabinets with rifle shelving. a safe without rifle shelving could be used for a lot more things than just guns, while a safe with rifle shelving is not likely to be used for pool cues or similarly shaped items. DO YOU UNDERSTAND THE WORDS THAT ARE COMING OUT OF MY KEYBOARD? http://images.google.com/search?&tbm=isch&q=gun+safe&oq=gun+safe
once again, in case you missed it, there is NO comment on the technologies of these safes. not even the parent poster asked about the technologies involved, that was something you added.
Is that life a normal safe only: 1) it's labelled as "'specially for guns!";
a normal safe is used to hold anything of value that will fit inside, including weapons that may fit. a "gun safe" is TYPICALLY a rifle cabinet.
insensitive clod overlords obligatory xkcd car analogy russian reversals whoosh pedant fanbois ftfy in 3...2...1..PROFIT
It's not a safe. It's a " Lockbox "
It's designed to give you fast access to the weapon when needed, yet provide a simple deterrent to keep your ( obviously unlearned ) kiddo from casually picking it up. It's not designed to be " child proof " any more so than the crazy lids on prescription drug containers are. Want to increase its ability to keep little Timmy from getting it open ? Mount it to the wall, or inside a drawer where it can't be thrown around the house like a football.
Besides, these devices are really only necessary in either of the following circumstances:
1) You live in a nanny-state that has imposed these requirements upon you under the " Think of the Children " clause
2) You are a lazy or terrible parent that failed at teaching little Timmy / Susie what a firearm is and how / why to handle one correctly and safely
( In which case you probably shouldn't be handling firearms either )
So you're saying don't say no to your children because they'll go and do it anyway?
Hammer? Fist? It's well known that door locks can be bypassed this way as well, and they're bolted to the wall. Look up "lock bumping" or "bumpkeys". In the door case, you need a special key, but the impact is the key.
that's good advice. i don't own a revolver but i would probably get a mag ring for it if i did.
insensitive clod overlords obligatory xkcd car analogy russian reversals whoosh pedant fanbois ftfy in 3...2...1..PROFIT
Wow, I had a BB gun when I was six. But dad always had guns around back then, and taught us gun safety at an early age. My grandpa gave me a pocket knife when I was five, I got a .22 when I was 12.
Hell, these days they probably would have locked my parents up for child endangerment, but it was a normal thing back then. Funny, you never heard of kids shooting each other back then like you do now.
Free Martian Whores!
Either use a semi-auto weapon ( SKS, AR-15, and the like ) or outfit your bolt gun with a suppressor and quietly take down the coyotes without them even realizing what's happening. Hell, your neighbors will thank you too :D ( So will your ears )
.308 is equipped with an AAC Cyclone and you will NOT hear it beyond fifty yards or so. My similarly equipped Savage MK-II ( .22lr ) is on par with a pellet or BB gun when fired. A coyote or wild pigs worst nightmare.
My Savage
Maybe yours or someone else's house....but in my homes.....we made sure everyone was proficient in firearms usage and respect for the weapon.
Hell, when I was growing up...I never> thought about sneaking out of the house.....hahaha.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
But then, the 2nd amendment isn't about Olympic sports or duck hunting....
Nope, Nintendo is
Depends where you live. Where I live you are supposed to ride as far to the right as you safely can.....(and this is the part that assholes in cars don't understand)....and still be able to follow the path you want to follow (get where you are trying to go).
I have biked to work for about 4 years now. I live in a part of the US where biking to work is not really popular, but I have to admit that the vast majority of drivers really are watching out for you and being considerate. But it only takes one asshole to drastically change your life.
Since the thread isn't really about this topic, I won't go into why riding thru a red light on a bike can be safer for everyone involved in some situations.
It is technically against the law to ride a bike on the sidewalk in most (if not all) places in the US.
It's not as easy as you think. What about concealing the hinges, which will have to be substantial to support a concrete-filled door. And what about fire protection? Most of those expensive gun safes have a certified fire rating that adds to the cost. And don't overlook the fact that a few inches of consumer-grade concrete are easily drilled through, unlike the properly reinforced walls of a commercial-quality gun safe.
How DARE you impinge on the coyote pack's right to a meal!
+1 Disagree
OK, sorry - it sounded like you were implying that there is something inherently 'funny' or 'bad' about buying guns designed to kill people .. but I re-read it and can see that isn't necessarily the correct interpretation.
My other UID is three digits.
When I grew up we had guns in the house and not locked up at all. My dad's shotgun and hunting rifle generally were leaning up in a corner. No trigger locks. If he'd been hunting earlier that day they may very well be loaded. [...] Wanna know why me and my siblings didn't die horrible deaths?
Because all the kids like you who *did* die arn't here to write on Slashdot...
iirc, the selections on the M16A2 are safe, semi, and three round burst. None of which are fully automatic.
+1 Disagree
As they say: if you have a pool in the backyard, which do you think would be more effective: Putting a fence around it, or teaching your kids to swim?
The fence around the pool isn't just there for your kid's safety -- the main reason is to keep the neighbor's kids from drowning and their parents from suing you. In the case of your dad's loaded gun leaning in a corner when your neighbor friend billy comes over to play and decides to have at it.
There were no significant differences between those with only handguns in the home and those with only long guns or both handguns and long guns, those with two or more guns, and those having one gun in the household; and between those who stored one or more guns unlocked and those who stored all guns locked (table 6).
The suicide rate wasn't lower for people with multiple guns or for people who kept their guns locked, so I don't think the data supports the hypothesis that the suicide weapon was purchased for the purpose of suicide.
To the "people who live in bad neighborhoods get guns" most of the second article is about that point and how to disentangle all the different predictive factors behind getting shot. I'm sure there's some truth to "people who are planning on entering a dangerous situation carry", but there's also some truth to "if you try and draw while you're getting mugged, you're gonna get shot." In support of that, note that having a gun increases your risk of geting shot even more for "assaults where the victim had at least some chance to resist"
Sad truth is that if you try to resist a crime, you generally place yourself in more danger than if you passively submit. I'm not saying that recommends any particular course of action. Personally, I hope to act bravely, even if it puts me in danger, though my soon-to-arrive child might change that opinion. We shouldn't let the ethical question of how to respond to violence obscure the fact that going for your gun does not make you safer. Escalating a robbery to a gunfight is a risky move--why does stating that fairly obvious fact upset people?
If I had touched my dad's guns, he would have killed me. I guess I was raised to leave things alone that weren't mine.
BTW -- my dad was a police officer for 25 years. Had more than one gun in the house. I knew where they all were. But I wasn't allowed to go into their room.
The real tragedy is that more and more parents want to be their kid's friend instead of their parent and don't know how to raise them
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
Why bother with something that requires reach?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Or shotgun loaded every other shell with slug and birdshot. Then when the burglar is on the other side of the wall, I can still hit him through it.
If he'd been hunting earlier that day they may very well be loaded...
I would consider that a gun owner fail.
Gun shouldn't be loaded till you want it to shoot, because at that point there just isn't much stopping it. (Consider the case of the gun getting bumped and falls over, what would it be pointing at? would the gun fire?)
Same reason I don't store my gasoline next to my fire pit, some things just aren't supposed to be stored together.
Interesting story, by dad was at someone's house, the guy was showing my dad some guns he had in the closet. He handed my dad a gun to look at. First thing my dad did (what he always does when picking up a gun) was check the chamber. The gun was locked and loaded, if he'd have pulled the trigger, it've shot. The guy was shocked to see that his gun had been in the closet ready to go off all that time, and thankful that my dad didn't just put it too his shoulder and dry fire it.
Not all creatures have the same fear of people. My stepdad lives in a rural mountain area and keeps both a pistol and a rifle around to deal with javelinas and coatis. Where the house is, there is rarely the need for the range of the rifle. Both weapons are .22
I won't argue that handgun design has primarily been to shoot people as compared to rifles which can better adapt to hunting - but it certainly doesn't mean that the only purpose for a pistol is to shoot humans.
+1 Disagree
For starters, why would you care about homicides by guns in particular?
Isn't this all about guns?
Your argument about rape being prevented by guns is weird. Also, it's completely false. You say UK has 4x more rapes than US, but wikipedia has 28.6/100,000 rapes for US and 24.1/100,000 for UK. France has 16.6/100,000.
~~~ Paf. Le chien.
[T]he short, squat boxy safes are not designed to hold rifles. [G]un safes are typically tall cabinets with rifle shelving.
I'm sorry; I just don't buy any of that.
images.google.com - search "gun safe" and see for yourself.
You think I was born yesterday? I'm not falling for that one... Oldest trick in the book.
This made me giggle - one of the guys I work with got a bow hunting license for Elk this year because, in his words: "If I'm going to wander around the forest not shooting anything, I may as well carry a bow instead of lugging a rifle"
+1 Disagree
Those safes are not fit for their intended purpose.
Yeah, so about six months ago my 5-year-old son broke into a bank vault. He goes with his Mom to the bank. He didn't know his numbers at the time, but he apparently is good at patterns, so he remembered the 7-digit pattern the teller would often punch in when he was watching what was going on (clearly not paying attention to the banking).
On a subsequent visit he wandered off (to play with the bead toys, right?) while his Mom did the banking, and a few minutes later, they notice the door opening unexpectedly. I think they were far too embarrassed about their security to say anything. I was far to impressed to scold him afterwards.
Back to the video of Toby - he's clearly a smart boy who's been taught how to defeat the safes. Now, it looks to me like several of those failures could be triggered accidentally, and obviously the designs aren't good enough. But, if you have a safe, ideally the kids won't know where it is, you certainly won't ever let them watch you opening the safe, and there will be consequences for even fiddling with the safe.
Yes, a perfect lock would be much better, but don't forget the other parts of the security process.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Or the neighbor kid killed YOUR son.
I'm not the poster you replied to and I haven't bothered to look for a source, but I've read that without a suicide note it is unlikely for a death to be declared suicide unless it is the only reasonable conclusion.
http://marriedmansexlife.com/
was actually talking about CARS on the sidewalk but....
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
A pistol is not the right tool for this job.
You want an SKS or if you have more money a Mini-30. Coyotes are small enough that even cheap FMJs are quite effective.
But.. but.. but.. the gun control people and even Obama say that no hunter needs a AR-15 or "AK-47"! Those are "battlefield" weapons! Those "evil black rifles" don't have any place in a "civilized" society!
the term 'assault weapon' was stolen and redefined to be anything that 'looks' like a battlefield weapon.
It's a nonsensical term for civilian use. A murder weapon, for example, is a weapon that has been used to murder someone without any reference to that weapon's characteristics. A rock, a stick, a knife or a firearm could all potentially be murder weapons but are NEVER so classified until a murder has taken place and even then only if that particular object was used to commit the murder.
Logical consistency demands that an assault weapon is something that has been used to assault someone and is unrelated to the type of object it is.
http://marriedmansexlife.com/
From the suicide rate article: "In both studies, the effects persisted for more than 5 years." "After they controlled for a number of potentially confounding factors, the presence of a gun in the home was associated with a nearly fivefold risk of suicide (adjusted odds ratio = 4.8) (13) and an almost threefold risk of homicide (adjusted odds ratio = 2.7)". Your dismissal clearly come without actually even glancing over the article to see if it may already have attempted to deal with your objections.
So, this is based on controlled statistics - unfounded opinions, however, often convey the useful information that the holder is arrogant.
I'm not sure of whether gun control is a good idea for the US or not. I am, however, sure that the side the is anti-gun-control comes with the largest amount of lousy arguments - and whenever you come with a bad argument like this, you make any good argument from your side less likely to be believed.
Isn't this all about guns?
It's about guns and their overall effect. Why pick a narrow meaningless stat and focus on it?
Your argument about rape being prevented by guns is weird.
I was not claiming that rape is "being prevented by guns". That, again, is a fallacy of assuming causation where correlation is observed. I was merely remarking that UK has more rapes than US despite having less guns.
Also, it's completely false. You say UK has 4x more rapes than US, but wikipedia [wikipedia.org] has 28.6/100,000 rapes for US and 24.1/100,000 for UK. France has 16.6/100,000.
Looking at the origin of the number I've quoted, it seems to be from 2001, which was a crime spike in UK (though it's kinda ironic that it happened right after the gun ban). Also, mind the fact that the table you've linked to doesn't show numbers for the entire UK, but only England & Wales (this doesn't change the picture for rapes, but it does for other categories of violent crimes such as assault).
Either way, my point was to demonstrate the irrelevance of those stats to the question at hand. You still haven't addressed the question of why, if your premise that more guns = more deaths (or at least more violence) is true, Swiss and Czechs are exceptions. While correlation does not imply causation, the lack of correlation does strongly imply the lack of causation, so this has to be addressed - you can't focus on US vs everyone else only, and exclude all other factors.
TFA says the safes in question cost $36 each. Confirmed on Amazon. Many years ago, when my daughter was born, I invested in a small heavy bedside safe with a Simplex lock (think, the mechanical pushbutton locks to some labs or machine rooms). Advantage: don't need to fumble with keys, and don't have to worry about the battery failing in an electronic lock if I have to open it in a hurry. Disadvantage: it cost almost $200. But I gritted my teeth and paid it, because, how much is your family worth to you? (And it still works perfectly today, almost 20 years later.) To the cynic in me, supplying officers with cheapie safes and hoping for the best might seem attractive if it makes your budget look better, but you have to figure something like this would happen eventually.
Side note: open the safe by dropping it? Why is dropping it even an option? Why wasn't it screwed into the floor? Many safes of this type have pre-punched holes in the bottom for this very purpose.
Mother-in-law, who now lives alone in a remote location, acquired a handgun a couple years ago. I looked for an inexpensive safe to keep it in. I came close to making a choice, but then I thought of all the grandkids who visited her regularly, and decided to significantly increase the budget to something I was certain couldn't provide accidental access. And I didn't need to have read this article -- you look at the cheap safes and it's pretty apparent that they're mostly for show.
I think the moral is, "cheap" and "safe" tend to be mutually exclusive.
Parenthetically, if you're going to have a safe by the bed, keep a flashlight in it with lithium batteries. Don't put the flashlight *near* the safe, because if people know it's there, they'll borrow it. (For the same reason fire buckets have pointed bottoms.)
And finally, a $15 trigger lock might have prevented the tragedy in TFA from happening, regardless of whether or not a safe was involved.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
My self-defense isn't for anyone, but for me it's by far the most dependable.
And I can qualify Marksman. But I'm better with my hands and edged weapons in an enclosed space.
There are no supervillains or commandos coming to break into my house. The kind of people who might do that kind of crime are sufficiently deterred by my dog. If they get past her, they won't get past me. There is a combined 35 years of martial arts experience in my house and a shameful amount of (legal) weapons, large and small, from broadswords to staffs, spears, chainwhips and some whose name I cannot pronounce. Firearms are redundant, but still on hand, locked up and without "one in the chamber".
This kind of talk is silly though. It's unlikely anybody's going to break into my house or that I'll win the Lotto. But if either happens, I'm pretty sure I'm ready.
You are welcome on my lawn.
teach kids how to handle the gun so that you take away the mystery
I find your anacdote quaint, but your logic quite flawed, being that most gun owners with more than three guns are adults and have these weapons for no good reason other than simply because they like guns. The "mystery" is still there. Nearly all gun accidents happen to people just like you, and if you can believe it, even to those far better trained than you and your father or any gun owners you or your father know.
No, I'm afraid the only trick to preventing gun accidents in the home is to not have them there. Worried about crime? Gun owners have a far far far better chance of injuring or killing themselves or someone they love than ever having the opportunity to effectively protect themselves against crime. You like to hunt? Well, there is a strong minority that like to kill things just for fun... though I'm unaware or any valid reasons for it. We have these things now called "supermarkets" so that the inefficient method of feeding yourself by hunting for your own food is completely unnecessary. My moderation score will be reflective of whether the search for civilization, or even responsible maturity, continues.
The Admin and the Engineer
That is the sad thing. Responsible people are having to create incontinence, and sometimes even danger for themselves and families because so many other people are irresponsible and won't educate their children. Then our legal system tells the negligent parent that they didn't do anything wrong.
I'm conflicted about the legal case in TFA.
On the one hand, a little research shows that the department really did screw up -- it's a crappy safe, and it was only a matter of time before something like this happened.
On the other hand, a responsible father would have looked at that safe and said "holy smokes, that's a crappy safe" and went out and bought something that actually worked. (About $180 -- $200, not $35.) Sure, he'd have to go without beer for awhile, but what's your family worth?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
lack of needed "bike" paths in the US is a big problem in fact im sure that a number of folks live in areas where there ARE NOT EVEN SIDEWALKS
I thought you were talking about riding bikes on the sidewalk, because that's what you seemed to be saying. Oh well.
Every consumer needs to understand that most of these gun safes are produced in China. They may look secure but they are not, for a variety of reasons, all based upon poor to non-existent security engineering practices. Their manufacturers, in my view, do not have the slightest expertise in designing these kinds of products.
That is all.
My nightstand doesn't have drawers. :)
It just sits next to your bed all night ...with no pants on?!
unsafe gun safes aren't safely able to be safely called safes
Deadbolted doors at regular intervals. Bottom of the stairs, top of the stairs, end of the hall, every bedroom. Get time on your side (or force them to be noisy as heck). Especially time enough to wake up. I don't know many people that can wake from REM sleep and be 100% in thinking or perceiving.
The trick is to teach kids how to handle the gun so that you take away the mystery. When I grew up we had guns in the house and not locked up at all. My dad's shotgun and hunting rifle generally were leaning up in a corner. No trigger locks. If he'd been hunting earlier that day they may very well be loaded.
It was like that from birth till I moved out. Wanna know why me and my siblings didn't die horrible deaths? Because we didn't feel a need to secretly "play" with the gun. If I wanted to go out and shoot it all I had to do was ask and my dad would take me out shooting. Not only that, but during those shooting sessions he taught me exactly how the gun worked, how to safely load and unload it, and how to handle it. Even if I HAD handled the gun while he was gone I was perfectly capable to doing so safely.
As they say: if you have a pool in the backyard, which do you think would be more effective: Putting a fence around it, or teaching your kids to swim?
Wish we could score to a +10.
Education is the key to most 'problems'.
My dad let me shoot a nice big magnum when I was really little. KA-POW!
Wasn't about to touch ANY gun after that.
Then when I was old enough, he took me out, taught me how to
use a gun, clean it, actually hit things with it.
And best of all, he let me shoot a pew, pew, .22
I thought... what a bastard. Not all guns will break your arms? Lol.
-AI
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion
I wanted an ammo safe since I only own shotguns and large gun safes are crazy expensive to buy and install, I did a ton of research and ended up picking up this one from perma-vault. It's pushbutton activated so it can easily be opened in the dark by muscle memory and there's no batteries to die. It's big enough for a couple handguns if that's your thing. It's made of nice thick steel (empty it's 14lbs) and the lock mechanism is fairly substantial for a safe that size (MUCH beefier than the mechanical unit they show in the article).
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Slashdot is full of children who do not yet understand cause and effect. Another issue is that only in the USA firearm ownership is more or less accepted; in Canada too, to a much lesser extent. In nearly all other countries of the world you have to jump through many hoops to get a permit for a shotgun that is only dangerous to ducks. Lack of shooting culture creates lack of understanding. People who never shot guns in their life are likely to not even comprehend why would anyone want to do that. And as such, they will vote to deny this privilege. If they don't have it, then nobody shall have it. It's called "tolerance" now.
Presence of starry-eyed teenagers is also evident in frequent references to bicycles. It is normal for a young person to take a bicycle to his college. However I seldom see a family man carrying a few 40-lb bags of salt on his bike. This is because family and home ownership come with literally heavy responsibilities. One of those responsibilities is protection of your family. If you choose to depend on the police to protect you, it's your right. But don't complain that the police comes just in time to outline the bodies and write a report. I'm listening to police radio quite often, and after the assignment is given the officer replies with his response time. Usually it is about 15 minutes. Cities are large, and there are only so many units on duty. You will be cold by the time the police shows up. The problem is exaggerated by the large number of criminal illegals from Central America. Those guys escape their own countries, where they are wanted for something already, and become invisibles in the US society. They don't exist; they can't be looked for; they can't be identified; if stopped, they give a dozen names, all false. They are free to do whatever they want - and, surprise - they do.
"People with guns in the home are around twice as likely to be murdered and 10 times as likely do die of suicide as people without guns"
What I want to know is: Did you honestly stop to think about what you're saying?
It is incredibly obvious that someone who plans to commit suicide might actually go out and buy a gun for this purpose.
This statistic is being presented with an obvious bias. You should have asked some obvious questions like:
1) Was the gun bought for the specific purpose of committing suicide?
2) If the person who committed suicide did not have a gun would he have followed through with another method?
Now ask yourself, why would some present their results in such a non-useful manner?
If someone attempted to address the questions above, you'd have a realistic statistic to use in weighing the risk of bringing a gun into you home.
Instead, it's completely useless for decision making... but it sounds nice for politicians looking to make a point.
I don't agree 100% with the following but it's interesting reading:
http://www.thefreemanonline.org/features/the-tainted-public-health-model-of-gun-control/
Not having a gun in the house kind of makes it hard for a kid to shoot himself in the face with your non-existent gun.
Not having a gun in the house also prevents you from teaching your kid about guns. This means that if your child (who is old enough to shoot or be close) is not familar with a firearm to the point that it is no longer a "forbidden fruit" to him then the kid is 100% likely to play with someone else's gun as soon as he can get hold of it. Perhaps that would be the gun that your neighborhood dealer had to drop as he was chased by the police.
The first and the best line of defense against any threat is in detailed knowledge of the threat. Kids are curious. Remove their curiosity by teaching them to shoot. They will be bored in 15 minutes, guaranteed. The loud noise, even with hearing protection, is not a pleasant thing. The recoil will be hard on small hands. Let them experience this, under control, and they will not want to do it on their own. Show them what a 9mm bullet does to a wet phone book and they will not be casual about firearms. If they want to shoot some more, take them to the range. You cannot defeat the curiosity of a child, but you can join it - and by doing so you can direct and control it. If such a child sees a firearm in school or in the street he will not be attracted to it; the first thing that will come to his head would be the image of wounds that his fist can go through. He will instinctively do the right thing: "STOP! Don't Touch. Leave the Area. Tell an Adult." An untrained child will never do that because it is so counter-intuitive. An untrained child's priorities will be opposite: "What is it? May I touch it? May I take it home? May I play with it with my friends?"
"Same thing applies to guns in the home. Even if your kids are perfectly safe around the guns, you need to be cognisant that their friends may not have the same education."
There's a flip-side to that coin.
Even if you don't have a pool in the backyard, teaching your kids to swim is a good idea. Likewise, even if you don't keep guns in your house, you should teach your kids about them and about gun safety. Imagine how you'd feel if your kid kills himself or another kid with a gun he found in a neighbor's house.
To be fair, the 2nd amendment isn't about protecting yourself from burglars (or hunting) either. The 2nd amendment is about keeping weapons to shoot government officials. It was about having enough and big enough guns for the South to secede from the Union.
People like to point out that there were not assault rifles when the Constitution was written. If there were, those would definitely have been protected weapons. Heck, they included canons in the right to bear arms.
It can be argued whether the 2nd amendment is a good idea or not, but it's intent was clear.
Which is why I'm keeping my Mosin M44 as the ready gun: it's got a permanently attached bayonet, so even if I can't get to the ammo quickly enough it's still got /something/.
Mind you, it's got a couple big deficiencies as a home-defense arm. One, 7.62x54R will over-penetrate like mad. For another, it's bolt action, and furthermore a bolt that was made by the Russians in the middle of a war - the fit-and-finish is very much "just good enough".
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
If you want to understand the Bill of Rights, you have to first read the Declaration of Independence. Otherwise you start making ridiculous comments like "The right to bear arms is for the army", or "The second amendment is to protect hunting".
the other is designed to kill other people.
That is simply a stupid statement. Most guns are not designed to kill people. Someone has been lying to you.
Actually, you can look up the minimum fire rating for thickness. My implication was something like 3/4" steel plate, with 4" concrete, and another 3/4" steel plate.
The first layer of 3/4" plate will deter most would be thieves. The 4" of concrete would slow brute force attackers, as would the interior 3/4" plate.
You'd need to build an offset hinge solution to allow the door to swing free of the 5.5" thick door with interior hinges.
You'll only get "certified" fire ratings, where they are mass produced, and deliverable to a testing site. Testing custom built safes, like a bank would use, is a bit more difficult.
Buying a $2000 safe for a couple thousand dollars worth of rifles and ammo, doesn't exactly make sense. Knowing that I spent a few hundred bucks to build a safe able to withstand most brute force attacks (short of C4 charges along the front edges), I'd be willing to bet that it's safe. Anyone willing to use C4 on it will probably end up spending more money on the explosives to open the safe, than the value of the contents.
No safe is 100% resistant to attacks. Consider what the "Bunker Buster" bombs are for. They will go through many feet of steel reinforced concrete, and destroy anything inside. The only safe that I know of, that is virtually impossible to penetrate, is Cheyenne Mountain. Even that, with the appropriate ground troops and demolitions, may get through, or may collapse the mountain on top of themselves.
It all depends on what you're trying to secure. $20? Stick it in a $15 money box. A $500 gun, stick it in a $200 safe. My rifles and other assorted things need something bigger, and that calls for a larger safe, which unfortunately can cost more than the value of what I'm storing.
I've actually been considering turning an entire spare room into a "safe room" or "panic room". It's not because I feel that I'll be overwhelmed by superior forces. It would be good if a tornado came through, which does happen here. In that case, a "vault" with multiple strong bolts and a swing-in door would be ideal. Swing-out doors can be problematic, if the main house roof collapses.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
The term Assualt Rifle predates 1994 and these lawyers abuse of that term. If you want to allow a bunch of gun grabbers to define terminology we might as well call all guns AK47s.
No, I just figure it's a very rare 8 year old that can pick even a crappy cabinet lock. And frankly by 8 kids should really have been taught not to play with things that can cause serious damage, especially if they're competent enough to pick a lock. If they haven't, well, I hate to say it but that's evolution in action. It wasn't so very long ago that at 8 you had about 1/3 of your life span behind you, were starting to contribute meaningfully to the family/tribe's fortunes, and would be looking to start your own family in just a few years. In fact there's still places on earth where that's the case. The whole "kids are incompetent/irresponsible" meme is a very modern thing.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Whoa now. The water on our planet is teeming with life. Is someone killing everything in it before he drinks it, or is he hoping his body will do all the dirty work for him?
Good call.
By your logic, I'm going to cancel my auto insurance, my home insurance, my health insurance, stop seeing the doctor, never get my teeth cleaned, and start crossing the freeway with my eyes closed and ears plugged.
I don't know many people that can wake from REM sleep and be 100% in thinking or perceiving.
It's a skill that you can learn. All it takes is practice. It helps to be an insomniac and work at home.
Doesn't the second amendment apply to 3-year-olds?
The odds of my being killed by a gun have almost no relationship to whether I own one myself.
Actually, they do. People with guns in the home are around twice as likely to be murdered and 10 times as likely do die of suicide as people without guns (source). People carrying guns are about 5 times as likely to get shot as people who aren't carying guns (source). This is not even considering accidental shootings. You say you're "not the sort of idiot who is likely enough to shoot myself by accident," and I hope you're right, but I doubt many accidental shooters thought they were either.
Resisting an armed assailant increases our odds of getting hurt. Isn't that obvious?
Is there some "guns stop bullets" message I haven't heard of, because this all looks like a straw man from here.
That's why I provided sources. These are far from uncontrolled statistics. Both articles go into great length on how they avoid the so-called "confounding variables."
What you're saying is that the mere ownership of a gun makes a person twice as likely to be shot. That's bullshit. Anyone with three or free brain cells floating around in their skull can see the holes in that "logic."
Cue up the comments that have nothing to do with this story and use it to further their own political agendas.
OK, you asked for it: Isn't the invisible hand of the free market supposed to produce better products through competition? Oh how, oh how could these faulty safe designs have possibly happened then?
Someone had to do it.
Here's the clue: "The Sheriff’s Department paid about $36 for each Stack-On Safe."
For $36, you do not get a high-security safe. You are getting a metal box with a cheap lock. Really, you'd be better off sticking the gun in your nightstand - at least then there is no illusion of security.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
They can eat all the rabbits and deer they want.
When they hunt livestock, it means one of several potential things:
Human encroachments have upset the food chain, and now prey animals are scarce.
The coyote pack has grown too large for wild food supplies to sustain alone
The coyote pack has grown to a sufficiently large size that they have become less fearful, and stock animals are simply easier prey
Weather/natural conditions have caused a difficult year for prey animals (dead grass, et al) causing stress on top level predators.
In all conditions except the first one, reducing the numbers of the top level predators to more sustainable levels (but not outright extermination. Leave the predators in place. They control prey animal populations very efficiently, which helps ensure your neighbor's corn crop doesnt get eaten by deer, etc.) creates a more healthy core pack, and keeps the predator/prey population in balance.
A large pack (more than 10 coyotes) becomes dangerous, and needs culling. They usually dont start taking stock animals until they become plentiful and fearless. Smaller packs will attempt to take prey when conditions are poor. A better solution is to make the environment more conducive to natural prey populations. (Plant wild corn stands, encourage food sources for rabbits and squirrels-- etc-- in marginal areas that cannot produce crops, but help sustain wild prey populations.)
You thin the pack down to about 3 or 4 members, but no lower if you can avoid it. By the time the pack pups again next year, prey populations will have recovered, and everything will be golden.
Also important to remember your teenage son can't bring the pool to school and drown his classmates in it
Some kids just wait for a chance to play with things that they've been taught can cause serious damage. And I could force open my dad's tool cabinets with a screwdriver when I was eight.
Now's the point where you say, "But it's evolution in action!"
And that's when I respond with, the smart child picks the lock on the gun cabinet, takes it to the park down the street, and is plinking cans with other neighborhood kids when YOUR child gets removed from the gene pool.
Evolution isn't a perfect process. This is why we shouldn't rely on it.
My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells by the seashore.
Well, completely random and unpredictable outcomes have always been part of evolution - in fact chaos and death is the very essence of the process. A much larger problem is that we've virtually eliminated "thinning of the herd" in developed nations, which leaves "who breeds fastest" as the only real driver of our evolution, which I think bids ill for our long-term well-being as a species. And no, I don't really trust genetic engineering to take up the slack - if there's one thing psychology has shown it's that humans are generally really bad at making good long-term decisions.
To answer the essence of your point though - yes, it's horrible that an irresponsible child (with irresponsible parents) can wreak that sort of damage, but one of the fundamental truths of the universe is that shit happens, the most we can do is guard against the most likely causes.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
"Why protect a $600 gun with a $15 lockbox?"
Liability.
Safes aren't for keeping stuff from walking off. They are to keep casual goofing off adults and kids out of them. By definition, if someone pried open a lockbox, it's not casual goofing off but "defeating a security mechanism". A kid defeating a security mechanism is determined to get in, and a threat.
Nobody that buys such safes think they will keep the bad guys out. They buy them to keep the good guys out and to make a set of steps the owner has to go through to want to get the guns out that aren't a spur of the moment "grab, fondle". So safes and cabinets prevent accidents, and then help prevent criminal liability after an accident. This is the reason many Fudds use a wooden, glass-front, locking gun cabinet. To keep the kids out by "dad will find out and be pissed" but also to let them go "see, this is my expensive Fudd .243 bolt action bambi-killer!"
They DONT protect against someone determined to get the guns.
That said, buy an appropriate safe for the task. Including measuring who will be around it, know about it, how fast YOU need to get into it, and how capable the people around it are compared to their impulse control.
I agree, sneaking out of the house is not part of my cultural heritage, and gun safety is something I was taught and teach my children. I own no firearms only because of cost, I desire one. I do not desire a pistol. I think a nice carbine will satisfy all my needs.
However, I do think having a gun readily available has a tendency to escalate situations, and could easily result in a higher instance of gun violence affecting someone. Statistics seem to bear this out.
Cheap storage VM.
Go look up "Box o Truth" and "birdshot" on Google. There's a guy doing all kinds of tests concerning penetration, scatter, etc. of common guns and you are 100% dead wrong. Summary: anything that can do enough damage to reliably kill, will go through several drywall and plywood layers with enough energy to kill on the other side too. Always be considerate of what is beyond your target.
Actually, the problem could greatly be solved by legalizing the most popular drugs. Home invasions to a great extent, are druggies looking to score drugs or money from other druggies. The problem is, unlike the pigs, they don't have ways to look up if the targeted druggie has moved or not. So mistaken "where's the drugs!" invasions happen all the time in the US. In my state alone, it's almost weekly. Granted, some of them are people who actually DO have drugs but destroy evidence before calling the cops....
If drugs could be obtained at the local 7-11 legally, all that activity would go away.
Because the "gun deaths" include domestic violence and suicide. Which would occur ANYWAY, just without guns. That "statistic" is a bullshit lie.
And an easy way to guard against "shit happening" is to get easily-defeated gun safes off the market.
My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells by the seashore.
This is more FYI than trying to niggle with you, but most gun deaths are suicides, not crime or accidents. So it is pretty related to whether there is a gun in the house. We could have a discussion about whether you're more likely to succeed in a suicide attempt in a house with a gun, but that's for another day.
In addition, the suicides that aren't done by a gun, don't show up in the balance of numbers. So it's an automatically skewed manner of looking at things to say "percentage of gun deaths from your own gun".
The odds of my being killed by a gun have almost no relationship to whether I own one myself.
Actually, they do. People with guns in the home are around twice as likely to be murdered and 10 times as likely do die of suicide as people without guns (source). People carrying guns are about 5 times as likely to get shot as people who aren't carying guns (source). This is not even considering accidental shootings. You say you're "not the sort of idiot who is likely enough to shoot myself by accident," and I hope you're right, but I doubt many accidental shooters thought they were either.
How many of those are gang-bangers who have guns in the home?
When those "studies" control for gang membership in the family and race, they'll have some numbers to believe. The largest single most largest risk factor in the US for dying by violence is being a young black male. When that factor is controlled out, the numbers will be able to speak about what people who are not young black males should be concerned about for guns. (The article says no such thing BTW, so their numbers are flawed.)
When you measure old white guy with a good job and guns the numbers will come out very different. The risk factor from a segment of the gun "owners" comes from a vastly different source than the gun.
You forgot "and I will be _completely_ deaf once I use it inside." If you don't hit the perp, he'll be easy to identify because he's the guy digging in his ears and going "WHAT?!"
So - your average /.er should be perfectly safe from gun accidents right?
I would consider that a gun owner fail.
Ok. So you are stupid.
Gun shouldn't be loaded till you want it to shoot, because at that point there just isn't much stopping it. (Consider the case of the gun getting bumped and falls over, what would it be pointing at? would the gun fire?)
No you moron. Guns made after 1900 or so, and that haven't been tampered with or modified are extremely unlikely to fire when just "knocked over". Even for those with a free float firing pin that's true. Revolver "won't fire until trigger is pulled" safeties are considerably newer, but the BS you see on TV of the gun just going off because someone dropped it are a myth. Glocks, the infamous "gun without a safety" has no less than three independent safety mechanisms that ensure it won't fire until the trigger is pulled. My Beretta has three as well, one of which is a standard safety and the other two worked into the design.(DA and hammer machining).
What is bad about a dropped gun, is GRABBING FOR IT and getting the trigger or firing mechanism activated by the grab. So, like a straight razor, let it fall and deal with the damage.
An unloaded gun for defensive purposes is STUPID. Unload your Bambi killers and curios, but SD firearms are needed right fucking now when they are needed.
Same reason I don't store my gasoline next to my fire pit, some things just aren't supposed to be stored together.
Interesting story, by dad was at someone's house, the guy was showing my dad some guns he had in the closet. He handed my dad a gun to look at. First thing my dad did (what he always does when picking up a gun) was check the chamber. The gun was locked and loaded, if he'd have pulled the trigger, it've shot. The guy was shocked to see that his gun had been in the closet ready to go off all that time, and thankful that my dad didn't just put it too his shoulder and dry fire it.
Yup, and your dad didn't need to own guns for him to be exposed to them. Which is why teaching EVERYBODY the basic rules (one of which is consider it loaded all the time, another is "check the chamber your damn self") is important. This ninny "head in sand" thing with guns is an increase in risks for everybody. You don't have to let your kids handle guns, and you don't have to own them, but you should make sure the kids and you know and practice all the rules.
Right... it's a great libertarian frontier story... but if the kid is injured or injures someone else... dad goes to prison for 3-20 years... in most US States... for child endangerment, manslaughter, etc... similar in many other countries... ... ...
When my children were growing up they knew to stay away from my firearms as a matter of course under severe penalties. Children visiting were kept away from the room where the firearms were kept simply by keeping the door closed and their being told to keep out. No exceptions. The young visitors weren't told why they were to stay out (to reduce temptation) just that was not up to debate.
Never even had a incident where the kids went near the firearms.
When my children were at an appropriate age they were taught the basics of firearm safety with the understanding they were to stay away from them without my supervision and to keep their friends away (no show and tell either!).
Don't forget to stir some industrial gemstones or at least some carbide grit into your concrete (and optionally capsules of sarin or ricin...). And I think the GP thought you could just cut the hinges off a safe and the door would fall out, not that you needed to offset them for clearance. No wonder they can sell $15 "safe"s to people.
I reckon you made all that up. OR your dad was a dickhead who should not have been allowed to touch guns.
Why? You wrote "Not only that, but during those shooting sessions he taught me exactly how the gun worked, how to safely load and unload it, and how to handle it" ... but earlier you said "My dad's shotgun and hunting rifle generally were leaning up in a corner. No trigger locks. If he'd been hunting earlier that day they may very well be loaded."
Any person who leaves loaded shotguns and hunting rifles lying around, loaded. is an asshole. End of story. (And all too often, end of life...)
....more BS to support the liberal agenda.
There are 2 groups of people you can make fun of on the Internet without fear of attack. The illiterate, and the Amish.
Forgot about that, yes. Even outside the thing's nasty loud.
Wish I'd gotten one of those Yugo SKSs in '05 when you could get them new-in-box for $150.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Don't let the Fire marshall find out about your death trap. And do you lock the kids in or out with your deadbolts on every bedroom?
The preponderance of concealed carry permits begs your conclusion. Crime rates are lowest in areas with the most liberal concealed carry laws. As states have relaxed their permitting process crime has dropped every time a state has relaxed the requirements to carry and thus allowed a lot more honest citizens to carry.
I live in a very low crime area and I carry, I really have no expectation (or desire) of every needing to use my weapon, but this last April my state (UT) saw a prime example of why carrying is a good thing. A dude went into a grocery store and bought a large kitchen knife, he walked outside the store, unwrapped the knife and started stabbing random people. He'd stabbed two people when a citizen walking by saw what was happening and drew down on the stabber, stopping the attacks and holding the attacker until the cops arrived five minutes later. The first stabbing victim was in critical condition and they reported had help been delayed even a couple minutes more, he might not have survived. Had concealed carry laws been more restrictive how many more might have been stabbed, possibly fatally, because an armed citizen wasn't around to stop the crime and when seconds counted the police were five minutes away? The area where this occurred is not considered a high crime area.
And amazingly to the gun grabbers who claim liberal carry laws will result in streets running with blood, not a shot was fired, the only blood on the street was from a knife.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
Your "Buying a $2000 safe for a couple thousand dollars worth" comment got my attention. One rifle with scope in my collection adds up to that value. While not every rifle is worth that money, they are more expensive than you think. Ammunition is $300-$400 a case which is the cheapest way to purchase it. I have trained my kids about gun safety and will happily let them handle them when asked. They will ask. We will go through the safety check drill and we will still treat them like they are loaded. This plan is to reduce the "mystery" associated with them. My kids don't pay any attention to my weapons now. Gun safety the open source way ;-).
Not news, trigger locks are shit. They give parents a false sense of security, and get them to believe that as long as the lock is on there, I don't need to get my kids socialized to guns. Check youtube, there's several videos that show firearms being fired with a trigger lock on them. The best way to keep kids from hurting themselves with firearms is keep them out of their reach when they're young, and when they're a bit older and more responsible (5 or 6, could be more or even less depending on the maturity of the child) educate them about guns, and don't make them a forbidden fruit.
The most effective thing to do would be to do both.
Which is what my parents did. Safes for the guns, ammo in another place and plenty of range time for the kids.
The most effective thing to do would be to do both.
Which is what my parents did. Safes for the guns, ammo in another place and plenty of range time for the kids.
If you want to reduce home pool related deaths, then definitely both.
Teaching swimming isn't effective at very young ages. A fence reduces the likelihood of accidental deaths.
This can be clearly seen in those parts of Australia which have mandatory pool fencing requirements. Given the Australian cultural orientation towards swimming it is a rare small child who does not get some form of swimming training. Training alone is not the answer and has been clearly shown not to be, hence the continual push for fencing as well as mandatory safety checks.
"Escalating a robbery to a gunfight is a risky move--why does stating that fairly obvious fact upset people?"
Because it's not "fair", and reality doesn't match-up with the fantasy people hold as truth.
As usual, reasoned responses based on real data get dismissed by people who have no capacity to discuss the issue without name-calling and asserting passionately how right they are, and how stupid and crazy everybody else is for not taking part in their little fantasy of safety through an escalation of armaments.
Actually, his assertion was not based on "mere ownership of a gun".
/.
Most people can see through AC posts that are mere empty assertions based on little more than misrepresentation of statements.
Another big AC fail on
Wow, good thing the Law prohibits three-year olds from owning guns.
What I find most odd about this ...
"... when an emergency arises"
Assuming you own a gun (which I expect you do based on the tone of the comment) ... what percentage of the time do you use your gun in an emergency situation vs not?
And your friends with guns?
IF I were to have a gun it would be for sport not protection.
Ouch
FTFA, "For convenience, all magnetic rings allow firing of all modified guns." Not really "you and only you".
Also, only works with S&W. Fail.
Only works with S&W revolvers. Fail.
They do most of the S&W lineup, but not the X-frame, and no automatics. In this day and age, most people shoot automatics. And as far as I can tell, police don't like it since it's too fiddly, even given that most police officers who die in the line of duty are shot with their own gun.
I may not be the first to adopt smartgun technology when it's mature (it'll be expensive, no doubt), but I support its use. When it's mature. And not by compulsion.
That's an obsurd level of reasoning. I have an alarm system, but by your logic it'd pointless because noone ever breaks in. Why keep a spare tire, a jack, and fix-a-flat in the trunk, it's not like I am changing tires everyday. You do understand the concept of emergency being something that doesn't follow a schedule right?
two things to say about this:
You have kids? You Damn well better make sure they know how to swim. You're the parent, that's your job!
You have a pool? All the places I've lived in, here in the US, local laws required you to have a fence around the pool.
TEN people die from drowning everyday (USA). Many times that number are rescued, BUT - require further care for severe brain damage that result in long-term disabilities and permanent loss of basic functioning (e.g., permanent vegetative state).
1 IN 5 who die from drowning are CHILDREN. For every child who dies from drowning, another five receive emergency department care for nonfatal submersion injuries.1 (from http://www.cdc.gov/HomeAndRecreationalSafety/Water-Safety/waterinjuries-factsheet.html )
Even if the local laws don't require a fence, having one lowers your liability against lawsuits when a drunk neighbor (teenager?) decides to go swimming one night while you're away. (Concept of "attractive nuisance?, maybe)
Anyone ever heard of the Wegmans grocery store chain? Based in upstate New York? Family owned, Great store's, great family, great people. How many companies provide health care and child care for cashiers?
Wanna see the family compound that holds the pool they lost one of their kids in? Nevermind. The water in a pool, lake, stream, river or ocean doesn't care how rich, smart, or pretty you are. once you go in, you better know how to get yourself out.
Water safety: Make sure your kids know how to swim. Make sure the pool is fenced, If above ground, keep the outside ladder off, and the inside ladder, in. (Just in case a kid does get in, so they have a chance to get out).
Think of the children. Really.
(someday I will tell y'all the story of how my brother used Wegman's Stores to intimidate the commies back in the 1970's. Also, the 'garbage plate')
(I listened to a noise outside one night, had no idea what it was, next morning, found a squirrel floating in the pool. Ever since then, inside ladder stays in. )
[[ Squirrel's are the tiny terminators of wildlife, nothing stops them. I had one chew through a 1/8 in steel cable once, to take a bird feeder down! If they ever get organized, human life in suburbia will be over! ]] .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willard_(1971_film) >
Also - for your perusal:
https://www.google.com/search?sugexp=chrome,mod=7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=child+drowning+pool
I'm really surprised at the "bolts" some of the cheap safes use. Some are a piece of bent metal. Some are a single bolt on one side. The one I just got, it has an internal hinge, and 4 bolts on one side. It's not perfect, but it's not bad.
I'd prefer multiple bolts on all sides.
But, with the right equipment and enough time, no safe is "secure". Kind of like you see in movies, if the door is so great that it would take a long time, go through the wall or the floor. :) Once in a while you see in the news where someone tunnels under a vault, and takes weeks getting through the floor. Sure, it took weeks, but they wouldn't have had the opportunity to do the same to do the door.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
I actually didn't do the math on what I have, and didn't really want to post the real value.
Here's a purchase I made last year from Sportsman's Guide.
The current price is a little bit more, but not bad.
http://www.sportsmansguide.com/net/cb/cb.aspx?a=862719
I definitely prefer to buy in bulk. It's a lot cheaper than buying a box here, and a box there. Well, unless you go to a retail store and they just multiply the per-box price, by the number in the case. If I had a bit of spare cash, I'd have a few thousand extra rounds.
I just consolidated down part of my collection, to use more common ammo. I'm sticking with 5.56x45 NATO, .45 ACP, and .30-06.
I want to get an AR-10 also, so that'd be one more ammo (7.62x51 NATO), but worth it. Practically though, I need to move first, to somewhere with enough land where I can target shoot at the house. I'd want an long shooting area, to practice at the far extent of the weapon's ability. I don't know of any good outdoor ranges near me, so I'm SOL at the moment. I can get a nice tight group with the AR-15 (5.56 NATO), at the far extent of the indoor rifle ranges. I usually put the target all the way out, so the bottom is just touching the backstop.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
I don't think that's a fair characterization. I would be irresponsible and creating some kind of unnecessarily-extra inconvenience for you if I had not taught gun-safety to my 3-year-old?
Oddly enough, the article didn't mention the back story behind the police office who's 3 year old died. If we look at the local media: http://www.oregonlive.com/clark-county/index.ssf/2012/01/former_clark_county_deputy_fil.html
We read: "Investigators further state that Owens blamed his son's death to his 11-year-old daughter and tried to force a confession out of her.
"...Deputy Owens did not maintain the highest standards of conduct and discredited himself and the Sheriff's Office....," the document states. "....His selfish, shameful and cowardly behavior has left an indelible mark on our agency and has raised serious doubts about his credibility, judgment, truthfulness and fitness for duty."
The Multnomah County District Attorney's Office declined to prosecute Owens for allegedly coercing his daughter. The incident happened in the Portland area."
and wonder what in the world it takes for a police office to actually get arrested. He & his wife apparently dragged the daughter to a fast food joint where the wife "questioned" the daughter: http://www.columbian.com/news/2011/nov/18/his-selfish-shameful-and-cowardly-behavior-has-lef/?print -- "But prosecutors declined this fall to try the deputy because it was in Multnomah County, Ore., where he allegedly coerced his daughter, when Owens and his wife were driving the girl to the airport about a month after the shooting.
“In review of the evidence in the case, the charges we were looking at were witness-tampering allegations,” Clark County Prosecutor Tony Golik said Friday. “Because of jurisdiction, we didn’t feel we had” sufficient evidence that a crime occurred in Clark County.
The case was referred to the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office. A deputy district attorney there declined to press charges on either Owens or his wife. A call to the spokesman for that DA’s office was not returned Friday."
Mine is actually a tiny fire-safe for storing documents. It has a pistol, and two bolts. The rifles the bolts go to are unlocked.
Padlock? On youtube I saw how to get into one with a soda can and a pair of scissors. You use the scissors to cut shims to open the lock with. I also needed pliers to grab the shims with when I did it. I always thought padlocks were secure. They are a joke.
...
No. You see they were not designed to keep guns safe. They were designed to extract money from people desiring such a device, at a low cost. They performed the task they were designed for admirably.
...
Ya, I've seen that. Bolt cutters are quicker, if you have them. :) In high school, we found most of the cheap dial master locks can be opened by just repeatedly tugging on them.
Most cheap cabinets, if you don't care about it, you can just force the lock with a big flat screwdriver and pliers. It won't disengage the lock like you'd want. It turns the whole lock assembly, which rotates the latch on the back, just like the key would do. They basically have two flat surfaces, and the hole matches. If it's stamped sheet metal, the metal will bend. If it's wood, the wood will splinter.
I think there are some that are better padlocks (two latches per side, both sides latch), so the soda can trick would be far more difficult.
You don't always have to open the padlock though. If the hasp ring is fixed, you can pop it with a screwdriver. If it can rotate, the prybar can usually pop the rivets or screws that are retaining the hasp. Again, it's all in how much you care about keeping it in the original condition.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Not so sure. Guns make suicide easier.
0xB315AA8D852DCD3F3DCA578FD2E0BF88
You hate government. We get it. Give it a rest.
Not for me personally, since I don't own any guns that shoot anything but water or nurf darts, but Yes. You not teaching your 3 year old about gun safety (or taking full responsibility for making sure your 3 year old doesn't get access to a gun) creates the same kind of unnecessarily-extra inconvenience for people that you not teaching your 3-year old other basic safety measures. Things like "Don't put things in electrical outlets.", "Don't play with knives.", and "Don't run out into the street." There are lots of dangerous things in the world. It is impossible to lock down every object that can kill a kid. It is the parent's responsibility to teach the child not to kill themselves. That includes me. I don't own guns, but I have taught my son enough about gun safety to keep him from killing himself. That can be as simple as "Don't play with it." I taught him not to drive the car, don't lick knives, look both ways before crossing the street, and never swim alone. These are MY responsibilities as a parent. If my neighbor has a pool, and my kid were to climb over the fence and drown, it would be heart breaking for me. It would destroy me, BUT it would not be my neighbors fault.
So, yes. It would be irresponsible for you as a parent not to teach your child how to be safe.
and as we all know, "Guns don' kill kids, kids kill kids".
The gentlemen of the circus seem to think so.
I'm sure if you look there are other manufactures of something similar. What the heck is wrong a S&W revolver for a gun at home? The police may need more firepower. The point is that your 3 year old can't fire it.
As far as smart gun stuff, why doesn't someone enterprising just use finger print recognition for your trigger finger? It needs to work every time and fast but it sounds like the ultimate solution and of course never allowing a 3 year old to play with your guns is the cheap and simple solution.
Despite the stuff that gets on tv handguns kill around 40,000 per year. People need to really be careful with them as some of it is accidental.