Slashdot Mirror
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."
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...
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.
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.
Yeah you're quite right. I probably should have added that to my post under yours. My gun safe has a key lock(pin tumbler), a dial lock, and a bar-handle lock. You need to engage all three before you can open it. It's tedious, but in Canada you're required to store guns in a safe manner. And ammo has to be store separately from the guns as well. I dislike these "security safes" they're cheap, useless and best of all they try to make a showy face of being secure, when at best they're inviting disaster. And anyone with about 8 seconds of time, can open them. 3yr old not required.
Om, nomnomnom...
A paving stone at short range is more effective than a club or sabre. The disappearance of cobble and paving stones has been more of a deterrent to the overthrowing of governments than machine guns, tear bombs and automatic pistols. For it is in the clashes when the government does not want to kill its citizens but to club, ride down and beat them into submission with the flat of a sabre that a government is overthrown. Any government that uses machine guns once too often on its citizens will fall automatically. Regimes are kept in with the club and the blackjack, not the machine gun or bayonet, and while there were paving stones there was never an unarmed mob to club.
-Ernest Hemmingway, Death in the Afternoon
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.
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.
Because an unloaded personal defense weapon is as useful as a brick.
Interestingly, though, an unloaded pump-action shotgun is of some use. The sound it makes when you cycle the pump is one that everyone recognizes, and it's loud enough to be heard through a typical interior door. There's a reason Mossberg has used the slogan "Nothing else sounds like a Mossberg".
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.
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.
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
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