How a 3-Year-Old Can Open a Gun Safe 646
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."
Shouldn't be a big shock (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
My little sister picked my BB gun's trigger lock (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Simple flaw. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:they aren't safes (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Loaded gun? (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Re:gun safe? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:gun safe? (Score:5, Interesting)
Not if you include obesity.
Re:Loaded gun? (Score:4, Interesting)
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".
Re:gun safe? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
As a potential gun owner (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:News For Nerds??!! (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Lock hobbyist (Score:3, Interesting)
Usually this is not a problem for most applications, but when the payload is a loaded handgun this is a disaster.
There's the problem.... what kind of idiot stores a gun in a loaded state? I'm not going to get into the whole gun control argument*, but in all seriousness... how stupid do you have to be to not make the weapon safe before you store it? And don't give me the "what if somebody breaks in!" argument, it takes very little time at all to load a weapon and chamber a round... so little, in fact, that if you don't have it in a break-in situation then you're as likely to get yourself killed just reaching for a weapon in the first place and shouldn't try.
I was in the military for 4 years (released because of a knee injury), and the first thing they taught us before we were given weapons on basic training was how to make it safe, and every night (when not in the field) when we locked weapons up in the armory we would clear the chamber and remove the bolt. Once I graduated from basic, it was the same thing... when weapons were stored, they were always made safe, and the ammunition was not stored in the same cabinet as the weapon. It's not that fucking hard. Even if you're not going to disassemble the weapon, it's still not that hard to remove the magazine, clear the chamber, and put the safety on when storing it. Use a trigger lock if you want to be prudent. If you're going to own a weapon, then use your brain.
* -- I don't believe weapons should be in the hands of people who don't train and recertify in their use on a regular basis, and I don't think that handguns should be in the hands of civilians at all, but it's not germane to the point I'm making, so let's simply accept the current situation and not get bogged down with what should or shouldn't be.
Re:My little sister picked my BB gun's trigger loc (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Lock hobbyist (Score:3, Interesting)
I was in the military for 4 years (released because of a knee injury), and the first thing they taught us before we were given weapons on basic training was how to make it safe
The reason the military has such procedures is because they have to teach to the lowest common denominator, which is keeping a bunch of 18 year old dipshits that have never seen a gun from hurting themselves or others. How often were you actually given live ammunition?
The majority of accidents is due to unnecessary handling. Unloading your gun every night or even multiple times a day is by far not the safest method and increases your risk of shooting something you didn't intend to shoot. Keep the gun in retention holster and put both in the safe. Do the opposite in the morning. No safety issue, and no negligent discharges.
* -- I don't believe weapons should be in the hands of people who don't train and recertify in their use on a regular basis, and I don't think that handguns should be in the hands of civilians at all, but it's not germane to the point I'm making, so let's simply accept the current situation and not get bogged down with what should or shouldn't be.
All you can do is make sure there are no guns in your hands. Just because you do not know what you are doing doesn't mean that everyone is clueless.
Re:My little sister picked my BB gun's trigger loc (Score:4, Interesting)
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