In a Security Test, 3-D Printed Gun Smuggled Into Israeli Parliament 280
GenieGenieGenie writes "After all the talk of printed guns and the problems they pose to traditional methods of perimeter security, we get a live demo courtesy of some rather brave journalists from Israel's Channel 10, who took the plastic weapon known as the Liberator past security into the Israeli parliament, and held it within meters of the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. I say brave because had they been caught pulling this stunt, which involved taking their toy out of the bag while sitting in the audience of a speech by the prime minister, they would have faced some real steel. Haaretz has the video (sorry, Hebrew only at the moment) [Google-translated version of the article -- Ed.] where you can follow the breach (from ~6:30) and see them pass the metal detector and the moment when the gun comes out. The movie also shows some testing of the gun in a police-supervised weapons range. Parliament security officials said that 'this is a new phenomenon and they are checking the subject to give it a professional solution as quickly as possible.' I hope this doesn't mean we will now officially face an era of ever more intruding security checks at entrances to events like this." Would-be Liberator printers, take note: the testing shows the barrel violently separating from the rest of the gun.
The only thing that has changed.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The truth of the matter is if you are able to get within a few feet of someone, you don't need a 3D printer or any other fancy machines to make a weapon to kill said person.
Re:of course... (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is part of a broader idea... whose idea was it to use metal detectors as gun detectors?
Sure it made sense a while back, the same way that assuming computers would remain analog, that the locomotive was the most reliable way to travel long distances, or investing in Zeppelin futures was a sure fire win.
Time & technology change... and detection methods must change with them.
What's the point? (Score:3, Insightful)
The whole point about weapons is intent. It's never so convenient as portrayed by government, to be the simple presence of a weapon. Who is to say that the intent of person with the weapon is other than to preserve the life of the prime minister, the king, the president? Who gets to say that simply because a weapon is present that the worst possible scenario is the only possible one?
To the AC that asked about the 'bullet,' PLEASE, you've been misled. Maybe even consistently. The bullet is the part that comes out of the barrel at high velocity. What you (perhaps) meant to say is "Don't they also need ammunition?" It's a 'round of ammunition' or it's a 'cartridge.' Don't be misled by media morons and ask about 'bullets.' I've visited many gun stores where you can buy bullets. They're quite necessary if you're going to reload ammo. One store in Rapid City SD was particularly awesome. They had lots of 750 gr. .50 cal bullets–in a barrel. They were expensive, but then if you shoot .50 BMG, it's an expensive hobby. I still wish I'd bought a few, just as souvenirs.
Re:of course... (Score:5, Insightful)
Or you could have a chat with EL AL who despite being the target of multiple hijacking attempts... has only been successfully hijacked once. An airline that once on board and inflight... you can expect to be handed a steak knife to go with your dinner because they know you not to be a threat.
I'll tell you the dirty little secret to improving security... profiling.
*gasp*!
Far too many items can be legitimately purchased off a shelf, built or crafted into a potential weapon than can be detected. The goal is not to prevent them from being carried on an aircraft (or to be in the proximity of a high ranking government official)... but instead to identify the person who is a threat and is likely to use such an instrument (or worse) against a target.
um, ammunition? (Score:4, Insightful)
So granted, they got a piece of plastic in the shape of a gun through security. The article says "a plastic pistol shooting live ammunition" but doesn't say whether any ammunition was actually present. Why is this important? Because the ammunition contains metal, (and propellant. Surely they're testing for chemical agents) and I'd be interested in whether they could get *that* through security. I suspect not.
Overall, I can see where this could cause a furor, but it'd be just as easy, for instance, to get an all plastic/rubber crossbow into the chamber, with the added advantage that an arrow can defeat Kevlar soft armor. (An arrow tip is just a bit of metal, which could be disguised as a variety of innocuous things.) There's always a way, given enough determination, which is why experienced security personnel are on the lookout even in a supposedly secured location.
Re:of course... (Score:5, Insightful)
whose idea was it to use metal detectors as gun detectors? Time & technology change... and detection methods must change with them.
If non-metallic guns were truly viable, they would have been used 20 years ago to sneak past metal detectors and kill judges and politicians and airplane pilots. Plastic manufacturing has been around for a long time, the only thing 3D printers do is reduce the cost. There are well-funded spy agencies and a few individuals who would have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for a single gun. And yet none has materialized: [1] [thefirearmblog.com] [2] [straightdope.com] [3] [urbandictionary.com]
Re:of course... (Score:3, Insightful)
An Israeli style system will NEVER be implemented in the US because it runs totally contrary to the politically-correct postmodernist identity politics narrative that drives our current political monologue (no, not dialogue).
Suggesting it will be met with screeches of "RACISM!", the person suggesting it will forever be chased and shamed from the limelight, and we will continue staffing our airport security with fat, sticky-fingered illiterate highschool dropouts that barely speak understandable english and use their union to protect their do-nothing jobs while extorting more and more taxpayer money from the very people subjected to them.
Re:of course... (Score:5, Insightful)
While they do have profiling, it is not the profiling people in the US think of. It is not religious or racial profiling. It is proper profiling based on real factors that make professional, trained profilers think you need extra scrutiny. They don't mark muslims for extra scrutiny because they are muslims. They mark people who act nervous and like they have something to hide for extra scrutiny.
There is nothing wrong with proper profiling. It is a very useful tool. Unfortunately in the US, profiling means having a poorly trained, poorly paid TSA agent check anyone who is brown. To proper profile you need intelligent, well trained profilers, which the US won't pay for.
Re:of course... (Score:5, Insightful)
Or you could say "if nukes were a truly viable way for small of non-state actors... clearly they would have been used decade ago"
both are equally false. As time, technology, and availability of information increase... the ease of constructing such weapon increases and we will see their eventual use.
No doubt you thought the same about malware and viruses a few years back.
Irrelevant (Score:5, Insightful)
I may have missed something in the translation but I saw no mention of ammunition getting past security. Unless the ammunition was also made of plastic then a metal detector would still find a loaded firearm.
Try again with a loaded plastic gun, let us know how that works out for you.
Now, assume for a minute that even a loaded 3D printed gun can get past security. What do we do about it then? Perhaps we should arm the good guys inside the security perimeter so that they can shoot back should a bad guy with a gun get in.
Gun free zones are free killing zones. Every mass shooting I can recall, except one [wikipedia.org], happened in a gun free zone. Problem is that when (not if) a murderer gets inside that gun free zone there is no one that can shoot back. When armed good people are present someone might still get killed but it's also quite certain the murderer will be among the people shot.
Re:of course... (Score:4, Insightful)
No it wasn't. "Depart" is what happens when the plane pulls away from the gate, and is about to take off. "Deplane" is what happens when the plane pulls into the gate at its destination, and people exit. They are two completely different words for two completely different circumstances, when used in the context as he did.
(Sure you could say "depart the aircraft" to mean the latter circumstance, but "deplane" says the same thing with the eloquence of using the proper term [lmgtfy.com].)
Re:of course... (Score:5, Insightful)
At any given point in the technology curve, it's going to be easier to make a plastic gun in a real factory with a $10 M research budget than with a 3D printer. Yet there are no plastic guns. I've heard of mostly-ceramic uppers with steel springs, but a good spring is a requirement even for a revolver.
What you get with plastic is what we see: a zip gun that's good for 1 shot if you're lucky. You can make a wooden cannon too, but I wouldn't recommend it.
Re:of course... (Score:5, Insightful)
An Israeli style system will NEVER be implemented in the US because it runs totally contrary to the politically-correct postmodernist identity politics narrative that drives our current political monologue (no, not dialogue).
Suggesting it will be met with screeches of "RACISM!", the person suggesting it will forever be chased and shamed from the limelight, and we will continue staffing our airport security with fat, sticky-fingered illiterate highschool dropouts that barely speak understandable english and use their union to protect their do-nothing jobs while extorting more and more taxpayer money from the very people subjected to them.
That's asinine conservative clap-trap. What you are discussing is typical LEO profiling in the USA where dark skin is used as a cheap and poor substitute by the lazy and incompetent, which blinds us to very real threats (Timothy McVeigh anyone?). Racism doesn't just harm minorities, it also blinds us to both the potential achievements/contributions of the minority group *and* makes us ignore the threats that look like the majority.
An Israeli-style system requires a literal army of very personable, often friendly, intelligence officers who walk around both in plain clothes and uniforms, chatting people up about their life, their family, their trip. That's true profiling. You have to get a feel for the person and whether they are being evasive or acting nervously. Red flags mean extra screening. As others have pointed out, they use tricks like having an attractive woman chat up a single man, without him even being aware that he's being profiled (at least at first). This means you can't pay crap wages and demonize them as tax-sucking leeches; you need decent pay and benefits.
Typical conservative nonsense... cut taxes, use the resulting deficit to justify cutting workers, hours, and benefits, demonize government employees, then point to an under-staffed and demoralized agency as proof government doesn't work, thus justifying cutting back even further. Use the small surplus in boom times to justify another tax cut, then wait for the inevitable downturn and temporary deficit to justify repeating the cycle all over again. Make sure to throw in rants about political correctness, drum up a fake "war on Christmas", etc for good measure. It would be laughable if it weren't so predictable.