
3D Printed Gun Smuggled Into Israeli Parliament - revnja
http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.haaretz.co.il%2Fnews%2Fpolitics%2F1.2062826&act=url
======
refurb
The thing I don't get is how a plastic gun suddenly becomes a problem if it's
3D printed.

You can construct (a very crude) gun barrel for .22LR out of 3/4" plastic bar
using nothing more than a 1/4" drill bit. You need a mechanism to fire the
round, but since you just need to crush the primer, it doesn't have to be
anything fancy. Of course you have no rifling and a poor seal so the bullet
tumbles and isn't effective more than 10-20 ft away, but it's deadly up close.

Since plastics became commonly available over 50 years ago, I don't understand
why everyone is suddenly concerned about plastic guns from 3D printing. What
is a criminal more likely to do, buy a 3D printing machine for several hundred
dollars, learn how to use the software correctly and print a gun OR just buy
some plastic and make one himself for $10 and a few hours of his time?

~~~
chrischen
He may not do that, but he could go and buy a plastic gun for $10 from someone
who does know how to use a 3D printer.

Think about this: a curious kid could accidentally shoot himself now in many
fewer steps than before. Download, load it into dad's printer, assemble.
Though, I'm assuming these plastic guns still need real bullets.

~~~
smsm42
"Curious kid" could also drink bleach or fall from a roof or bite into an
electric cable or spill a boiling soup on his head. That's what parents are
for. If the kid is smart enough to use dad's printer, he has the mental
capacity to understand the dangers. If the parents didn't educate him it's
their failure.

~~~
mc32
But aren't parents supposed to keep dangerous chemicals away from the reach of
curious children?

They can be told over and over of the dangers, but get a few together and all
those warnings can flee their brains. If the stuff is inaccessible, then they
can't --I mean, unless they're insolent, but most children will refrain from
braking into locked closets. Leave things out and it's a different story.

~~~
smsm42
Yes, they are supposed to. That's the whole point - it's parents'
responsibility, not yours or government's.

------
aray
Title doesn't (really) reflect that this was part of a test, and not that
someone was found to have smuggled a 3D printed weapon in.

Also, the article does not mention whether or not ammunition was smuggled as
well; I'd imagine that'd be harder to hide from a metal detector than plastic
-- and the gun isn't much good without bullets.

~~~
minopret
Correct. The article says that the plastic pistol was brought within yards of
the Prime Minister by a correspondent from a show on Israel's News 10. It says
that the Israel Security Agency (sometimes known in English as "Shin Bet")
characterized this act as irresponsible. It says that the weapon was tested by
firing at a cardboard target.

~~~
smsm42
Curiously enough, they don't exactly say they hit the target - they say they
fired "towards" the target (I've read the Hebrew original of course), but it
doesn't mean they actually hit it. I imagine the accuracy of such device would
be pretty bad...

------
lemming
3d printed guns are one of the few things I can think of that will make air
travel even more inconvenient than it is now. This is going to be bad.

~~~
Sanddancer
3d printed guns are a lot less scary than a number of things that exist
already that could do a lot more damage. Given their construction, they're
only accurate to a few feet, and given their one-time use abilities, you're
not going to do much with them before you get tackled by several angry co-
passengers.

Were I an evil terrorist, I'd be looking much more at other, completely legal
things. Items such as two-part epoxies could be used to make a crude but
effective knife, lithium batteries are trivially short-circuitable to cause a
fire, etc. But, such things are much less glamorous and scary than a plastic
derringer that's about as dangerous to the wielder as anyone else.

~~~
MichaelGG
It seems the existential threat to an airplane remains the same: cockpit
access. Note that in some areas, taxis have more security than an airplane, in
the sense that there's no way to escalate from passenger to pilot (dividing
wall).

Even today, I see pilots open the cockpit during flight to use the toilet.
Usually, the FA blocks the passageway with a cart. It seems plausible to me
that there's a short period of time that a well-trained ninja-like attacker
could leave their first class seat, and obtain cockpit access.

But I guess it'd be too expensive to provide full pilot separation.

~~~
VBprogrammer
Millions of flights a year are conducted safely with this apparently lax
security. Perhaps the pilots simply weight up the minuscule risk and rate
urinating in their trousers as the greater inconvenience.

Back in the 90s I still remember the day when a kind flight attendant came to
my seat and took me to the cockpit of the 767 we were flying to Florida in.

Back then aircraft were occasionally hijacked, they'd be forced to divert or
land somewhere and some ridiculous demands made before, more often than not,
everyone was allowed to go home unhurt.

------
sp332
Pre-9/11, my dad forgot a large serrated bread knife in his backpack when
entering the French Parliament building. When he explained (very embarrassed
and expecting trouble) that it was for his lunch, the guards smiled, gave him
the knife back, and waved him through. I remember we admired how civilized the
country was.

------
malandrew
It seems like this should be super easy to spot by outfitting X-ray machines
with computer vision that can compare shapes/outlines from the X-ray image
with a massive catalog of 3D printed gun schematics. Of course this would only
help with assembled guns, but it's a step in the right direction.

~~~
hobs
Would it? Wouldn't the catalog be enormous, and the model could be from almost
any angle? Not trying to call BS, I am not a computer vision expert, its just
whenever someone says something like this I always wonder the actual
feasibility.

~~~
PavlovsCat
I think it was in the 90s when I read about neural nets being used to
correlate air plane type to a static silhouette (might have been radar) from
any angle. Of course, airplanes can't be slightly modified and printed out in
minutes, so I'm not sure this would work here, or how much of a PITA
constantly retraining the neural net when new schematics are made would be.

~~~
hobs
That's pretty cool yo, thanks for illuminating!

------
lifeguard
Plastic firearms are harmless.

~~~
malandrew
correction: "Plastic firearms are [currently] "harmless" [in the grander
scheme of things and in most cases]."

AFAIK all current designs can only fire one bullet before breaking, making
them pretty useless for most situations where someone would want one. The only
legitimate threat they currently pose is targeted assassinations, and those
are a non-issue if you don't have enemies. If you do, invest in bodyguards and
private security instead of externalizing your security costs to tax payers.

I think the most absurd thing is worrying about planes these days. Passengers
pre-9-11 are completely different than passengers post-9-11. Passengers now
know to revolt against any hijackers, especially if they meet the criteria of
a hijacker that would use the plane as a flying bomb. In fact, that is exactly
what happened with the flight that went down in Pennsylvania. As soon as one
passenger discovered what happened at the Twin Towers via their cell phone,
they tried to take over the plane and averted disaster.

Plus, all that was done in the time before wifi on board. Nowadays, many
people on a plane are using wifi to browse the internet, send email and chat.
All those people have access to communications outside the plane, whereas in
9-11 pretty much no one did (at least not legally)

~~~
6d0debc071
Heck, a repeat of 9-11 went out the door when they decided to lock the
cockpit. Which, really, they should have done much earlier considering all the
planes that were hijacked in the past and the previous attempt(s?) to use
planes as weapons against buildings. I can think of at least one person who
got as far as a plane, intending to have it flown into the White House, I
believe, long before 9-11.

Really shoulda locked those doors....

~~~
MichaelGG
They still open them on many flights for the pilots to access the toilet.

~~~
6d0debc071
At least it reduces your vulnerability if you only unlock them for the few
seconds it takes to step through for the toilet, I suppose. If they've some
means to verify there's not a knife wielding maniac waiting outside the door
the risk's probably minuscule.

Still. You'd think they'd have a toilet as part of the secure area on bigger
planes - which I imagine is where most of the pilots who need to visit the
men's room are. >_<

