8 ms·

3D Printed Gun Smuggled Into Israeli Parliament

23 points by revnja 13y ago

lifeguard 13y ago
Plastic firearms are harmless.
- AsymetricCom 13y ago
  or rather, they can't cause much more harm than things you can already carry on a plane.
- malandrew 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    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 13y ago
      They still open them on many flights for the pilots to access the toilet.
      - 6d0debc071 13y ago
        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. >_<
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - lifeguard 13y ago
    correction: Plastic firearms are useless and they always will be. A plastic firearm is the same thing as holding a cartridge in a pair of pliers and hitting it with a rock. Rifling in a plastic firearm that fires metal projectiles shows how stupid this exercise is. For rifling to spin a projectile, it must be harder than said projectile, and cut into it forcing it to spin. eg bullets are made of lead or copper and are fired through tempered steel. The first liberator zip guns that the OSS dropped in France in the 40s were a psy op. They were never used to injure "the enemy". Most armed government employees -- the presumed intended targets for these dangerous toys -- wear a spectra vest with a metal strike plate the makes plastic and wood projectiles harmless. I guess if one were to use a taser to disable an opponent, then they could hold one of these roman candles to the temple of their victim, and if the plastic gun didn't explode in the shooter's face it would seriously harm the victim. A simple metal pipe, while not rifled, is vastly superior to plastic guns with one inch barrels because the propellant actually has a chance to burn and generate force. These plastic guns do not contain the force of the propellant and transfer it to the projectile. These plastic gun affectionatos are an embarrassment to the intelligent readers of HN.
lemming 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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.
  - lemming 13y ago
    Sure, but airport security is all about the theatre, not so much about the actual security.
  - vacri 13y ago
    There was a pilot who wrote an essay on the uselessness of the checks. Sure, check for firearms, but nail files and so forth can be found on the plane. One of his examples was to pull up a strip of emergency lighting and break it - now you have a pointy thing to use as a weapon.
  - MichaelGG 13y ago
    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.
malandrew 13y ago
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.
- m0nastic 13y ago
  You would then basically have the airport screener version of Antivirus software (signature-based). I suspect you'd end up having all the same problems that Antivirus software has (basically an arms race, I guess quite literally).
- hobs 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    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 13y ago
      That's pretty cool yo, thanks for illuminating!
aray 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    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...
sp332 13y ago
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.
refurb 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    "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 13y ago
      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.

23 points by revnja 13y ago

lifeguard 13y ago

Plastic firearms are harmless.

AsymetricCom 13y ago
or rather, they can't cause much more harm than things you can already carry on a plane.
malandrew 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    They still open them on many flights for the pilots to access the toilet.
    - 6d0debc071 13y ago
      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. >_<
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- lifeguard 13y ago
  correction: Plastic firearms are useless and they always will be. A plastic firearm is the same thing as holding a cartridge in a pair of pliers and hitting it with a rock. Rifling in a plastic firearm that fires metal projectiles shows how stupid this exercise is. For rifling to spin a projectile, it must be harder than said projectile, and cut into it forcing it to spin. eg bullets are made of lead or copper and are fired through tempered steel. The first liberator zip guns that the OSS dropped in France in the 40s were a psy op. They were never used to injure "the enemy". Most armed government employees -- the presumed intended targets for these dangerous toys -- wear a spectra vest with a metal strike plate the makes plastic and wood projectiles harmless. I guess if one were to use a taser to disable an opponent, then they could hold one of these roman candles to the temple of their victim, and if the plastic gun didn't explode in the shooter's face it would seriously harm the victim. A simple metal pipe, while not rifled, is vastly superior to plastic guns with one inch barrels because the propellant actually has a chance to burn and generate force. These plastic guns do not contain the force of the propellant and transfer it to the projectile. These plastic gun affectionatos are an embarrassment to the intelligent readers of HN.

lemming 13y ago

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 13y ago
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.
- lemming 13y ago
  Sure, but airport security is all about the theatre, not so much about the actual security.
- vacri 13y ago
  There was a pilot who wrote an essay on the uselessness of the checks. Sure, check for firearms, but nail files and so forth can be found on the plane. One of his examples was to pull up a strip of emergency lighting and break it - now you have a pointy thing to use as a weapon.
- MichaelGG 13y ago
  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.

malandrew 13y ago

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.

m0nastic 13y ago
You would then basically have the airport screener version of Antivirus software (signature-based). I suspect you'd end up having all the same problems that Antivirus software has (basically an arms race, I guess quite literally).
hobs 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    That's pretty cool yo, thanks for illuminating!

aray 13y ago

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 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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...

sp332 13y ago

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.

refurb 13y ago

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 13y ago
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 13y ago
  "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 13y ago
    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.