Originally published at: $140 gun "lock" has only six combinations | Boing Boing
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Six should be enough to confuse most ammosexuals, right?
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That’s honestly what is so puzzling about it. LPL’s veritable genre of gun lock and gun safe reviews suggests that there’s a strong market for devices that are legally ‘locks’; but will leave you as unhindered as possible for whatever day-making scenario you prefer to fantasize about; but if you want an utterly garbage lock your postindustrial procurement pals who are slapping mystery brands onto Pacific rim imports can set you up for way less money.
The price, and the build quality(at least of the shell, plastic internals are rather tacky, though they at least seem to be to decent tolerances and not marred by mold lines and flash all over the place) suggest at least an appearance of caring above and beyond bare minimum legal standards; but the implementation is so dire as to put it in the “$10 and open if you look at them funny” class.
Seems oddly dissonant.
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Surely the point of the lock is to meet some state regulation or insurance mandate or range safety rules without really doing what it’s supposed to?
State regulation? You’re going against mah Second Amendment Rahts!
Insurance mandate? How will minorities and poor people be able to afford to keep semi-automatic weapons to defend their homes? [cue crocodile tears]
Range safety rules? Such a lock isn’t needed on ranges, places where you’ll only find Responsible Gun Owners™.
Jokes about (i.e. actual statements made by) ammosexuals aside, this is exactly the kind of fake security measure they’d pay a high premium for (or claim is unaffordable) if locks were mandated or used to reduce mandatory insurance premiums. Beyond multiple colours for the obsessive collectors, the only thing missing is an NRA seal of approval on the side.
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When Antifa breaks into your house to steal your kid’s adrenochrome, you don’t have time to remember a complicated combination. A man™’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do! /s
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It’s hard to count past five after blowing a hand off playing with munitions.
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an expensive chamber lock that encloses the trigger of AR-15-style rifles
clearly does not enclose the trigger –– blocks the magazine is more like it.
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As Deviant Ollam would point out, there are different levels of security for different situations. This might be appropriate for very young aged kids, or to keep someone from just picking it up and using it. There requires SOME time to remove the device. And while with the knowledge of the video, one could do it in seconds now, most people would take way more time fiddling with it to figure it out. The makers compare it to a retention holster, which isn’t made to be a security device, as much as just prevent instant access. I suppose if one were a cop and this was on the rifle to prevent someone from just reaching it and using it, it would provide -A- barrier.
Still, being generous thinking about WHERE and WHY it might be useful, at $140 and such a low level of security, I’d never buy it. I remember seeing an ad for it and thought it wasn’t very useful. Maybe if it came standard with the larger number of combinations it would be more useful, but it sound like the decoding would be the same either way.
Final note: LPL has expensive tastes in firearms. I guess he makes good money doing that lawyer thing. haha.
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I know you’re being sarcastic, but some ranges do require chamber flags during cease fires. This would be a great chamber flag. But even with a fancy flag that says “Remove before pewpew” and a carabiner to attach to a bag, a chamber flag comes in <$5, and you would have to be stupid or rich enough where $150 bucks isn’t a lot of money to pick this over a traditional flag.
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…sorry gotta tell a related story off your branch: So i’m helping a colleague move and the next door neighbor in the communal living condo is calling to her six year old grandson to come in and “help Granny with her pills!”. As it turns out the six year old is the only one in that dwelling who can manage to get past the child-proof™ caps.
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O_O
Is that because arthritic hands can’t manipulate the bottles? I know some stores have it where you can flip the lids to non-child proof, larger gripping surface for that reason.
At least at 6 they SHOULD know not to try granny’s pills!
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But, it’s like,130 dollars better than the ten dollar one. I’m saving up for the $1400 one, it’s the exact same appearance and design, but it’s over a thousand dollars better.
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A whole new way to play Russian Roulette.
Trigger locks are meant to be an obstacle to distressed or intoxicated people, or said curious teen. Not a secure solution to determined people. So they don’t necessarily need to have the sort of “security” we expect. That’s what locked storage is for.
It’s been pretty well demonstrated that the delay of that basic obstacle tends to have a really big impact on accidents, any kind of shooting involving drugs and alcohol, and especially suicides.
Not a lot is actually required of these, either in practice or in regulation.
And that seems to lead to two genres of garbage that won’t do the job.
Stuff like this that barely even hits the mark of an obstacle. Which seems to be down to how you can make a lot more money selling cheap garbage at huge markups.
And then the whole quick release/easy access thing. Which is meant to check the box on lock and storage regulations while still allowing all your macho fantasies (and your kid to off themself).
I think if this was meant to be the latter it’d have some sort of “secret” latch, RFID functionality or bargain basement finger print scanner.
If you’re gonna sell something cheap for $140 you need to make it look quality.
That was the whole market strategy for Beats headphones before Apple bought them. They were literally adding weights to the things to make them feel heavier and more solid.
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I know someone who interviewed Nixon. After (or before? I can’t remember) the interview he managed to wander around and went into the Oval Office (times were different back then.) He opened the only drawer he could which contained a bottle of medicine with a child proof lid.
And gnaw marks.
The man who had the ability to end the human race in a nuclear war couldn’t figure out/ was too impatient to deal with child proof lids on medicine…
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So the $140 “lock” is only slightly more useful than the $2000 fetish object it’s attached to. Good to know.
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As Boris the Blade would say, “Heavy is good. Heavy is reliable. If it does not work you could always hit him with it.”
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I’ve found that mode is even harder to open - the threads are stiff, and the plastic is soft so the lid deforms when you grab it, making it even stiffer.
It’s much easier to use the locking side, you can just push it with your palm.
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There is one context where added weight is a valuable feature, rather than just a gimmick to make cheap stuff feel more quality: thanks to the march of miniaturization it’s not uncommon to have little set-top-boxes and USB hubs and such that do their jobs just fine; but don’t weigh enough to keep the cables attached to them from dragging them off whatever you perch them on. The ones that add a pot-metal slug are much better at resisting the siren lure of a cable bundle beckoning them toward death.
Obviously, this is still an ‘economy’ move; it’d be classier to break out the thick sheet steel enclosure(if not thermally limited) or the “well over half the case is a chunk of aluminum heatsink with some bits milled out of the bottom to accept the device” approach(if thermally limited); but its pretty reasonable to not necessarily want to spring for a such serious, much enterprise, wow USB hub when the more competent plastic ones are just fine, so it’s forgivable(albeit tragic) that they don’t generally embrace that approach the way something like this one does.
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