Le savon de ma tante est sur la table.
So many strange new things that one wonders what to make of, then an exposé, c'est cool, and it all makes sense.
French hackers are selling concealed weapons including so-called pen guns that fire .22 Long Rifle bullets on highly secretive crime forums, threat researcher Cedric Pernet says. Videos of the home-made pen guns scattered around the internet show the weapons in working use. The guns are being sold for €150 (US$169, £127, A$ …
Pen guns and other pocket weapons have been around for a hundred years or more. They're illegal in most places so you're not going to find them on Amazon or eBay. Vintage models are collectable so there's a small market for them in the US (but even then you won't find people walking around with them as weapons -- legalities, again, and anyway they were never that effective).
Its possible to improvise a single shot weapon out of little more than a piece of tubing. The trick -- at least for British people -- would be finding ammunition.
How is it that such financial volume is not tracked down and under surveillance ?
We're not talking about cash changing hands in a dark alley, this is online financial transactions. The police have all the tools they need to track this, so how do scammers not get caught ?
Is there only one cop on duty at any given time ?
I thin Pascal read it (as I did first time around) that we were talking 40000 people pulling in 5 million EACH every month. THAT you would think would be easy to trace. 5 million divided by 40000 people not so much.
Also doesn't seem really worth it for that sort of money. Your taking a hell of a risk to make €200 a month. So I wonder how accurate those figures really are...
"Also doesn't seem really worth it for that sort of money. Your taking a hell of a risk to make €200 a month. So I wonder how accurate those figures really are..."
As with all enterprise, it's incredibly unlikely that the money is evenly spread. You'll have the top 1% making €9.9 million, while the rest make virtually nothing. Quite possibly even more than that, since simply totalling all members will include both vendors and customers - a decent proportion of those 40,000 probably aren't even trying to make money, but are actually spending it.
And should we really care?
It's probably easier to get a crate of AKM directly from a CIA container in the Middle East / ex-Yougoslavia manufacturer / Ukrainian "security" personnel delivered to Italy / Vienna / Brussels if you want to do ... harmful things.
When you can legally buy a small lathe and bar stock for the same amount and make many many more (not legal but near impossible to track if you keep you gob shut yo everyone else).
Small non repeating arms are really really easy to make. Which is why getting ammo in many EU countries is also a challenge. Sometimes even for those with a licensed legal firearm.
I read that as "an expensive illegal penguin ".
From a quick perusal of the guidance on wild animals, I think you'll need a whole host of licenses to import most species of penguins, so there's probably a niche for darknet animal-smugglers.
So in the mind of ThePress, the word "hacker" has now come to mean "criminal", and the two words can be used interchangeably?
The reason that I ask is because I see absolutely nothing in the article that could possibly be called "hacking", at least not where I come from ...
So in the mind of ThePress, the word "hacker" has now come to mean "criminal", and the two words can be used interchangeably?
That is not a new thing, has been the case for at least a decade. And that's the perception implanted in most of the minds of the public.
With such a low mass 'gun', isn't it getting to the point where the backwards impulse of the 'gun' itself is going to get a bit, erm, uncomfortable? What next? Hold the 22 shell in your teeth and trigger the primer with a bent paperclip?
The other issue is shooting somebody with a 22. The victim might get very angry, grab the wannabe assassin, and then tear them to shreds with their bare hands. Not always, but likely a sizable fraction.
There was the FP-45 Liberator, amongst other guns like pen- and lipstick-guns, and guns as part of gloves... a lot of clever ideas, but usually more of a novelty than an effectice weapon. Most of them fall into the category of "if you're close enough to your adversary to use it, you might just as well use a knife or your hands or a brick or whatever is availiable".
At point blank range a .22lr has a muzzle energy of around 80 ft/lbs (I still haven't got to grips with metric me ) so if fired perpendicular to a skull, will penetrate it. At an angle it may pass through the skin an ricochet off the skull and as you say, if , in a body shot it hits nothing important, you are going to have a pissed off target coming after you.
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"The other issue is shooting somebody with a 22. The victim might get very angry, grab the wannabe assassin, and then tear them to shreds with their bare hands. Not always, but likely a sizable fraction."
.22 is a good caliber for whacking people, you just need to know where to put the round. Do not forget that .223 is another mans 5.56, which as we all know is the caliber of many Western assault weapons.
Do not forget that the Israeli Kidon units have long favoured the odd perfume shot [1.] with a .22 .
1. A splash behind the ear.
Except . . . the .223 "warhead" is quite a bit heavier, full metal jacket, and has one hell of a lot more propellant behind it. I doubt that anyone hit with a .223 even in a one shot shirley would be in any shape to apply a beat down on anyone. I've used them in a "powerhead" for anti shark defense during scuba adventures.
"The other issue is shooting somebody with a 22. The victim might get very angry, grab the wannabe assassin, and then tear them to shreds with their bare hands."
I saw a quote similar to that about the .25 recently, can't remember exactly where. Something along the lines of:
Never carry a .25 pistol. If you absolutely have to carry a .25, never load it because then you might shoot it, and if you shoot it you might hit someone by mistake, and if he finds out about it, he's likely to be very angry at you.
I remember these from shop class in the 60s. Wearing a glove there was no mark on your hand as the bullet's mass is negligible, as is the muzzle velocity. The French Resistance (and English and American spies) used them for contact assassination, distraction, and suicide. A bureaucrat might be threatened by one, but an overcoat would stop the shot from a foot or two.