I have two more almost as good Richie...
When in college in the spring of 1966, I was in the ROTC Armsroom cleaning my M1 Garand, one of about 400 that the ROTC detachment possessed, when I realized that the standard issue weapons racks were NOT secure even with the padlocked bar installed behind the front sight... I proceeded to demonstrate to a doubting Regular Army NCO that if I pulled the trigger guard and separated the stock from the receiver I already had two main subassemblies, and then all I had to do was unscrew the gas plug and remove the gas housing from the barrel to get the majority of the pieced out of the rack... finally with the barrel removed, there was enough play behind the locking bar to remove the last remaining piece, the gas houseing and I had the rifle reassembled in about 60 additional seconds... 30 minutes later I was re-demonstrating my feat to the Commander of the ROTC detachment... within 30 days, engineers were sent to the college to modify all the weapons racks so that a steel bar prevented the removal of the trigger group...
I didn't finish school that year... and then in 1967 after being drafted, and on active duty, I discovered that all the M14 racks had recently been modified to prevent exactly the same kind of unauthorized removal from a locked weapons rack...
You would think that some lessons learned would be remembered, but oh no... in 1977 while stationed in Italy, I was in charge of a sensitive facility that had two racks of M-16A1 rifles in racks for rapid issue when I discovered that the racks had a similar vulnerability... the rifles where kept in place by a large angle iron installed below the rear sight...
Having done a lot of gunsmithing on AR-15 rifles, I was very familiar with the methods and tools for their detailed dissassembly... I bet the Officer in charge of the facility that I could remove one of the rifles in less than 5 minutes without the racks or the rifle being unlocked or damaged... he said that if I could do that, he would give me a 3 day pass, and pay for a steak dinner... The steak was delicious... I simply removed the handguards of the M-16, then pulled the disassembly pins and removed the lower receiver... finally I tood a nail of the appropriate size and held it in a pair of needle-nose pliers and used it as a drift punch on the roll pin that held on the front sight assembly... a couple of whacks with a hammer handle and I had removed the upper receiver and barrel from the rack and was able to get the front sight assembly out now that the barrel had left enough room in the space provided for the rifle sights and barrel... Re assembly took about 3 minutes because the roll pin was a little stubborn going back in, but that same afternoon, I had to repeat the process while the local MI and CID guys watched and photographed the process...
the result?... the next generation of rifle racks were manufactured with additional brackets and locking bars to prevent my removal process from ever working again... I will never forget the look on that officer's face when I handed him the reassembled rifle...
