A New York Democrat wants to revise gun laws to encompass a downloadable plastic gun produced on a 3-D printer.
On Friday, Defense Distributed premiered its plastic firearm with only one small necessary metal part: the firing pin.
Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) wants to pour water on this invention with his Undetectable Firearms Modernization Act, which extends a 1988 ban on plastic guns that expires this year and extends it to include homemade, plastic high-capacity magazines and receivers. The piece of metal in the downloadable gun, which allows it to be spotted by metal detectors, keeps it within current law.
“Security checkpoints, background checks, and gun regulations will do little good if criminals can print plastic firearms at home and bring those firearms through metal detectors with no one the wiser. When I started talking about the issue of plastic firearms months ago, I was told the idea of a plastic gun is science-fiction. Now that this technology appears to be upon us, we need to act now to extend the ban on plastic firearms,” Israel said.
Israel “revamped” his bill to make it “illegal to manufacture, own, transport, buy, or sell any firearm, receiver, or magazine that is homemade and not detectable by metal detector and/or does not present an accurate image when put through an x-ray machine.”
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) was so alarmed by Friday’s demonstration video of the downloadable gun that he called a Sunday news conference to jump on board Israel’s bill.
“We’re facing a situation where anyone — a felon, a terrorist — can open a gun factory in their garage, and the weapons they make will be undetectable,” Schumer said. “It’s stomach churning.”
The senator clarified he doesn’t want to ban 3-D printers outright.
See update on next page.
UPDATE: On CNBC today, Schumer said “at the very least” Congress needs to make it “a crime to have such a gun.”
“If the police see you carrying one on the street, they’ll know it’s a crime. If anybody sees you doing it, they’ll know it’s a crime,” he said. “What we should do beyond that, I don’t know. I mean, obviously there are First Amendment issues. We’ve had this issue about bombs being put on the Internet in the past. And obviously someone could go overseas and put something on the Internet where our laws don’t govern.”
“But we have to do more than just make it a crime. I agree with that, mindful of the various constitutional and other types of constraints,” the senator continued. “And I don’t want to abolish these printers, that’s for sure, because I think by and large they do good things.”
Schumer said Congress has to investigate all ways in which guns can be made and regulate them.
“Everyone saw that John Malkovich movie, In the Line of Fire. It was a frightening movie. He spent months and months and months trying to craft a gun made of wood and plastic and figuring out a way,” he said.
“Obviously, you still have to deal with the bullets, but they could be put in a metal casing that could get through a metal detector without it ever being revealed there — a bullet. But he spent months doing this so he could assassinate the president, and the movie was frightening. He was one of the best bad guys I’ve ever seen in a movie. But now it’s real. And that’s — that’s much more frightening.”
PJM FLASHBACK: Gutenberg’s Rifle: The Downloadable Firearm Is Almost Real
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