With Announcement of Fully Plastic Gun, Rep. Israel Stresses Need for Revamped Undetectable Firearms Act
With Announcement of Fully Plastic Gun, Rep. Israel Stresses Need for Revamped Undetectable Firearms Act
HON. STEVEN J. ISRAEL
OF NEW YORK
MEMBER, UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
May 3, 2013
With Announcement of Fully Plastic Gun, Rep. Israel Stresses Need for Revamped Undetectable Firearms Act
As Debate Stirs around Gun Safety, Homemade Gun Enthusiasts Show Firearms Can be Made At Home with Ease
Melville, NY—Today, following news of a working plastic gun made almost entirely on a 3D printer, Congressman Steve Israel (D-Huntington) renewed his call for passage of his recently-introduced Undetectable Firearms Modernization Act that extends the ban on plastic firearms and includes homemade, plastic high-capacity magazines and receivers. The existing ban on plastic guns expires this year and does not clearly cover these major components. On Friday, Defense Distributed, a group of homemade gun enthusiasts, premiered a plastic firearm with only one small necessary metal part, a single nail used as the firing pin.
Rep. Israel said, “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.”
The Defense Distributed project circumvents the current Undetectable Firearms Act by including an extraneous block of metal in the gun, making the firearm detectable by metal detector. However, those who wish to smuggle guns onto planes and into high security areas will soon be able to download the digital blueprints from Defense Distributed’s website and forgo the extraneous metal, producing guns completely undetectable by metal detector.
The revamped Undetectable Firearms Act that Rep. Israel wrote makes 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. The reauthorization would extend the life of the bill for another 10 years from the date of enactment.
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This work is in the public domain in the United States because it is a work of the United States federal government (see 17 U.S.C. 105).
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