Remembering President Nelson Mandela

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, we are about to hit the 1-year mark since the tragic shooting in Sandy Hook, CT, which took the lives of 20 little boys and girls, 6- and 7-year-olds, and 6 of their educators who cared for them.

It should be a source of great embarrassment to the Senate and the House of Representatives that we have not moved the ball forward 1 inch when it comes to the issue of protecting the thousands of people all across this country who are killed by guns every year. This is the case even while 90 percent of Americans agree that people should have proof that they are not a criminal before they buy a gun and that there is really no reason why we should allow military-style weapons to get into the hands of ordinary Americans. We should be embarrassed by the fact that we are not doing more to try to stem the scourge of gun violence that plagues our Nation today. But we should be even more embarrassed if this week we cannot pass a commonsense extension and update to the Undetectable Firearms Act, a bipartisan piece of legislation that has been on the books since 1988. Most people in this country have no idea it exists because up until this week it has been so noncontroversial.

In an effort to explain to my colleagues a little bit about why this is so important, I wish to take my colleagues back 60 years to World War II. In World War II the allies developed a very small firearm called the Liberator. The Liberator was capable of only firing one shot. It was a very small, little gun. The idea was that we would get this out to the resistance movement in Europe and they would be able to conceal this very small firearm so they could get close enough to a German soldier, use the one bullet in the gun to kill the soldier, and then take his weapon. That program never went very far.

Fast forward to 70 years later, to a University of Texas student who came up with a design for a new undetectable firearm--a plastic gun that can be reproduced on what is now known as the 3D printer--named the Liberator. It is very similar to the gun that was developed by the resistance movement during World War II. Witness also the fact that once he posted the plans for that plastic undetectable gun online, those plans were downloaded 100,000 times in short order across this country before the Department of State used its authority to take down those plans.

I don't know exactly what the designs for this gun were, but it can be used in the exact same way the original Liberator gun was used. It is a plastic gun which is undetectable by imaging equipment, by metal detectors. It can be used to get into a very secure place such as, let's say, a government building. The ones being designed today, such as the one the young guy in Texas put online, can't fire more than a couple of bullets, but it can fire enough bullets to injure a law enforcement officer or a security officer, take their gun, and do even more damage.

So we have two problems today when it comes to this new issue of undetectable plastic guns:

First, the law passed in 1988 that bans the manufacture, possession, or sale of undetectable firearms--firearms that can't be picked up with a metal detector, that can essentially move into secure locations without being identified--expires today. If we don't pass an extension, tomorrow it will be legal in this country to create an undetectable firearm.

The second problem is this new technology that is pretty widely available, already called 3D printing, has made it very easy to make firearms that comply with the existing law but are still potentially undetectable.

Why is that? Because to be a legal weapon, you have to have a certain amount of the weapon be metal so it can be picked up by a metal detector or an x ray machine. But because we can now make very creatively constructed weapons with 3-D printers, that piece of metal can be easily removed before it goes through a metal detector and still be used without the metal on the other side of the detection unit, thus essentially erasing the benefit of having a metal component if the metal component can just be stripped out.

It is a pretty simple update we have to make here. All we have to say is that the metal piece of the gun has to be integral to the firing mechanism of the gun so that if you take the metal out to get it through a metal detector it does not work on the other end. But we are having a hard time getting that commonsense update--just recognizing the advancement of technology--passed in the Senate and in the House of Representatives.

So we have these two problems: one, the underlying bill--which is still really good law even without the update--is expiring. We have to pass it here. Second, we need this update to be taken care of.

This is not science fiction anymore. The threat of undetectable firearms has always been around and that is why in 1988 both parties got together to pass it. It has been extended since then. But it is no longer science fiction that somebody can make a gun in their basement basically obliterating the utility of all of our Nation's firearms laws and use it to perpetrate great evil throughout this country.

Mr. President, 3-D printers cost only about $2,000 today. Most futurists are pretty certain that in maybe a decade or more most Americans will have access to this technology. Just like the photocopier and the personal computer seemed out of reach at some point for most middle-class Americans, maybe today the 3-D printer is, but in a decade or more it might be another household appliance that sits right next to your computer printer.

Second, we know how dangerous plastic guns are because people have tested this premise. One investigative journalist in Israel took a plastic gun into the Israeli Parliament--got through the serious security that surrounds that building, got into the Parliament, and sat 10 rows behind Benjamin Netanyahu with a plastic gun in his possession. So this is not science fiction. It is not just a perceived or imagined threat. This is real, this is now, and we have to do something about it.

One of the things that has happened in the wake of Sandy Hook is that schools have invested in enormous amounts of security. I am somebody who does not believe ultimately that is the way you keep schools safe. But to the extent that schools have put in more metal detectors, have put in more security platforms around their entryways and exit ways, it does not do any good if somebody can walk through that school, who wants to do great damage within it, with a plastic firearm that will be legal in this country in one way, shape, or form if we do not pass an updated version of this bill right now this week.

It is time we recognize the future is here, plastic guns are real. As we approach the 1-year anniversary of the most horrific school shooting this country has ever seen, it is time for us to do what we have many times before: reauthorize and update the Undetectable Firearms Act.

I yield the floor.

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