Feel Safe From Gun Violence While Getting on an Airplane? Think Again

Congress Fails to Bank Non-Detectable Guns Made from 3-D Printers

Memo to Al Qaeda  - Please Stop Laughing

A law than bans the manufacture of guns that cannot be detected by airport security systems seems uncontroversial.  In fact the only controversial thing about it is that it has a term limit, and must be renewed every now and then.  In the past this has not been an issue, even the gun lobby is somewhat afraid of getting on an airplane where other passengers have a bunch of guns.

In the past, renewing the Undetectable Firearms Act, as the law is known, has been a largely noncontroversial move. It first passed in 1988 and was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan; Congress has renewed it twice since.

But technology has changed.  It is now possible to make a gun with a 3D printer that can have its metal part removed, rendering the gun undetectable by airport security.  Reasonable people want to ban that.

Democrats in the Senate tried to renew it before the Thanksgiving recess with a simple one-year extension, hoping they could use the coming year to pass the 3-D printing provisions.

As the law is currently written, manufacturers of 3-D printed guns are only required to make their firearms detectable to security screeners in some way, usually by including some form of metal. But some designers have made that metal piece nonfunctional and easily removable.

Unreasonable people, that is the gun lobby, are aghast.

Opponents of expanding the current law argue that 3-D printed guns are expensive to make and unreliable to fire, and so not worth regulating.

But unlike the gun lobby, there are actually people who know what they are talking about here.

But law enforcement agencies, including the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, say the proliferation and improvement of 3-D printing technology, along with the falling cost of the machines that make it possible, have created a very real security threat. The bureau tested a 3-D printed gun that it assembled from designs downloaded online and found it capable of firing multiple metal .380-caliber bullets.

The terrorists and would be terrorists are not worried.  Republicans in the House have passed a renewal with no prohibitions against 3D printed guns.   And while the terrorists did not put out the following statement,

We the amalgamated union of airplane terrorists wish to congratulate and support the gun lobby for making it possible for us to get back into the airplane hijacking business.  Without their ignorance, stupidity and blind adherence to ideology in the face of public danger we would never again be able to do another September 11 type of attack.  Thanks gun lobby, we know whose side your are on.

it's what they are all thinking behind their giggles at American stupidity.