Hysteric anti-gun Democrats continue to be terrorized by dreams of a fictional John Malkovich character

Printed plastic firearms have not been linked to a single injury. They have not been linked to any crimes, any deaths, any terrorist attacks, or any assassination attempts.

Advertisement

Ever.

But a ban on “undetectable firearms” first passed in 1998 due to the paranoia of anti-gun Democrats over non-existent plastic guns and renewed in 2003 due in part to non-existent ceramic guns featured in a Clint Eastwood movie is set to expire on December 9, and these “progressive” politicians have worked themselves into lather over not just renewing the existing ban, but greatly expanding it.

Schumer, however, has said the technology of 3-D printing has advanced to the point anyone with $1,000 and an Internet connection can access the plastic parts that can be fitted into a gun. Those firearms can’t be detected by metal detectors or X-ray machines.

The senator says that means anyone can download a gun cheaply, then take the weapons anywhere, including high-security areas.

More than 100,000 copies of plans for the world’s first 3D-printed handgun, The Liberator, were downloaded in May before the State Department told the Texas-based nonprofit behind the firearm to stop sharing the file.

Charles Schumer is blatantly lying.

Any block of plastic of sufficient mass and density to be used as as a firearm will still show up in an X-ray machine, just as more porous and less dense bones show up in x-rays of people. Likewise, any “plastic gun” system still requires metal parts to operate, as plastic firing pins are too soft and flexible to work. A metal firing pin must be used in the firearm to ignite a metal-encased primer mounted in a very detectable metal cartridge holding a very thick metal bullet, that all show up quite readily in metal detectors and X-ray machines alike.

Advertisement

But this is unlikely to stop the fear-based machinations of anti-gun politicians who seem to be driven by fears of movie prop guns than firearms found in the real world, such as the gun carried by assassin Mitch Leary (John Malkovich) in 1993’s In the Line of Fire.

Let me reiterate for these terrified politicians that Malkovich’s character “Mitch Leary” is fictional, as his undetectable gun.

Scenes from Hollywood movies and fears of things that have never happened should not be driving public policy, even if these fears belong to people as self-important as politicians.

Join the conversation as a VIP Member