Congress has agreed to extend by another decade a ban on plastic guns that can evade traditional security screening, after an effort to include stronger limits was rejected in the Senate, the Los Angeles Times reports. The renewed Undetectable Firearms Act, due to expire at midnight, goes to President Obama for his signature.
First passed in 1988 and signed by President Reagan, the law requires that plastic guns contain enough metal to set off a metal detector or appear in X-ray scanners. It has been renewed twice before, under Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush. Advocates of stricter gun measures lamented that the renewed measure does not go far enough. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) sought to add a provision that would require plastic guns, including those that might be produced by new 3-D printing technology, to include metal as a permanent component. A design for such an all-plastic 3-D weapon was posted online briefly this summer, but was removed after complaints by law enforcement. Senate Republicans resisted Schumer's amendment as a political stunt.