3D Printed Gun Safety Act of 2018

Mr. President, I join my colleagues on the floor, and I salute both Senator Nelson and Senator Blumenthal, who represent

States whose citizens have felt the scourge of gun violence--in Newtown, in Parkland, and in the Pulse nightclub. I don't know how many more Parklands we need, but I certainly know that my colleague from Utah, who only read a part about what alarms him--that it shall not be possible to publish what? To publish the information to create a gun--a gun that is undetectable and untraceable.

Why are we spending billions to secure ourselves as we go through the airports of our country? We saw it after September 11. Now we are going to undermine all of those billions and all of that security by allowing anyone here or in the world to get access to the IP address. You download it, and all of a sudden, you can create a three-dimensional plastic gun that is as deadly as any other gun.

What draws us to the floor to ask the unusual effort of unanimous consent to ultimately bring this legislation to the floor is the failure of the administration to not allow this to happen in the first place. We won't need legislation if the President turns back the decisions of his Secretary of State and others in his administration and says: Wait. This is not in our national security interests. It is not in the national interests of the United States to allow our citizens to be exposed to an undetectable, untraceable gun that is as deadly as any other. It is not in the national interests and security interests of the United States to have our soldiers halfway around the world face terrorists who have access to a new design that will be cheaper for them and at the end of the day will allow them to attack our soldiers.

It is unconscionable. But since the administration, if anything, has acted the opposite way, we come to the floor. If the government has any specific role that rises above all others, it is to protect its citizens. That is what we are trying to do here. It should be a bipartisan request.

What is so difficult about the legislation? Nothing much. One of the two pieces of legislation simply says that you cannot permit an IP address to be published on the internet because, globally, anybody can get that, download it, and create a gun. That is the simple part of it. The other one is that any gun has to be traceable and identifiable and therefore has to have a number on it.

Even when our colleagues who are the most ardent advocates of the Second Amendment say they want to keep guns out of the hands of criminals--well, how do you keep a gun out of the hands of criminals when it isn't detectable and isn't traceable? It is pretty amazing. I have been in the Congress 26 years between the House and the Senate, and it is one of the most amazing moments for me.

Look, this country has a gun violence problem. It has a mass-shooting problem. But a do-it-yourself, downloadable gun will supercharge this crisis, leading to more senseless tragedies. It is already too easy for criminals, extremists, and terrorists to get their hands on a gun. Now we are going to add a new concern: terrorists packing the plans for new, plastic, printable firearms. I don't care if a gun is made out of metal or plastic--if it can fire a bullet and take someone's life, then it should be regulated.

It is beyond irresponsible for the Trump administration to roll over and allow a self-described anarchist to post directions for do-it- yourself guns on a website available to anyone with an internet connection. That is what we are saying. Already, according to some news reports, the blueprints for an AR-15--the weapon used in the massacre at Parkland--were downloaded more than 2,500 times. That is 2,500 unknown individuals in an unregulated space.

As the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I was appalled to find out that the State Department carried this out without notifying Congress. Last Wednesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was before our committee, and he looked us in the eye and said that he was unaware of the issue and that he would look into it. That was on Wednesday. On Friday, the State Department had suspended arms export regulations specifically to allow these 3D gun blueprints to be posted on the internet--so much for looking into it.

This is a case that was proceeding through the courts where the government had won at every round. In this morning's tweet, the President made it pretty clear that instead of listening to the concerns of the American people when he has a gun question--which I would submit is not even a gun question; it is a national security question--he listens to the NRA.

The NRA may be concerned in this particular case. Why? Because plastic guns don't get built by the gun manufacturers and dealers that they represent and that fund their causes.

The posting of a 3D gun shows just how dangerous the Trump administration's regulatory effort to loosen export controls on firearms--including assault-style rifles and even sniper rifles-- actually is to the safety of Americans at home, abroad, and innocent civilians across the globe.

All you have to do is go to this company's website to see it for yourself. They are proclaiming that ``the era of the downloadable gun'' is here. That is what they say on the website. ``The era of the downloadable gun'' is here. Well, we should make sure that era doesn't happen.

These are two simple but powerful commonsense pieces of legislation that can protect us. I call upon the President to stop it dead in its tracks so we don't have to wait for the legislation, but if not, we call upon this institution to protect the American people.

I hope my colleagues will consider coming back later in the day and making another unanimous consent request so that we can actually protect the American people against the ability of anyone--anyone--with a 3D printer to create a gun that can kill a human being and ultimately defy all of our security procedures at airports and elsewhere. And it lets any terrorist in the world who wishes us harm to manufacture it in quantity. That is pretty outrageous. That is what we are talking about. I hope the administration will see the light and change their course.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, to accommodate the Senator from Utah, I will not make my remarks first, but just by way of introduction to say that tonight at midnight American national security is going to be irreversibly weakened by the actions of President Trump and his administration. That is because at midnight the administration will allow the online publication of blueprints to manufacture 3D plastic guns, and this is one example.

So to accommodate the Senator from Utah, instead of making my remarks now, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 3304 submitted earlier today; that the bill be considered read a third time and passed, and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. President, the Senator is basing that on First Amendment rights. There are many limits on our First Amendment rights of speech. You cannot say ``fire'' in a crowded theater. Why in the world would you assert First Amendment rights to publish instructions to manufacture a plastic gun that someone can take through a metal detector, into a crowded theater, and start shooting in that theater-- instead of shouting ``fire,'' which is clearly an understood limitation upon our First Amendment rights of speech.

It is inexplicable that the administration is allowing this to go into effect at midnight tonight. It is dangerous. In fact, the President this morning tweeted that allowing these blueprints to go online--the President tweeted: ``It doesn't seem to make sense.''

I would say amen to that, Mr. President, but it is your administration that has allowed this to happen because after years of winning this issue in courts at every stage of litigation, the administration has surrendered to the crazed demands of a self- described anarchist who is going to put this on the internet. He wants to sow chaos--he said so--in our country and across the world by making these blueprints widely available.

We can make this impossible if, No. 1, the President will do it. He can stop it before midnight, and the clock is ticking. We are only talking less than 9 hours from now because 3D-printed guns, made of plastic or resin, can't be detected by metal detectors. Because they are plastic, there is not a serial number on the metal so they are untraceable, and anyone can get their hands on them, even people who are legally barred from having a gun, such as felons or domestic abusers. So after midnight, people can walk onto airplanes with a deadly weapon because they are not caught in the metal detector, and people would not know about it.

People can walk into schools. My State is the most recent for a school shooting. As a result of Parkland, people are outraged. They want to harden schools, but now are we going to render the metal detectors useless as they try to harden the schools because somebody can get through a metal detector with this or with an AK-47 or an AR-15 that can be manufactured by these 3D printers?

Somebody could come into this building, somebody could be up in that Gallery right now, and if they have a plastic gun, including bullets that are plastic bullets, we wouldn't know about it.

So whether you are talking about schools or this Chamber or whether we are talking about airports, any public space that we try to protect is going to be useless because these 3D-printed firearms are a direct threat to our national security, and we are going to let these go up on the internet tonight at midnight.

I think some of our allies like the Israelis should be concerned about this because this is not limited to the United States. These can be printed anywhere in the world. Therefore, it can give national security apparatuses a great headache because they can't detect them.

So as I stated in the unanimous consent request, I and other Senators have introduced the legislation today to block the online publication of blueprints.

Now, as it turns out, since we can't do it here, and if the President can't do it in 8 hours 45 minutes, it is going online, and it is going to take us a long time--I mean, what Senator or Representative can object to this? So even if we can get the legislation passed, it is going to take a while because the legislative process is slow.

We have also introduced a separate bill to require every gun to have a serial number and to have a main component made of metal so it can be detected by a metal detector.

Obviously, this is all common sense. This is not a partisan issue. Everybody should be concerned about the threat posed by these deadly plastic guns.

I had intended to give these remarks before asking for unanimous consent. As an accommodation to the Senator from Utah, who had to run to an appointment, I went ahead and asked that unanimous consent. But I want my fellow Senators, who have been so great and so articulate on this issue, to be heard. I ask for them to also speak--the Senator from Utah's objection was about First Amendment rights--about why those objections don't apply here.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Florida, Mr. Nelson, for introducing this legislation and also my other colleagues who have been on the Senate floor today.

This is emergency legislation, which is why there was a request for unanimous consent to move forward today. It is very disturbing that consent was not provided because we know that as a result of the Trump administration's actions, starting tomorrow, people all over the country--in fact, all over the world--are going to be able to download on their computers instructions and a whole manual on how to manufacture plastic guns with 3D printing.

This is something that has been before previous administrations. The Obama administration fought hard against this ability for people to be able to send those instructions to make 3D guns at the speed of light around the world. In fact, this administration early on opposed allowing this to happen.

Somehow, when this whole lawsuit was resolved the other day, the folks who want to send these instructions around the world were allowed to do so. In fact, Alan Gottlieb, who is with the Second Amendment Foundation that was part of this case, said:

We asked for the Moon and we figured the government would

reject it, but they didn't want to go to trial. The

government fought us all the way and then all of the sudden

folded their tent.

Secretary Pompeo and the Trump administration folded their tent. As a consequence, Americans will be placed at much higher risk starting tomorrow. We have already seen over 1,000 people sign up to begin to receive the instructions to make AR-15s using 3D printing.

Why is this going to pose a big danger? No. 1, it is a total end-run around criminal background checks for the purchase of a handgun or any kind of weapon. We should be closing the loopholes in the existing background check system, closing things like the gun show loophole. Instead, this allows for a total runaround. If you can just download instructions and use a 3D printer to make a gun at home, you obviously aren't going to go through any kind of criminal background check.

No. 2, we have spent a lot of time and effort giving the ATF the authority to track guns used in crimes. I would have

thought all of us want to make sure we can track people down who are using guns to commit crimes and catch them. If you print a gun at home using a 3D printer, there is no traceable number, there is no serial number. We are not going to be able to easily track down the people who are using these guns to commit crimes.

No. 3, with plastic 3D printing, the technology we have at airports to detect metal will become ineffective.

Folks around the world, if you are a terrorist wanting to do harm, now you are going to get instructions over the internet. You are going to be able to download it as easy as you can download an iTune. With a 3D printer in your basement or around the corner in some space, you are going to be able to manufacture guns; No. 1, evading metal detectors at airports, putting the entire flying public at risk; No. 2, it is a public end-run around the criminal background check system, which is already flawed; and, No. 3, it will not allow us to trace guns used in crimes.

I thought there was a consensus in this body that we should get after people who use guns to commit crimes, whether crimes in the United States or crimes around the world. Yet what this body is doing by not allowing a vote today on the Nelson bill is saying it is OK for people to be using this technology in their basements to make guns that can evade all these systems and commit crimes and make it impossible to trace who did it.

This is a really bad day for the U.S. Senate. This is a moment where people should be acting in emergency fashion to stop this danger and risk to the American public. Instead, people are folding up their tent and allowing this to happen, starting tomorrow. It is a shameful moment.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I thank my colleague and friend from Florida for his leadership on this profoundly important and imminently threatening issue of safety, as well my colleague from New Jersey for his very important leadership and also Senator Markey from Massachusetts. We have joined together in this cause to prevent a new wave of lethal gun violence in our streets and communities resulting from these plastic, undetectable, and untraceable, weapons. We are talking about assault rifles, pistols, and shotguns--all of them homemade. They are ghost guns. They are the new frontier and new face of gun violence in this country.

Our colleague from Utah raised a First Amendment objection. The fact is that the courts are dealing with that objection. It is the basis of a challenge brought by a group who so far has failed in the courts to stop this public health regulation.

No right is absolute. The First Amendment is not absolute. The idea of crying fire in a movie house is one example that is given time and again. Likewise, in the course of our history, we have found that the First Amendment has to yield to public safety when there is an imminent and urgent threat. Clearly, there is here.

I have supported companion legislation that would, in fact, stop the actual making of these kinds of weapons. It involves none of the First Amendment difficulties the Senator from Utah has raised, and I will be pursuing it perhaps through the same kind of unanimous consent effort in the days to come.

Today, the Senator from Florida is absolutely right to seek this body's unanimous consent in the face of this threat that is self- inflicted by the Trump administration. It has caved to the rightwing fringe group and the NRA, which are challenging this public safety regulation, and it has, in effect, snatched defeat from the jaws of victory because the litigation was on a path to prevailing against those objections. This litigation should have been permitted to run its course. It was on a path to success. But now the administration has created this emergency, beginning at midnight tonight. On August 1, plans, designs, blueprints can be published without limit on the internet, making possible the mass homemade manufacture of these ghost guns. They are a scourge, a potential source of death and injury on our streets.

Any idea that plastic is less durable or strong as a source of material for these guns is completely outmoded because we make planes from plastic. Plastic in some forms is as durable and strong as metal.

The threat here is real and urgent, and I join my colleague from Florida in asking that there be unanimous consent. I hope we will pursue this legislative effort together and that we will have bipartisan support. I stress that we must have bipartisan support. Senators who fail to step up, speak out, and act in the face of this emergency should be held accountable.

Mr. President, I yield the floor to our colleague from New Jersey.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I first saw this legislation literally moments ago; therefore, I haven't had adequate time to review it, but I will say this: Any legislation that comes from this body that begins with the following words will attract my attention and should attract the attention of anyone who is concerned about our First Amendment and other constitutional rights. It begins with the words: ``It shall be unlawful for any person to intentionally publish. . . . '' That ought to be concerning to us--to each and every one of us--Democrats and Republicans alike.

On that basis, I object.