U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer was in Albany Monday to launch an effort to keep undetectable plastic weapons illegal.
Flanked by Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan and Police Chief Eric Hawkins, Schumer sounded the alarm that a Reagan-era law is set to expire on March 8th.
"I'm here as Majority Leader the Senate to launch my push to get Congress to extend this life saving provision in the next month to keep undetectable ghost guns from flooding our streets," said Schumer.
Schumer says current law requires that every gun must contain at least around four ounces of metal, a little less than a roll of pennies.
"But it ensures that no matter what guns will set off metal detectors, which keeps everyone safe," Schumer said. "If this provision were to lapse, they can make this now with 3D printers very easily. They can make plastic guns with 3D printers. And they can easily be bought and sold, making it terrifyingly easy for these weapons to show up at schools, at airports, at big events, because security would have no way of detecting them. And it's hard to fathom that we would allow that to happen."
Hawkins says the department is seeing a rise in confiscated ghost guns.
"Five years ago, we didn't see any ghost guns in our community. And then, two or three years ago, we saw a significant increase to the point of where 13.5 percent of the weapons, illegally possessed weapons that we took off the streets in Albany, were ghost guns," Hawkins said.
Schumer says the NFL, NBA, Major League Baseball and NASCAR are all worried that ghost guns could be snuck into stadiums, so he's pushing hard for an extension of the Undetectable Firearms Act.
"They wrote me personally and voiced their concerns," said Schumer. "Now, you say, Well, why are you waiting for the last minute here? This bill, this amendment, was put into, I put it into the Defense Authorization Act, a must-act proposal a few months ago, and the House Republicans said take it out. I don't know why they did that. But now we have to make another effort to put it in another must pass bill."
Sheehan noted that we all are accustomed to being screened, which gives some peace of mind when entering a facility.
“Many schoolchildren walk through metal detectors, when they go into our schools, when we go into concert venues, when people come to City Hall, when people go into our courthouses. And as we see, the studies that are out there, and the surveys that are out there that talk about the level of anxiety that young people are feeling, one of the top things that they feel anxious about is their own personal safety and guns in schools and school shootings,” Sheehan said.
