Celia Israel: “I thank the gentleman from Virginia, who serves ably as ranking member of the Subcommittee on Crime. I also want to…”

“I thank the gentleman from Virginia, who serves ably as ranking member of the Subcommittee on Crime. I also want to thank my friend, the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Coble), who truly is a gentleman and who will be missed, for his bipartisan work on this bill. We have worked well together, and I am deeply grateful to the gentleman for that partnership. Mr. Speaker, in 1988 when we passed the Undetectable Firearms Act, the notion of a 3-D printed plastic firearm slipped through metal detectors and onto our planes and into secure environments was a matter of science fiction. The problem is that today it is a reality, and in only 6 days the law banning the Undetectable Firearms Act expires, and so we have to act now. This law was enacted under President Reagan in 1988. It was reauthorized under President Clinton, and it was reauthorized again in 2003 under President Bush. When Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton and George Bush agree on something, so should we. This has always been a matter of bipartisanship, and so we should continue that bipartisanship and pass this bill today. It is bipartisanship because it is a matter of common sense that we don't want to make it easy for terrorists and criminals to bring guns past metal detectors onto our planes and into secure environments. As the gentleman from Virginia stated, in our view this bill is not perfect.…”