Political Quotes

“Taggants have been studied. I am holding up one of these studies entitled ``Taggants In Explosives.'' The date is April 1980. The studying office is the Office of Technology Assessment. You can see the thickness of the study. On the issue of safety, what the Office found: In no case did the addition of encapsulated taggants significantly increase the sensitivity of the explosive materials to the test conditions. No evidence of any decreased stability or other significant changes was found in any of the tests with dynamite, gels, slurries or black powder. That is essentially the world that would be affected by taggants. The taggants would affect, really, these areas. In my amendment we do provide for a study, but what we say is at some point you have to say enough of studying and make a decision and go ahead. Twelve more months of study and then it is implementation, where taggants can be used with safety, with no increase in the volatility of the explosive matter, and where they could lead to being able to trace suspects in bombings. There have been two constituencies opposed to taggants. Let us be brutally frank. One of them is, once again, our friends in the National Rifle Association. And the second is the explosives industry. The explosives industry says taggants would add cost to us.…”