Joe Biden: “The idea, of course, here, Mr. President, is that the proposal that is in the bill, the failure to do this in the bill…”

“The idea, of course, here, Mr. President, is that the proposal that is in the bill, the failure to do this in the bill does not make sense. Listen to some of the types of weapons covered. Poison gas, bombs, grenades, rockets having propellant charges of more than 4 ounces, missiles having an explosive or incendiary charge of more than one-quarter ounce, mines--these are not playthings we are talking about. Remember, the statute of limitations runs not from the time the crime becomes public knowledge, but from the time the crime was committed. So if a terrorist builds a bomb secretly, keeps it in his barn for 22 years, and blows up a building with it, the Federal prosecutors only have 6 months to track the guy down and get an indictment for building that bomb. Crimes covered by the National Firearms Act are serious. They involve illegal manufacture of rockets, bombs, missiles, and sawed-off shotguns. So I cannot understand why anybody would oppose bringing the statute of limitations for these crimes into line with almost every other Federal crime.”