3.6 "Plastic guns, which can slip through metal detectors..."
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This article is from the talk.politics.guns Official Pro-Gun FAQ, by Ken Barnes (kebarnes@cc.memphis.edu) with numerous contributions by others.
3.6 "Plastic guns, which can slip through metal detectors..."
see Kleck,"Point Blank_p.82
"Inside the NRA: Armed And Dangerous,"by Jack Anderson, Dove Books,
ISBN 0-7871-0677-1 (1996), pp.49-50 [Anderson's book serves as a
concise and convenient collection of nearly all the recent press
clippings maligning gun owners and/or the NRA, as well as many of
the anti-gun myths debunked in this FAQ, all cloaked in the mantle
of objectivity and sympathy for the ordinary gun owner.]
Washington Post, Jan. 15, 1986, p.F14
In summary: The Austrian-made Glock 17 pistol was the subject of a
"gun control" scare originating in 1986 with Washington Post columnists
Jack Anderson and Dale Van Atta (with assistance from anti-gun activist
Josh Sugarmann), because it was one of the first widely available
handguns to have a polymer frame (or handle) which reduced the overall
weight of the gun. In his newspaper column (which, strangely enough,
ran on the comics page) Anderson claimed that Libyan dictator Muammar
Quadaffi was "in the process of buying more than 100 plastic handguns
that would be difficult for airport security forces to detect" to use
in anti-U.S. attacks. Though Anderson's column made the claim that the
Glock 17 was "made almost entirely of hardened plastic," in reality
the Glock still contained over a pound of steel (in the barrel, slide,
magazine, and trigger mechanism), and is detectable both by metal
detectors (due to the metallic content of the gun and any ammunition
it might contain) and security X-ray machines (due to its clearly
recognizable shape). The column referred to these "plastic guns" as
being the "hijacker special," paralleling the rhetoric used to ban the
so-called "Saturday Nite Specials". "Gun control" advocates agitated
for a law which would ban "plastic guns", a threat they claimed would
defeat security measures at airports, prisons, and courtrooms. No all-
plastic undetectable firearms existed at the time, and except for a
fictional depiction in the 1993 Clint Eastwood movie "In The Line
Of Fire" none exist today. There is of course, an exemption in the
Undetectable Firearms law for government agencies. (Intelligence
agencies like the CIA may have such exotic weapons, but won't publicly
reveal the fact.) The Glock, first made for the Austrian military,
has since become a popular sidearm for police officers, who must carry
a gun for long periods of time while on duty.
Rather than exploring ways to upgrade security measures to deal with
possible future technological threats such as non-metallic firearms,
Congress banned their production in the United States and required that
all firearms sold and manufactured in the U.S. must meet an established
detectability standard. The National Rifle Association helped draft the
law which was adopted, and fought to prevent the banning of detectable
firearms containing plastic parts, like the Glock. The ban legislation,
aimed at a non-existent threat, can of course do nothing to prevent the
eventual development of non-metallic firearms in other countries, and
the subsequent acquisition of such weapons by terrorists.
Curiously, the theme of plastic tends to recur in "gun control"
arguments, from "plastic" handguns, to "assault weapons" with black
plastic stocks, to "plastic cop-killer bullets" like the mythical
"Black Rhino" (which manages to combine two previous "gun control"
motifs, "plastic" and "cop-killer"!). Some "gun control" supporters
also advocate bans on plastic toy guns, and "high capacity" squirt guns,
like the popular "Super Soaker".
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