While suppressors are still regulated under the National Firearms Act, at least we don’t have to pay a $200 tax stamp when we get one. We have to do far more than we should in order to get one, but it’s still a move in the right direction. I’ll take what I can get, then try to get the rest later.
However, lest you believe that anti-gunners in Congress would be content to take the loss, a new bill seeks to move us backward on the topic. It doesn’t seek to reintroduce the tax stamp, either, nor does it try to do it with a much higher price tag.
Oh no, it seeks to ban suppressors entirely.
Signaling the agenda should polarity shift in Washington in the coming months and years, a group of House Dems has debuted legislation to outlaw suppressors.
Dubbed the Help Empower Americans to Respond, or HEAR, Act, the proposal would “ban the importation, sale, manufacturing, transfer, and possession of gun silencers or suppressors.”
Saying “Silencers are not tools of self-defense,” HEAR Act sponsor U.S. Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, a New Jersey Democrat, argues such devices “have no legal application,” and her proposal is part of “a common sense approach to firearms legislation.”
Notably, suppressors are prohibited for consumer use in Watson Coleman’s state, one of just eight states with such a ban on private ownership. Other supporters of the bill at filing include Reps. Adriano Espaillat (N.Y.), Jahana Hayes (Conn.), Glenn Ivey (Md.), Sean Casten (Ill.), and Ed Case (Hawaii). As with Watson Coleman, all are Democrats, and, except Ivey, hail from states that outlaw consumer-owned suppressors.
I do so love it when a New Jersey Democrat who knows nothing about self-defense decides to tell us that the device that would allow us to shoot an intruder in our home without causing permanent hearing damage to our families isn’t a tool for self-defense and has no legal application. I guess her pronouncement is all we need to know that we got everything wrong despite decades of education on the subject, right?
Oh, wait…
It should also be noted that the bill does not grandfather in existing suppressors except for police and nuclear security organizations. That’s it. You could have had a suppressor for 30 years, and this bill would require you to either turn it in during a “buyback” or become a felon, even though you’ve done nothing wrong.
And since suppressors are registered by the ATF, they know who lawfully purchased them.
What concerns me most about it is that there are far too many judges out there who seem to believe that “arms” doesn’t include things like suppressors.
The good news is that there’s no hope in hell of this passing before the midterms, and even if anti-gunners get both the House and Senate in November, it would require a supermajority in both to turn this into law, as it’s likely President Trump will veto it should it make it to his desk.
But we know where they’re going, even if they’re not pushing gun control as a significant issue in their campaign rhetoric these days. They didn’t use it in Virginia last year, either, and what did we see when they took office there?
Yeah, it’ll be like that.
Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
Help us continue to report on and expose the Democrats’ gun control policies and schemes. Join Bearing Arms VIP and use promo code FIGHT to receive 60% off your membership.
Read the full article here
