Don’t look now but antigun billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s The Smoking Gun is in tears over suppressor export reforms that President Donald Trump’s State and Commerce Department finalized. It’s a pretty good tell that things are headed in the right direction when the gun control organization Everytown for Gun Safety’s The Smoking Gun, is up in arms over the right to keep and bear arms, or the firearm industry’s ability to compete in the international marketplace.
The Smoking Gun is Everytown for Gun Safety’s attempt to portray themselves as the exposé of the firearm industry and Everytown’s attempts to smear firearm manufacturers as the cause of criminal misuse of firearms. In other words, it’s gun control propaganda masquerading as press. As expected with propaganda, it’s an offering of half-truths and outright narrative fabrications into the gun control echo chamber.
The latest in these hoplophobic plots is Greg Lickenbrock’s attempt to deride the transfer of export licensing for firearm silencers, or suppressors, to the Commerce Department from the State Department, finishing the U.S. Munitions List to Commerce Control List transition, a process that the first Trump administration continued in 2020, after the Obama administration derailed it for the firearm industry, and no others, after testifying to Congress they would complete the firearm industry export before the end of its term. Why? To appease gun control groups, like Everytown.
This is the same Lickenbrock that NSSF exposed as the latest gun control “Fudd.” That is, he was once a “gun guy” — an inconsequential gun writer — but he’s suddenly seen the error of his ways and is paying penance by chest-thumping all things gun control. He was also part of Everytown’s “Train Smart” firearm owner safety program, which NSSF exposed as an oxymoron since Everytown thinks guns are inherently evil and should be banned. It’s kind of like a vegan guide to Texas barbecue … or James Talarico for Texas.
Lickenbrock’s hot take on suppressor exports is just what you’d expect. It’s a lot of hot air.
Gun Control Smoke and Mirrors
First, Lickenbrock asserts that the Commerce Department will have oversight of military firearm exports. This is patently false, proving his ignorance of the topic. Export licensing of suppressors for military firearms, such as full automatic, does not transition to the Commerce Department. Those suppressors stay controlled by State Department. Commerce will control export of commercial dual use suppressors.
The transition will not reduce vetting of license applications because every suppressor license application received by Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security will be staffed for interagency review by the State Department, just as every firearm license application has been handled for the past six years. Again, Lickenbrock and The Smoking Gun just don’t know what they are talking about.
Criminal Obfuscation
Those aren’t Lickenbrock’s only misfires. He also claims that streamlining commercial suppressor exports will incite crime in foreign nations. That’s fear-mongering. The transition of commercial dual use suppressors to BIS will not have a negative impact on public safety in other countries. First, if an item is illegal for import into a country, neither the State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls nor BIS will approve an export license to that country. Second, many countries have allowed the legal sale and use of suppressors for decades, without any resulting surge in criminal activity or risks to public safety.
Lickenbrock’s reference to the 2020 transition of firearm export control from State Department to Commerce Department resulting in a surge in gun violence overseas is simply not true. Aside from illegal uses of legally exported firearms misused with tragic results, the vast majority of legally exported firearms are used as authorized for legitimate hunting and sporting purposes, or for use by allied partner country government and law enforcement agencies.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives National Firearms Commerce and Trafficking Assessment: Crime Guns – Volume Two, PART IV: Crime Guns Recovered Outside the United States and Traced by Law Enforcement, published January 2023 should shame Lickenbrock. The report states, “These recovered and traced crime guns represent less than 1% of the total (2,793,002) firearms lawfully exported out of the U.S. between 2016 and 2020.”
Lickenbrock needs to unclutch the pearls and stop hyperventilating. This rule change doesn’t alter laws in other countries. If suppressors are legal in those countries, they’re still legal. If they’re not, they’re not. This rule change only eliminated artificial barriers that Everytown praised when the Biden administration put them in place to hobble the firearm industry.
He, and Everytown know this. They attempt to pass off the Biden administration’s Interim Final Rule published in April 2024 as a panacea to fixing crime across the globe. The 2024 IFR did nothing to promote U.S. national security or foreign policy interests. It was plainly and undeniably meant to harm the U.S. firearm industry, undercut legitimate business including with close partner countries such as NATO and Wassenaar and open the door to less scrupulous foreign manufacturers to supply unvetted parties with firearms without the rigorous review such export received via the U.S. export control process.
In other words, when vetted U.S. manufacturers were cut out of the market, shady international players moved in, without near the oversight required by U.S. exporters.
Military-Grade Propaganda
Lickenbrock blithely claims that the Biden’s bidding of the gun control lobby kept suppressors from being used against U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. That’s not naivety. That’s ignorance. The Biden administration abandoned upwards of $7 billion in weapons and equipment to the Taliban during the disastrous and botched withdrawal, including 600,000 weapons. Some of those small arms were reportedly smuggled to Hamas terrorists and used in the Oct. 7, 2023, terror attacks in Israel that claimed the lives of 1,200, including babies.
Lickenbrock is foolish in his attempt to make it appear that U.S. suppressor manufacturers are the only ones making these devices in the world. Suppressors are manufactured in many countries, most particularly in China. And we know Chinese export controls are not of the standard of U.S. and partner countries. U.S. soldiers would and have faced enemies equipped with suppressors regardless of a U.S. ban on export commercial sales.
The bottom line is that commercial use of suppressors in the United States has grown significantly in the last decade, following what has been true in many other countries. Suppressors are commonly used in many countries as the polite and proven method to reduce noise pollution.
Lickenbrock’s complains that “Neither of the new silencer rules mentions, or even attempts to assess, any potential impacts on the safety of civilians or military personnel through the unlawful use of these devices.” First, he again shows his ignorance because crime and instability are factored into the interagency review of all licensees. Second, since suppressors are already widely available in these foreign markets, the potential impact on safety of civilians and military personnel due to unlawful use is already well known. Those nations make their own laws based upon their own assessments. This finalization of shifting commercial suppressor export oversight from the State Department to Commerce Department doesn’t tell those destination countries how to write their own laws. It only tells U.S. exporters that artificial barriers designed to decimate their business no longer apply.
The only things smoking here are Lickenbrock’s ears after he gets caught peddling gun control lies.
Larry Keane is SVP for Government and Public Affairs, Assistant Secretary and General Counsel of the National Shooting Sports Foundation.