Sometimes We Have to Take the Good When the Perfect Isn’t an Option

When Donald Trump was elected to a second non-consecutive term in November, along with GOP control of Congress, all of us who care about gun rights once again got stars in our eyes. Visions of 50-state carry reciprocity and silencers being sold at Harbor Freight and Home Depot danced in our heads.

That was fun and all and the requisite bills were written and introduced in Congress. Some of it was done in earnest and some of it was nothing more than performative fan service by politicians who knew good and well that the legislation was as doomed as the Cretaceous dinos who saw that big flaming rock hurtling toward them 65 million years ago.

In other words, we’d all like to have national reciprocity. And we’d all like to see suppressors delisted from the NFA. But given the realities of razor thin majorities in both the House and the Senate, along with pathetically few politicians with spines of sufficient stiffness to make any of that happen, it’s just not happening. We’d love to tell you there’s a realistic chance that either will come to pass, but we don’t make it a practice to lie to our readers. Still, isn’t it pretty to think so?

Over the weekend, our friends at Ammoland published a story about what’s happening with the Hearing Protection Act in the House Ways and Means Committee. As John Crump writes . . .

The Hearing Protection Act (HPA) might be in trouble in the House Ways and Means Committee, and anti-gun lobbyists are NOT the ones holding it up.

David Kustoff (R-TN) has been actively pushing to lower the tax stamp to $5 from $200, which would be a welcome change, but the better alternative is to remove suppressors completely from the National Firearms Act of 1934 (NFA). That would eliminate the tax stamp fee and remove all other NFA requirements.

Yes, delisting cans would certainly be better. If that’s doable.

Heavy lobbying is being done by the former head of the National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA), Chris Cox, a paid lobbyist. Cox is working to lower the tax stamp fee to $5 and keep suppressors on the NFA!

The current NRA-ILA has pushed for the removal of suppressors from the NFA, and Cox’s actions are contrary to that stance. Mr. Cox no longer has any connections to the NRA. Mr. Cox has also lobbied for a gun company that produces suppressors, which has strongly advocated removing silencers from the NFA, and could make millions of dollars if the hearing protection item is delisted from the NFA.

Yes, this sucks. There’s no reason why metal tubes that save shooters’ hearing should be regulated like machineguns (not that machineguns should be regulated more than semi-autos either). But while I’ve had no contact with anyone involved in the HPA process at all, none of this sounds nefarious.

Politics has accurately been called the art of the possible. Believing the bill could pass on its own and get 60 votes in the Senate (let alone wrangling all of the House Republicans) to get it though to the President’s desk is a fantasy. Could the bill be tacked on to some other “must pass” item like budget reconciliation (no filibuster, simple majority to pass)? Maybe…again if and only if Republican have the cojones to do that.

In other word, don’t bet your mortgage on it. So what’s happening to the bill in the Ways and Means committee? We’d guess it’s realpolitik. It sounds like Cox and Rep. Kustoff have recognized that they have a snowball’s chance in Hell of passing the bill delisting suppressors and rather than throwing their hands up and saying, ‘Oh well, we gave it the old college try,’ they’ve decided to take a big step in the right direction.

Think about it for a minute. A tax stamp has cost $200 since it was enacted as part of the NFA in 1934. While inflation has whittled the real value of that away over the decades, it’s still not nothing. Add that amount to the price of a good suppressor — which will run you anywhere from $300 to $1300 depending on caliber, materials, features, etc., that’s still enough to discourage a lot of people from buying one. Beside the fact that it’s just plain insulting to pay Uncle Sam $200 for no good reason at all, most people would rather put those two Benjamins toward more ammo.

But what if a tax stamp costs only $5? That would be much more than just “a welcome change.” Lots of us pay that much for coffee every day. A $5 tax stamp would effectively be de minimis. Combine that with the fact that average eForm 4 wait times these days can be counted on the fingers of one hand and the hurdle to suppressor ownership would be almost nonexistent.

Yes, you’d still have to fill out the Form 4. Yes, you’d still have to submit fingerprints. Yes, that’s all blatantly unconstitutional (or should be adjudicated as such in a Supreme Court ruling).

But once again, we live in the real world. A world inhabited by sniveling, linguini-spined politicians on the “good” side and venal gun-hating hacks on the “bad” side. A world with billionaire-backed civilian disarmament operations run by hoplophobic gun-grabbers who operate by sowing fear and work on a daily basis to limit Americans’ gun rights. A world where anti-gun stenographers in the media are only too happy to further the messaging of the gun control industry.

In short, delisting silencers from the NFA simply isn’t in the cards. We’d love to be proven wrong, but it’s just not a realistic possibility now (or likely any time soon). And that probably accounts for what’s happening behind closed doors in Washington.

So…what if the average gun owner could sidle up to a SilencerCo kiosk at their local gun store, fill out the Form 4, submit their fingerprints right there, and pay only $5 on top of the cost of the can? And what if they could then pick up their can the same week? That would open up suppressor ownership to tens of thousands (if not more) people than today. And that’s something that should be done if it can be.

While it’s not ideal, it’s unquestionably a big step in the right direction. And if that’s what can be achieved right now, we’d call that a win.