Quote of the Day
I oppose any form of regulation or tax on the people’s right to keep and bear arms. No constitutional right should be at risk due to public opinion, or subject to regulatory and tax burdens. These rights certainly extend to the procurement of safety accessories for firearms. My legislation would eliminate the overly complicated and antiquated process for acquiring suppressors and ensure that those purchases are no longer subject to federal regulation.
Bob Good
U.S. Representative from Virginia
May 6, 2024
Bob Good introducing bill to protect gun silencers from federal regulation (msn.com)
It is a nice gesture, but even if it were to pass both houses (unlikely) President Biden would certainly veto it.
But, maybe, next year it could be passed into law and we could go to sleep with the sweet sound of Democrats wailing and the gnashing of their teeth filling the streets.
The goal of this bill isn’t that it become law. The cynical side of me says that the politician who proposed it knows that it won’t become law, but is using the bill to promote his RKBA bonafides in order to keep his 2A supporters in an election year.
The cynical side of me agrees with this assessment.
I agree, but if we could convince enough Congresscritters of the need to polish their RKBA bonafides we might be able to get somewhere…the right answer derived incorrectly still counts as a right answer.
It’s all a matter of definition. There really is no legal definition of a silencer or suppressor and the BATFE has been allowed to develop their own definition of what constitutes a silencer or suppressor. The BATFE has even prosecuted people for manufacturing devices that looked like a suppressor but made the noise louder.
So here is how we define things.
Gas powered guns, spring powered guns (BB guns), black powder guns, coil guns, curios and relics are not firearms. (This is basically a restatement of current legislation.)
A silencer is a device that can attached to a firearm and reduce the sound of a firearm discharge from 70 decibels or greater to 30 decibels or less when measured at a distance of 10 feet. (This is how Hollywood portrays silencers.)
Any device that meets this criterion shall be banned from ownership by private citizens. (The government can still own these devices.)
Any device which fails to meet this criterion shall be called a suppressor and shall be removed from regulation under the NFA. Anyone eligible to own a firearm may freely own, purchase, manufacture, possess and use a suppressor without further encumbrance, fees or regulations.
We’ll call this “The Silencer Ban”.
We all know how suppressors really work and that there are no silencers that meet this definition. It effectively removes federal regulation of suppressors.
Democrats MUST vote for this law because it is holy gun control. Woe betide the Democrat that fails to vote for the Silencer Ban.
Interesting.
I could see that working. The purist in me would whimper, but I would support that approach until SCOTUS slapped down all such bogus regulations.
We’ve lost our rights incrementally. If that’s how we have to take them back, so be it.
(As much as I’d like most-if-not-all gun laws gone in one fell swoop, it’s not likely. Incremental improvement is better than no improvement.)
Agreed.
The incremental approach is the way the Courts are disposed to, whether by training or temperament. Plessey v Ferguson was incrementally reduced until Brown v Board of Education et al. repealed the last bit remaining. THAT took 57 years to accomplish.
There’s a case that involves how to determine a court’s jurisdiction, which I won’t burden you all with, which took only seven years, but that was a case mostly of concern to the courts, and the courts will act faster when it is their concerns and interests at stake.
As if “shall not be infringed”, isn’t enough. Heller and Bruen already made the banning and regulation schemes of “accessories”, to firearms illegal.
Just like banning and taxing magazines and ammo out of existence.
It’s already been shot down, and it flamed in hard.
Now were getting more bans than ever out of state and local communists.
The problem is the communist mindset. They’ve had total free rein for a100 years or better now to regulate and murder anyone that didn’t go along.
And nothing they have ever done in firearms regulation is even remotely legal. They know that. They don’t care. Thus, the reason they don’t follow the law, or listen to courts.
Pass all the laws you want. Communists will be more than happy to ignore those too.
Until SCOTUS starts laying down the law in unambiguous terms. (Already did actually.) And demand the lower courts/government follow.
The sooner the rest of us can do the same.
This was the fight in 1775. And surprise! It somehow still is today!
And no one gives a crap about suppressors.
It’s about the communists not letting you win, anything.
Sir Robert Peel, who invented the modern police in London stated this as part of his reason for establishing the institution: “To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police, the police being only [no more than] members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.”
Law Enforcement Officers are not the military, they’re just citizens who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen. Anything the police can possess, other private citizens should be able to possess.
Add me to the cynical list.
Republicans are great at introducing bills that have no hope in the other chamber, or are sure to be vetoed.
When they control both chambers and the oval office, cue the crickets.
“… who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.”
THIS is a major problem with the police. Being a FULL TIME job leads to a mindset that is bad for relations between cops and the public.
I think the citizens would be vastly better off if all police positions that interface with the public were part-time positions, with rules that forbid working for multiple departments to eliminate any attempt to be a full time cop.
One could argue that, at least under some circumstances, gunshots are a form of speech and as such a suppressor/silencer ban is also a 1A violation.
If protest and vandalism are forms of speech as one Leftist said recently (albeit not in a case decision), there is no principled reason gunshots could not be speech as well.
Bills like this are almost always touchy feely feel good political Kabuki Theatre BS.
The pseudo conservative introducing them KNOWS they have zero chance of becoming law so they can preen and posture about “defending the Second” without actually worrying the bill will pass. Such a tactic fools some of their constituency into buying their bullshit while not offending the commies who are truly in charge.