Quote of the Day
Lets suppose for a minute that suppressors become available through vending machines and at WalMart. No tax stamp, just cash or credit card.
I can see municipalities across the country adding regulations requiring suppressors at outdoor public ranges where housing developments have popped up in the recent past.
How would you like to see a potential multiverse wherein suppressors go from prohibited to required? Is that not just as oppressive a dictate from government? Would we not have the NRA and FPC running campaigns against mandatory suppressor use? “It adds an unreasonable financial burden on our 2nd Amendment right to require suppressors…”
Or maybe this is how we pitch it to Liberals. “You know… I have this way to make all guns more expensive, and the RKBA crowd will simply love it! As a matter of fact, they’re proposing it now. Hear me out…
Mike Hines
Via email on March 14, 2025
I laughed out loud.
It would be an interesting change of perspective to be in court fights insisting requirements to possess are unconstitutional. We could always offer the compromise of government subsidies. Of course, such subsides must be funded by taxes on those who registered as being gun free. And those registries would, of course, be public records available to everyone.
It’s often been discussed how strange it is that mufflers are mandatory on cars and (almost) forbidden on guns.
On the notion of mandatory suppressors, the cost isn’t that big an issue (without the legal pain they are pretty cheap) but rather the bulk. Concealed carry of a suppressed gun would be quite a hassle at best.
The discussion takes me back to an entertaining “graphic novel” by Neil Smith and Rex May (https://www.amazon.com/Roswell-Texas-L-Neil-Smith/dp/0974381454), an “alternate history” story in which Texas is independent and has a law requiring all adults to go armed unless they have a “license not to carry”.
I have long advocated for suppressors in vending machines at a competitive price.
I bet they could be made for $25 bucks and sold for $40.
I visited New Zealand some years ago.
I went into a country town hardware store for something, and the entire back wall of the shop was shelves full of suppressors – starting at $40.
At the time, NZ$40 was about USD$15.
This idea of suppressors going from illegal to mandatory is hilarious and a bit terrifying at the same time! It’d definitely turn the NRA’s world upside down—can you imagine the campaign ads about how ‘this hurts your Second Amendment rights’?
Once again, “the right to keep and bear arms”, is the human right of self-defense.
A personal choice. Not something the government can regulate.
Any more than the government can tell me I have to carry a knife also. Or 5, 30 rnd. magazines.
Government is the problem in 99% of all equations, not the answer.
But as the bible says; “It’s hard not to kick against the pricks.”
Wow, was that a prophetic pun on government or what?