Year: 2011

NRA-ILA’s hunting policy division is busy trying to educate hunters on something that might surprise you: the usefulness of suppressors. As many of you are well aware, suppressors, or silencers, have been regulated heavily by the federal government since the 1930s, and are subject to the National Firearms Act. The popularity of suppressors is soaring, to the point where ATF has been complaining in legal seminars I’ve attended that they are having a hard time keeping up with all the NFA paperwork, especially as Trusts are quickly becoming the preferred mechanism for papering Title II firearms and accessories.

I was surprised when NRA did a Facebook post after a victory legalizing suppressors that there were a number of people expressing discontent, and blathering ignorance that’s been drilled into people’s heads by decades of Hollywood movies and unfamiliarity. It’s looking like NRA is trying to address that. Does this mean we’re close to being able to push some legislation to deregulate them? I don’t know. It’s difficult to get Congress to act, and our Republican friends tend to act on the gun issue more out of political benefit than true love. But I think we’re moving in that direction.

… getting all hysterical about HR822, and starting a dog and pony show in the Senate, It looks like another victory is afoot in Congress:

Cox pointed to three provisions in particular that would be made law under the minibus: language that would prohibit the Justice Department from consolidating firearms sales records, from electronically retrieving the records of former firearms dealers and from disclosing information on people who have passed firearms background checks.

The bill includes a host of one-year gun protections and new language barring the Justice Department from requiring imported shotguns to meet a “sporting purposes” test. The legislation also bars the use of funds to transfer the functions of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to other agencies and to promulgate or implement any rule requiring a physical inventory of any licensed firearms business.

I’m particularly happy about the part I bolded there. I’m guessing this is a funding rider that prevents ATF from spending money to enforce this provision. That effectively renders the sporting purposes test meaningless for shotguns. This prevents ATF from implementing its plans, which we discussed with John Frazer of NRA-ILA here.

Tam takes a look at what thinks looked back in the 90s and early 2000s. She includes a link to a forum post from circa 2000, asking people what they thought things would be like in 2010. Needless to say most people are not optimistic, and the people who everything thought were wild dreamers were actually closer to reality.

Ten years ago, a major party Presidential candidate was running on a platform of universal licensing and registration for all gun owners. The guy NRA was backing only went so far as calling for the assault weapons ban to be renewed (though, no one really thought he meant it, and it turned out he didn’t).

Now we’re getting pretty close to having national reciprocity, and our opponents are happy if they can get members of Congress to even mention them by name. Things have definitely changed in ten years, but we still have a ways to go.

UPDATE: More from Joe Huffman, who says it was worse.

A number of other issue have cropped up while we’ve been distracted by HR822. They’ve learned that often the best defense is a good offense. One is that it seems Obama is taking some actions against shooting on federal land. The other is that, rather than fighting HR822 in the House, Bloomberg and his anti-gun cadre have gone on the offensive in the Senate. Dave Kopel appeared on Cam & Company a few nights ago to discuss this. Here is the video:

UPDATE: Interior has backed off.

During the floor speeches, a few legislators so mentioned that something like 15 states participated in a “Joint Concealed Carry Database.” This is the first I had ever heard of this. I know Pennsylvania is one of the states that has a system whereby a permit can be validated, through calling a phone number. But I’m fairly certain this is something run by the Pennsylvania State Police. Does anyone know of an interstate compact that allows this kind of data to be centrally shared?