Shall Not Be Questioned

The Hearing Protection Act has been attached to the SHARE act, which is a sportsman’s omnibus bill, and what a glorious omnibus it is. Of the important things the SHARE act does:

• Eliminates the sporting purposes language from GCA ’68 and the law on armor piercing ammunition.
• Creates a blanket exception for shotguns to prevent arbitrary reclassification as destructive devices.
• Moves silencers/suppressors from Title II to Title I (no longer an NFA item).
• Preempts states from playing games to discourage silencers but does not outright prevent states from banning them. (limited preemption)
• Enhances the FOPA language to include travel by means other than vehicles.
• Creates remedies against states that violate the safe travel provisions, including a cause of action and attorneys fees.
• A bunch of hunting related shit I don’t really care about.

One concern I do have with the enhanced safe travel provision is that while it does cover ammunition and firearms, does not cover ammunition feeding devices or other accessories. If this bill passes, it will make suppressors Title I, which means they will become more common and more widely transported. Ten states still ban them even after this becomes law. About the same number of states have some kind of restriction on ammunition feeding devices. FOPA safe travel won’t do us much good if we can still be arrested for magazines and accessories.

The antis are quickly trying to get word out that they are now supposed to oppose the SHARE act, and not the HPA anymore. The attachment of HPA to a bill that should be easier to pass suggests that perhaps the GOP is a bit more serious about actually passing this, if they can pass anything.

I’ve been blogging for ten years, and this bill would constitute winning on a number of things we’ve been fighting for that whole time, including things I didn’t think would be politically possible ten years ago.

Dave Hardy details the problems with the NFA registry in all its horrid detail.

OIG asked how often there was a discrepancy between the inventory and what the NFRTR said the inventory should be: 46% of inspectors said either “always” or “most of the time.” (Only 5% reported “never”).

I’ve heard this from ATF people who have spoken at the National Firearms Law Seminar too. The database is a mess, and there’s been a quiet effort to clean it up going on for years. Dave also notes:

Mind you, felony prosecutions are undertaken relying on the NFRTR to establish that a gun is not registered, and with evidence consisting of an affidavit from the custodian of records for the NFRTR certifying that no record of registration could be found.

But don’t go thinking you’ll evade prosecution if you convert your AR because the NFRTR is flawed. Most machine gun prosecutions there days proceed under 18 USC 922(o), where all they have to do is prove the machine gun was manufactured after May 19th, 1986, and that you possessed it. But if grandpa kicks the bucket, and you find the M1 Thompson he managed to smuggle back from Europe, be sure your lawyer knows the history of the NFRTR.

Passes the House by a 59-49 vote. We’re on a roll! Granted it still has to go through the Senate and earn a Governor’s signature in both MI and NC, but these things often take several sessions to pass. Concealed Carry was this way too. Given that Michigan’s governor has shown a willingness to veto pro-gun bills, Michigan seems a stretch, but every little step.

Voted out of the House by a 65-54 vote<. North Carolina is a pretty large state, with about 10 million people. It’s considerably more populated than Arizona. A victory with Constitutional Carry here will be quite a prize, and would help get the ball rolling elsewhere. It’s a harder leap for legislators to make when Arizona is the most populous state to vote go Constitutional Carry so far. “It’ll never work here,” becomes less an excuse once states that are similarly situated adopt it, and the sky doesn’t fall.

In this day in age, when police cruisers are fitted with networked computers, they can tell immediately whether someone shouldn’t have a gun. The more information technologies like that become more widespread, the less permitting systems make sense.

A bill has been introduced in Pennsylvania that would amend the Pennsylvania Human Rights Act to make gun owners a protected class. This means it would be unlawful for employers, landlords, banks, and public accommodations from discriminating against you because you’re a gun owner or because you carry a firearm.

I have mixed feelings about these bills. On the one hand, this is the system that exists, so as long as it does, I don’t see why, for instance, a landlord ought to be able to deny someone housing because they are a gun owner (and that does happen, and it happens pretty often, actually). Also, it’s hard to have sympathy for companies like Weyerhaeuser, when you read about the way they treat their employees. This incident is what got this whole issue rolling.

But unlike race, sex, disability, etc, owning a gun is not an immutable characteristic, and I’m not that big on the state interfering with private relationships. I accept that it was probably a necessary evil to do so for race. But it is an evil which I am loathe to expand to more and more people over issues that don’t boil down to immutable characteristics.