GOP Introduces Perhaps Most Absurd Pro-Gun Law Yet

[Lee-Lee]

18. In some countries in Europe that are mandated for hunting

And in others it's considered rude to hung without one.

It's really a non-issue from a crime perspective to change this law. Any criminal who wants one can make one easy enough- if you simply get a thread adapter and screw an oil filter on the end of a barrel you can get a 30-35db drop for 100 rounds or so and after the first round punches a hole in the end it's just as accurate. So quite literally anyone who wants to get one to use illegally needs only to spend about $20 at Home Depot and Autozone and spend about 5 minutes putting it together.

The keeping of them on the NFA is pretty ridiculous. The whole point of the NFA tax at $200 when passed in 1934 was to tax them and full auto weapons and others out of the hands of private citizens but keep them accesablr for the elite and big corporations- that is why the Pinkertons and other strike breakers in the 1920s and 1930's always had the strikers outgunned.

The $200 tax at this point has outlived its bad intended life anyway, and given the amount of time the government spends processing the paperwork it's sure to be a net loss for the government. And they spend all that time to do manually the exact same background check that a gun dealer accomplishes with a phone call, because the law is still following 1934 guidelines.

So at this point they are collecting $200 in tax revenue and making people wait for momths while they manually process paperwork that does nothing more than the exact same thing a NICS check at a gun dealer does now. There is no way that the $200 covers the manpower and infrastructure it takes to manage this, so not only are they keeping a bad, out of date system they are losing money in the process.

There is no rational arguement for keeping suppressors on the NFA. The only one that even approaches one is that the penalties to untaxed possession discourage criminals, but that doesn't pass the common sense test. It's already illegal for a felon to have a firearm and the law change would treat them in the same class as a firearm so a felon caught with one on a gun would face double charges, and anyone who plans to use a firearm to kill someone already is willing to violate many much more serious laws so the small difference between penalties for an NFA weapon and a suppressor regulated like a regular firearm used illegally are small potatoes compared to murder and attempted murder.