There’s a lot going on at the moment regarding the Hearing Protection Act and the SHORT Act. We all know that the House Ways and Means Committee essentially gutted those two measures and gave us scraps. We’ve talked a lot about what happened, and there’s no need to rehash it.
But the current status is something else.
On Tuesday, I spoke with Ben Sanderson, the deputy federal director of Gun Owners of America, about where things stand as of this moment for my personal YouTube channel.
During our chat, Sanderson suggested that the Rules Committee hearing could be delayed, rather than kicking off at one this morning.
Well, that didn’t seem to happen, as they’re still meeting at the time of me writing this. As a result, some of the information in there is a tad outdated–calling Rules Committee members now and asking them to do something in committee is probably not going to be useful, for example–but there’s a lot to understand.
If you’re confused, there’s a reason. This is kind of a confusing process, but it’s one that’s necessary and has the added benefit of being something that can’t be filibustered in the Senate.
However, both the SHORT Act and the Hearing Protection Act had to be worded carefully so they could be in the budgetary process. The Byrd Rule basically requires that anything tacked onto the budget have to involve revenue in some manner. That actually makes some sense, which is weird for Congress, so GOA worked to craft the language in both of these bills.
Sanderson told me that the $0 for tax stamps and nothing else came from Rep. David Kustoff of Tennessee, and there have been some rumblings of him facing a primary challenge because of it.
Honestly, that’s legit, and it’s something I’ve been advocating for a fair bit lately.
Now, with the Rules Committee meeting as I write this, it might not be useful to make phone calls to your congresscritters and make demands for actions in the rules committee–for those who are on it–but there’s still a lot of politics left no matter what happens today. Call your representatives and senators. Call them and make your voice heard, because even if nothing happens in the House, there’s still the Senate process, where both the HPA and SHORT Act can be included, then reconciled between the two chambers.
Sanderson noted that this isn’t remotely the most controversial element to the budget battle, which means there’s every opportunity to slide this in and get it to stay there.
All we need are some members of Congress, other than the small handful that have already signed onto these measures as they stood.
Call your representatives and pester them. Email them. Make yourself a burden. Make sure you expect them to vote for this and if not, you’ll back any primary challenger they have.
And then we need people to step up and challenge these lawmakers. Then we need to back them with time and treasure. If yours steps up and does the right thing, throw some money at challengers in other districts.
It’s not enough to be anti-gun control anymore. It’s time for them to be pro-gun.
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