The Hearing Protection Act, making it through the House, was a huge win for gun rights. It was specifically crafted to get around the Byrd Rule, which dictates that anything included in a budget or reconciliation bill has to be fiscal in nature. The HPA meets that criteria, in my opinion, though some senators are trying to say otherwise.
Still, I think it’ll hold firm and we’ll get legal suppressors very soon.
But the SHORT Act, which would do the same for short-barreled rifles and shotguns, didn’t make the House cut. There’s still a chance for it to make it, though, and that’s via the Senate.
And the folks at the Buckeye Firearms Association signed a letter urging the Senate to include it.
Buckeye Firearms Association has joined a list of Second Amendment advocates in a letter to the Senate budget and finance committees, urging them to restore the SHORT Act in the reconciliation bill.
The U.S. House of Representatives narrowly passed the bill and included the Hearing Protection Act to remove suppressors — and their burdensome tax and regulations — from the National Firearms Act of 1934, but the bill did not include the SHORT Act, which would remove short-barreled rifles, shotguns, and other weapons from the definition of firearms under the NFA for the purpose of regulation.
BFA previously joined a long list of organizations nationwide in signing an open letter to two U.S. House of Representatives committees, insisting that Congress eliminate unjust restrictions imposed by the NFA.
There’s no list of other signatories on this particular letter, though I can suspect at least some groups who either have or will sign the letter.
You can read it for yourself at the above link.
In short, though–pun fully intended–the letter calls for the SHORT Act to be passed by the Senate, but goes beyond that in some significant ways.
One key provision is basically a call for the federal government to create a kind of preemption on both short-barreled firearms and suppressors, so states cannot prohibit people from owning them. As it stands, a lot of states do have such prohibitions. The letter calls on the Senate to address that.
Frankly, though, I’m not sure they can do that with this bill because of the aforementioned Byrd Rule. They can get the SHORT Act in because it’s structured similarly to the Hearing Protection Act, but preemption for these items is unlikely to pass muster.
That will require new bills to be created and passed, which creates some challenges. The reconciliation bill before the Senate here and now can’t be filibustered. Anything budget-related can’t be.
A gun bill, however, can and likely will be.
Of course, I also don’t think we’re going to see the Senate introduce the SHORT Act into the bill in the first place. They can, but there’s less willingness to do that sort of thing in the Senate. They’re likely to hold firm on the Hearing Protection Act, but short-barreled arms are likely to be a bit too much for them here and now.
I hope I’m wrong. I really, really hope I’m wrong, but I obviously don’t think so.
Read the full article here
