Repealing Useless Gun Laws Isn’t ‘Reward’ For Gun Lobby

I’m constantly amazed at how often anti-gun zealots can completely ignore their own failures, while pretending we on the other side are the ones making stupid decisions.

It’s insane, really, especially if you define insanity as doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. They want gun control, it fails, then they want more of what didn’t work.

Or, they cite one failure to criticize a pro-gun move in a completely different place.

Take this op-ed, for example.

Just a few weeks ago, four people — including an NYPD officer — were senselessly killed in New York City by a gunman armed with an AR-15-style rifle. It was the deadliest shooting New York City has seen in 25 years. Like so many of you, I was heartbroken — and angry. Because no matter how strong New York’s gun safety laws are, they can’t stop weapons of war from flooding across our borders from states with weaker laws. Gun violence, and the proliferation of assault weapons, is a national crisis that demands a national solution.

But instead of protecting our communities, federal leaders like U.S. Rep. Mike Lawler and Donald Trump are doing the opposite. In July, Lawler passed and Trump signed a reconciliation bill eliminating the $200 tax on purchasing or manufacturing silencers, short-barreled rifles and shotguns and other dangerous weapons.

This is not a minor change. It’s a full-scale rollback of nearly a century of bipartisan safeguards. And it could not come at a worse time.

Gun violence is an American scourge

Gun violence in this country continues to rise. Firearms are now the leading cause of death for American children and teens, surpassing car accidents and cancer. In 2023 alone, nearly 47,000 Americans died from gun violence. This is a national emergency. Yet, instead of responding with urgency and common-sense solutions, Lawler and Trump handed a $1.7 billion giveaway to the gun lobby.

Of course, the writer is a volunteer with Moms Demand Action, so we shouldn’t be overly surprised that she’s completely unhinged, but let’s break this down for the slightly more rational.

What happened with suppressors and short-barreled rifles and shotguns might benefit the gun industry, sure, but not nearly as much as people like the writer would like to believe. Short-barreled AR-15s are pretty common already, and AR-style pistols are also common. No one really wants an AR-pistol, though. Most get one because it’s as close as they can get to an SBR without the ATF paperwork. That market will likely shift over to actual SBRs, especially if the courts overturn the registration aspect of the National Firearms Act on these products.

Further, the NFA was sold to the American people as a tax, not gun control. It’s been defended in the courts as a tax, not gun control. You don’t get to pretend it’s suddenly critical gun control and not get laughed at.

Now, let’s also recognize that bypassing these regulations is trivial for criminals. Luigi Mangione allegedly used a 3D-printed suppressor while assassinating UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. They’re not lawful to construct in any way without ATF approval, of course, but he did it anyway.

The sawed-off shotgun is a staple of American culture, really, even though it’s been illegal since 1934. All it takes is a shotgun and a hacksaw, and you’ve got yourself a felony…if you get caught. Most have never been discovered. Creating an SBR is even easier, considering you can just by an AR pistol upper and drop it on your AR rifle lower just by pulling out a few pins.

Criminals have no barrier to doing these things. They’ve done all of this and more, so why in the world should a shooting in Manhattan that involved an AR-15 that was banned in the state of New York years ago, somehow have any relevance to the removal of a $200 tax stamp for products that cost a good bit more than $200?

The answer is that it doesn’t.

Manhattan was a failure of gun control, while repealing laws that don’t actually do anything to criminals is correcting the mistakes of the past.

Frankly, I hope we can correct a whole lot more of them, and if some Moms Demand Action volunteers have aneurysms, well, I’m not going to feel all that bad about it.

Editor’s Note: President Trump and Republicans across the country are doing everything they can to protect our Second Amendment rights and right to self-defense.

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