PA Bill Number: HB2311
Title: Establishing the School Mental Health Screening Grant and Development Program.
Description: Establishing the School Mental Health Screening Grant and Development Program. ...
Last Action: Laid on the table
Last Action Date: Sep 23, 2024
Congress should quickly pass the Hearing Protection Act of 2015 :: 11/21/2016
Like many persons of the Baby Boom generation, I have hearing loss. This is most annoying when I can hear but not locate subtle squirrel barks in the woods and when I must turn up the TV volume very high in order to follow the dialogue.
This handicap knows no gender bias. The girls mostly attribute it to listening to loud rock music while wearing earphones. For us guys, in particular country boys who grew up handling firearms, it was triggering thousands of rounds at tin cans and critters while not wearing hearing protection. While this was happening to most of us, we did not realize it.
In formal range shooting situations, such as the training and re-qualification I underwent as a Probation and Parole Officer, it was common for the range officer to call out, “Eyes and ears” preliminary to giving the fire command. Everyone on the line had to be wearing safety glasses and hearing protectors of some sort, either the headphone type or the little soft plastic disposable plugs that are the embodiment of “Stick it in your ear!” It was not until I was in my 20’s and in training situations that I became aware of the issue of shooters’ hearing damage.
We can blame politicians for the extent of this hearing loss. In 1934, Congress passed the National Firearms Act. This first federal effort at gun control was a reaction to the gangland violence of the Prohibition era. Images of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, Al Capone, and Murder Incorporated come to mind—of wild street shoot-outs with Tommy guns and quiet rub-outs subtly executed with Colt 1911 pistols or Smith & Wesson .38 revolvers, all with evil-looking silencers puffing out whispered death. Hollywood helped perpetuate these images in gangster movies. The National Firearms Act of 1934 imposed a transfer tax on fully automatic firearms, on short-barreled rifles, short-barreled (“sawed-off”) shotguns and on “silencers”—more accurately suppressors. The NFA also mandated registration of these weapons and devices as well as a rigorous and lengthy approval process to acquire them. True believers in the right to keep and bear arms resent all aspects of the NFA but we will not get into the totality of that issue here. The really unwise part of the law was to impose the tax and restrictions on suppressors.
Those who accept that well-intentioned legislating can allay any social and behavioral problem might ask why anyone other than an assassin would have need for a suppressed firearm. Reality is that they make wonderful sense both as hunting tools and for better public relations between hunters and the residents of areas where there is hunting going on and near shooting ranges because they eliminate the noise factor. The hearing loss from recreational shooting is a public health issue that widespread use of suppressors can alleviate. Had we been afforded less expensive suppressors without undue regulation, the incidence of hearing loss among shooters would be dramatically lower.
On October 22 2015, US Representative Matt Salmon (R. Arizona) introduced HR 3799, the Hearing Protection Act of 2015. This measure has garnered 76 co-sponsors, 74 Republicans and 2 Democrats, so we might make a long stretch and say that it has bi-partisan support. (If this were a Facebook post I would likely add a “lol”.) I am proud to say that our own Representative and Lewis County neighbor Thomas Massie is among these co-sponsors. To summarize simply, HR 3799 seeks to exempt suppressors from the transfer tax and require no further background investigation than the NCIC check necessary when one is buying a long gun. It would also pre-empt any state taxes or regulations on suppressors. But buried in committee, this sensible bill has gone nowhere in the year since its introduction.
With the recent election leaving Republicans in control of the Presidency and of both houses of Congress, there is strong expectation that HR 3799 can zoom to swift passage early next year. As hunters we should contact our Senators and Representatives and urge them to enact this bill, even if they must resort to the “Nuclear Option” to accomplish this.
It is unlikely that inclusion of suppressors as an NFA device has prevented any criminal from obtaining one. Persons bent on murder do not blanch at the minor illegalities prerequisite to the deed. Only benign and pacific folks abide by the rules.
Many states, including Kentucky, allow hunting with suppressed firearms. If HR 3799 becomes law I may begin shopping for a suppressor-ready squirrel rifle.
Suppressor-ready firearms have turned-down muzzles that are threaded to accept the screwed-on suppressor, which gun folks refer to as a “can” in the vernacular.
Savage offers the 64 FVSR semi-automatic in .22 Rimfire, which is very modest in price. A few Bens more elite is CZ-USA’s 455 Tacticool model, also a .22 Rimfire, a bolt action with 16.5 inch rigid heavy barrel and adjustable trigger. CZ .22 rifles have a reputation for accuracy that splits hairs like a Schoolman.
The other route to a suppressed weapon is to have a conventional firearm modified to accept a suppressor. This takes the work of a skilled gunsmith/machinist to grind down the outer rim of the muzzle and then cut threads to turn the barrel’s muzzle into a male screw. In the case of a treasured or classic firearm such a radical modification would require considerable soul searching.
I own a Thompson Center Classic Benchmark semi-auto .22 with an 18-inch heavy barrel. It is very accurate and would be an excellent rifle to alter for a suppressor. So would my Remington 541-T heavy barrel model—the “Fat T”. But I would not modify either of these rifles. In the case of classic guns, severe modification, even drilling and tapping for scope mounting, though making more useful guns of them, spoils the collector value.
A factory-made suppressor-ready rifle is the best way to go, and if I decide to jump on this project the CZ-USA is my likely choice. But this move will demand some hard thought. If Congress removes the political hurdles early in 2017, the soonest I could have my silent squirrel sniper woods-ready will be next fall. I will be 70 then and into the 2nd season of my Afterword period if I am still in the flesh, and that is a mite senior to be undertaking the task of breaking in a new squirrel rifle. I’ve owned the Fat T for a decade and have not really broken it in yet.
By “breaking in” I mean that I have used the firearm in all of my traditional hunting grounds still available to me and killed enough game with it for the weapon and I to have developed an “edge”—sometimes I call it “medicine” or “mojo”. I admit to having some esoteric notions about the guns I use and these feelings come only by much successful experience with them. A new rifle, no matter how technically perfect, would begin its career as a blank slate in the hands of a shooter well onto the down slope. It is also emotionally hard to contemplate laying aside my 541-S. When I take it to the woods I carry with it all the places I have used it and the souls of over 2,000 game animals.
I also have reservations about the ethics of using a suppressed rifle in the classic scenario of several squirrels cutting in hickory-nut trees. It is common to make multiple kills—take entire limits—from one tree while using an unsuppressed .22.
Enacting HR 3799 would right a government wrong that has been ongoing for too long. It could save future generations of American shooters and hunters from unnecessary hearing loss. We have handed the entire federal government to pro-gun, pro-hunting people and we deserve a return for it.
