PA Bill Number: SB1198
Title: In plants and plant products, providing for plant and pollinator protection; conferring powers and duties on the Department of Agriculture and ...
Description: In plants and plant products, providing for plant and pollinator protection; conferring powers and duties on the Department of Agriculture and .. ...
Last Action: Referred to AGRICULTURE AND RURAL AFFAIRS
Last Action Date: May 17, 2024
NRA Wants to Ease Laws on Buying Gun Silencers :: 05/24/2017
The National Rifle Association, which typically rests its case on the Second Amendment and personal security, is framing legislation that would make it easier to buy gun silencers as a public health issue.
The NRA’s campaign includes rebranding silencers as “suppressors” because they don’t completely silence the sound of gunfire. Silencers reduce the average firearm noise from 165 decibels to below the potentially dangerous level of 140 decibels.
“The Hearing Protection Act” is the gun lobby’s priority in Congress, along with a bill that would allow people to carry concealed weapons across state lines if they have permits in their home state.
“We can have disagreements about politics, but there should be universal support for hearing protection,” said Chris Cox, executive director of the political arm of the NRA.
Gun control groups oppose efforts to make suppressors more accessible, arguing that the noise of gunfire is essential to warn potential victims and help law enforcement track down criminals.
“Hearing is important, of course, but so are people’s lives,” said Erika Soto Lamb, a spokeswoman for Everytown for Gun Safety. “This is about putting profits over public safety when the market is saturated with guns, and now they want to sell accessories.”
The push to make it easier and cheaper to buy silencers comes at a time when gun sales are on the decline. Background checks dropped 11 % between January and April this year compared with the same period in 2016, according to federal data. Gun sales typically rise when the White House favors gun control; background checks more than doubled under former President Barack Obama to 27.5 million last year.
Demands for silencers also rose during the Obama administration, with the number of registrations reaching 902,805 last February, according to the Justice Department. Currently, a Depression-era law requires suppressor buyers to submit fingerprints and photographs, pay a $200 fee and pass a background check that can take nine to 12 months. “It’s the hardest consumer product to buy,” said SilencerCo spokesman Jason Schauble.
Proposed legislation would allow full rebates on the $200 fee and make the red tape the same as what’s required to buy a firearm. That means a buyer could walk out of a store with a suppressor after an instant background check in some states on the same day.
The silencer legislation is expected to be well-received by the Republican-led Congress and President Donald Trump. In the first speech to the NRA by a sitting president since 1983, Mr. Trump in April called himself “a true friend and champion” of the organization. Its political arm spent more on his 2016 campaign than any other outside group.
Mr. Trump’s older son, Donald Trump Jr., appeared in a promotional video last year for Utah-based SilencerCo, the biggest silencer manufacturer. “I love the product,” Mr. Trump says in the video.
He didn’t respond to inquiries about whether he would lobby for the legislation sponsored by Republican Reps. Jeff Duncan of South Carolina and John Carter of Texas.
Less than two weeks after the video was posted online, SilencerCo CEO Joshua Waldron and his wife, Audrey, each gave the maximum $2,700 contribution to then-candidate Trump’s presidential campaign and another $22,300 to the Republican National Committee.
Asked about Mr. Trump’s position on the silencer legislation, a White House spokeswoman said, “The Trump administration is dedicated to preserving Second Amendment rights, as well as eliminating regulations and laws that interfere with those rights.”
Appeared in the May. 24, 2017, print edition as 'Gun Lobby Wants to Ease Silencer Buying.'
https://www.wsj.com/articles/nra-wants-to-ease-laws-on-buying-gun-silencers-1495582743
