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posted by martyb on Monday November 21 2016, @06:09AM   Printer-friendly
from the silence-is-golden dept.

A Republican trifecta in Washington next year will likely see action on a bill to remove firearm suppressors from National Firearms Act regulation after 82 years.
The Hearing Protection Act was introduced last October by U.S. Rep. Matt Salmon, R-Ariz., and currently has 78 bipartisan co-sponsors from 34 states. Since then, the HPA has been among the top 10 most-viewed bills on Congress.gov almost every week since it was introduced.

However, with a slim Republican majority in the Senate unable to override a near-certain veto from President Obama, the bill has been in doldrums.
Now, with the White House under new management next year, advocates for the measure feel signs are looking up and will likely return to the next Congress with a fresh mandate.

Why is this important? Safety has been increasing in nearly every aspect and product since the beginning of time, but allowing people to protect their hearing by adding silencers to their weapons has been a tough road for gun owners for a long while.

“Imagine for a second that we lived in a world where you had to pay a $200 tax to buy a pair of earplugs,” Knox Williams, president of the American Suppressor Association, the industry trade group for the devices, told Guns.com on Wednesday. “Now, imagine that even after paying that tax you still had to wait 8 months before you could bring your earplugs home with you. As silly as that sounds, it’s the world we live in with suppressors in the NFA.”


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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 21 2016, @08:13AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 21 2016, @08:13AM (#430398)

    Shooting even a relatively small caliber in a confined space is enough to make you go deaf, and the most successful rounds in home defense situations are 5.56 and .45 respectively (i.e.- loud). The ideal weapon in those situations is so dependent on context as to be a meaningless statement. Remember Biden's recommendation for shotguns? He was advocating for permanent hearing loss.

    Beyond defense, I have to qualify with weapons every year. The inability to hear speech clearly on the range is a huge safety risk due to the hearing protection worn. Suppressors would ameliorate that, and most likely help combat the epidemic of hearing loss around people who use weapons regularly as a part of their jobs.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 23 2016, @06:14AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 23 2016, @06:14AM (#431696)

    Yeah, that is what I worry about, too. Hearing loss from repeated home invasions! If you have to defend your bedroom more than, say, three times a month, there is a potential for permanent hearing loss! Not to mention the effect on the nice people who have come to visit in the middle of the night. So yeah, Congress really needs to pass this bill! Go, Trump! What did you say?