Selling Us Out Slowly

The Hearing Protection Act is currently languishing in a House committee with 164 co-sponsors and no vote in spite of house rules demanding one. The bill has been swept in its entirety into the SHARE act, which is languishing on Paul Ryans desk as he won't bring it to a floor vote.

Rep Jeff Duncan is the sponsor of the HPA and is proposing yet another mashup to try and get some movement for this suggesting that the HPA might be scrapped if National Reciprocity is added to SHARE. NR has less chance of passing the Senate than the HPA so either approach is legislatively pointless although forcing floor votes in both houses would provide advertising fodder for Republicans in the upcoming elections.

Duncan being the sponsor of both bills is trying to get some movement on SHARE this year.

According to Duncan, there are several options including dropping the silencer provision altogether and replacing it with other gun language. He said one idea could add language that would ban or require more stringent licensing for buying bump stocks, a plastic attachment added to semiautomatic weapons that allows them to fire far more rapidly.

Since the "bump stock" relies on 2 phenomena common to all semi-auto firearms, namely recoil and self-loading, any attempt to limit bump stockery would either be completely ineffectual or end up completely banning semi-auto firearms with a trigger pull weight equal to or less than the recoil force. Just what you wanted eh? A varmint rifle with a 12 lb trigger?

Paul Ryan is solidly in line with the Dems on this so if you want to see any movement, he would be the one to write or call weather you live in his district or not.