As anyone on the ASA’s mailing list would know, the 115th Congress has reintroduced the Hearing Protection Act of 2015 (previously talked about here), this time as H.R.367 “To provide that silencers be treated the same as long guns.” Yeah, I’m hoping they work on that title a bit, but it was just introduced yesterday and currently has 43 Cosponsors.
Text for the bill has not yet been provided, but in the coming days it will likely be a verbatim copy of H.R. 3799, along with a companion Senate bill. While I’m not getting my hopes up, introduction into the 115th Congress gives it some advantages that it didn’t previous enjoy. While there was a slight increase in the Republican edge in Congress, there was previously and it never even got a committee hearing. No, the advantage comes from the fact that not only would this bill have a significantly better chance to NOT get vetoed, it also has a proponent in the President Elect’s son, who notably met with SilencerCo CEO Joshua Waldron.
In any case, I’m cautiously optimistic, while I wholly suspect the pending stamp refund to get axed from the bill faster than an M-10’s cyclic rate, that was always there as a negotiation concession. As said before, be sure to keep up the communication with your representatives telling them you expect to see their support of this during this session.
Edit: Found this thread, good bit of information on it, and it will likely be updated with a who’s who of key figures in getting this thing moving, so pay attention, and we might end up with a good list of representatives who need to be contacted.