Cosponsors is your rep on the list?

Please pressure committee members and Paul Ryan to act on this necessary and helpful bill during this Congress.

Introduced in House (01/09/2017)

Hearing Protection Act of 2017

This bill amends the Internal Revenue Code to: (1) eliminate the $200 transfer tax on firearm silencers, and (2) treat any person who acquires or possesses a firearm silencer as meeting any registration or licensing requirements of the National Firearms Act with respect to such silencer. Any person who pays a transfer tax on a silencer after October 22, 2015, may receive a refund of such tax.

The bill amends the federal criminal code to preempt state or local laws that tax or regulate firearm silencers.

Background

If you’ve ever legally bought or built a suppressor, you’ve shared the pain of more than a million Americans who’ve endured and complied with the federal government’s bureaucratic paper shuffle before enjoying the fruits of your labor.
You prepared and submitted special forms, a photograph, and a set of fingerprints. Before July 13, 2016, you either waited for the approval of your local chief law enforcement officer (CLEO) or spent time and money to prepare a special trust. You also paid a $200 tax. And then you waited. Six to 12 months went by while the ATF hand-processed this personal and revealing pile of paperwork.
And finally, if your forms were two-sided, your signatures original on duplicate copies, your supporting documents in order, and, of course, a background check revealed you’re not prohibited from possessing firearms, the special “tax stamp” was affixed. Your new suppressor was officially tied to you in the National Firearm Registration and Transfer Record (NFRTR), and permission was finally yours to enjoy the pleasure of shooting without earplugs.
Currently in America, the land of the free and the home of as many as 80 million gun owners, American taxpayers dole out millions of dollars annually to enforce an inefficient, expensive, and unnecessary process. These dollars are spent in the name of overseeing and taxing gun owners who, in part, wish to acquire the mufflers once sold at hardware stores for around $5. These same, heavily regulated “firearms” are required hunting tools in some European countries.
The American Suppressor Association (ASA), backed by gun owners, dealers, and manufacturers across the country, is lobbying for what its supporters view as a necessary update to the law.
When the Hearing Protection Act was first proposed in 2015, Congress.gov indicated it had only a 3 percent chance of becoming law. After almost a decade of the Obama Administration’s push for more gun control, it seemed very unlikely that Americans would pass any laws in favor of gun rights.
One year and a presidential election later, the dream is moving toward reality. For Second Amendment advocates, a light has begun to shine through the murk of America’s gun-control system. This light is, in part, produced by the ASA, which refers to itself as “the unified voice of the suppressor industry.”
Before delving into how the ASA is lobbying to fix what they see as a broken system, a brief history lesson is in order.
The National Firearms Act
In an attempt to control prohibition-inspired crime in the early 1930s, Congress formulated a plan to restrict certain firearms by reducing the average American’s ability to afford them. Congress enacted the National Firearms Act (NFA) to tax certain firearms, including short-barreled rifles and shotguns (SBRs and SBSs), fully automatic firearms, suppressors, and the ill-defined category of “any other weapons.” The NFA taxed these firearms into oblivion, making them unaffordable to the average American gun owner. The ATF’s website still portrays this bit of history:
“[The NFA’s] underlying purpose was to curtail, if not prohibit, transactions in NFA firearms. Congress found these firearms to pose a significant crime problem because of their frequent use in crime, particularly the gangland crimes of that era such as the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. The $200 making and transfer taxes on most NFA firearms were considered quite severe and adequate to carry out Congress’ purpose to discourage or eliminate transactions in these firearms.”
At 40 times the cost of a suppressor, the average citizen could no longer afford the $5 muffler after this tax was added to the purchase price. Interestingly, there was a complete lack of data or even mention in the legislative record that suppressors were ever used in crimes.
The Door Opened to More Gun Control Laws
In 1934, when the NFA became law, America had no computerized background check system. In fact, there were no federally required background checks for gun purchases at all. There were no federal laws preventing felons or the mentally ill from possessing firearms. Congress expected that the would-be gun buyer’s local law enforcement officers would know who the bad guys in town were, and these officers would simply refuse to sign the required paperwork to prevent known criminals from legally acquiring NFA regulated firearms.
Since then, Congress has passed several comprehensive gun-control laws, including the Gun Control Act of 1968 (GCA) and the Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986 (FOPA). The GCA requires federal licensing for dealers, manufacturers, and importers, requires them to keep records and conduct background checks on would-be purchasers, and prohibits certain people (felons, the mentally ill, and illegal drug users, to name a few) from legally possessing firearms.
Despite its title, the FOPA further restricted gun owners by expanding the definitions of silencers and machine guns to include their mere parts. The FOPA also expanded the list of “prohibited persons” who cannot legally possess firearms, and it denies gun owners the ability to purchase machine guns manufactured after 1986, which caused their cost to skyrocket.
This line of federal gun-control laws created a system that restricts purchases and requires so-called instant computerized background checks — all in the name of ensuring that the “bad guy” doesn’t get the gun. As many gun owners have experienced, state governments can, and have, passed even more laws further restricting our ability to buy and possess firearms and ammunition.
If the aim of the NFA was to protect citizens by keeping firearms out of the hands of criminals, it has been substantially replaced by the later federal and state laws that restrict transfers and require efficient, computerized background checks. Gun owners argue the extra paperwork required by the NFA does nothing to deter crime, and only places a burden on Americans who follow the rules.
Some Americans created gun trusts to avoid some of the NFA-required paperwork. But in January of 2016, Attorney General Loretta Lynch signed Rule 41F into law. Rule 41F is a 250-page death warrant for one gun trust benefit, which was to avoid some of the NFA paperwork and process.
While many gun owners believe the solution to the paperwork and wait times is to completely abolish the NFA, that solution will not happen overnight. The first step, according to the ASA, is to address silencers and their current definition as firearms under the National Firearms Act.
In the following interview with Owen Miller, Director of Outreach for the American Suppressor Association, he further explains the HPA and the likelihood that it’ll be enacted so that suppressors will no longer be controlled by the archaic rules of the National Firearms Act.


Read more: http://www.recoilweb.com/the-h...6.html#ixzz4lOdvoOer

I called my useless Representative.
Frank Lobiondo mr. invisible....