When asked about suppressors on June 3, 2019, President Trump said, “I don’t like them at all.” (Whitehouse.gov)
On President Trump’s direction, after a gunman opened fire on the crowd at a country music festival held in Las Vegas in October 2018, the DOJ banned bump stocks. Owners of bump stocks had until March 26 to turn them in.
Though Trump reversed an Obama gun regulation that allowed the Social Security Administration to submit names of those who have their finances managed by someone else, he has voiced support of gun confiscation without due process, as well as raising the purchase age of an AR-15 from 18 to 21.
President Trump did back off those last two comments, but he never backed down from banning bump stocks. His reasoning, he claimed, was because you couldn’t shoot accurately with them. He said, “A bump stock, you shoot rapidly but not accurately. The bullets come out fast, but you don’t know where the hell they’re going. That’s why nobody even really, too much, came to its defense.” (The most current docket has 193,297 comments.) Brandon Combs, President of the Firearms Policy Coalition has said, “the bottom line is President Trump has been more anti-gun in his tenure, in terms of legislation and regulations, than the Obama administration.”
Armed with a .45 caliber handgun with a suppressor, a gunman opened fire at a business at his place of employment in Virginia Beach, killing 12 people on Friday, May 31, 2019. Virginia’s Governor Ralph Northam has already called for a ban on “assault weapons” and suppressors, as well as enacting universal background checks and further gun restrictions where people can carry.
The Wall Street Journal reports that when asked about banning suppressors, Trump replied, “I would like to think about it…I don’t love the idea of it.” The Truth About Guns is reporting he said, “I’m going to seriously look at it.”
He also told Piers Morgan while on the U.K.’s Good Morning Britain, “When somebody has a gun illegally and nobody else has a gun because the laws are that you can’t have a gun, those people are gone. They have no choice, they have no chance.”
Forty-two states allow the ownership of suppressors. There are over 1.3 million suppressors registered with the ATF.
For more on suppressor laws, click here.
Before banning suppressors becomes an issue, us gun owners need to express our support of removing suppressors from the NFA. Despite the Hearing Protection Act failing in Congress, we can’t allow what happened to bump stocks to happen to suppressors. What would be banned next?