Hawkins: GOP Needs to Secure Hearing Protection Act to Protect Environment

With Republicans holding the House, Senate, and White House, now is the time to pass a Hearing Protection Act to protect the environment.

A Hearing Protection Act would remove suppressors from the purview of the National Firearms Act of 1934 (NFA), ending the cumbersome process for acquiring one and ending the requirement that the devices be registered with the ATF.

Contrary to the nonsense coming from the left, suppressors do not silence a gunshot. Rather, they muffle the ear-splitting aspect of it, protecting the hearing of the hunter or target shooter. And suppressors also accomplish something else–They protect the environment by keeping it quiet, or quieter.

Surely the left can see that securing an act that muffles man-made noises in the environment is a win for fringe elements of their party, including the eco-activists who oppose, among other things, the introduction of airport and/or interstate noise into an otherwise quiet landscape.

The GOP almost secured a Hearing Protection Act in 2017, a time when they also held the House, Senate, and White House. The act fell through when tabled by then-Speaker Paul Ryan (R).

Breitbart News noted that Ryan shelved the Hearing Protection Act under pressure from Hillary Clinton, who suggested the October 1, 2017, Las Vegas shooting would have been worse if the attacker had used a suppressor. Of course, Clinton used the word “silencer” instead of suppressor, suggesting no one would have heard the shots or known to run from the scene.

Ryan folded under the pressure, even though Clinton’s scenario was as unrealistic as contemporary Democrat claims that a pistol brace turns a pistol into an “automatic weapon.”

The process for acquiring a suppressor is simply too burdensome and too costly, as it includes paying the federal government a $200 tax in compliance with the NFA.

It is time to pass a Hearing Protection Act so suppressors can be acquired with greater ease to protect the hearing of the hunter and to preserve the natural ambience of the environment in which hunters hunt.

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio, a member of Gun Owners of America, a Pulsar Night Vision pro-staffer, and the director of global marketing for Lone Star Hunts. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal in 2010 and has a Ph.D. in Military History. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly: awrhawkins@breitbart.com.