As Barack Obama sneered, elections have consequences. Among them, with Donald Trump’s reelection, is a new respect for the Second Amendment, the part of the Bill of Rights that secures the rest. For the first time in many years, there is real potential to pass laws that would enhance individual liberty. 

Sen Mike Lee has proposed the SHUSH Act to deregulate suppressors (there’s no such thing as a silencer).  The provisions:

Graphic: H&K MP5SD6, Author

*Eliminate federal regulation of suppressors as firearms under the National Firearms Act (NFA) and the Gun Control Act (GCA).

*Remove existing taxes, fees, and registration requirements associated with suppressors.

*Allow current or retired law enforcement officers to carry concealed firearms with suppressors.

*Preempt state regulations on the manufacture, transfer, transport, or possession of suppressors.

*Strike provisions requiring mandatory minimum sentences for suppressor possession in certain cases.

*Exempt suppressors from regulation by the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

*Provide a provision for a refund of the $200 transfer tax for anyone who purchased a suppressor within two years prior to the enactment of the bill.

*If passed, the SHUSH Act will work alongside the Hearing Protection Act to further deregulate suppressors and remove them from the Gun Control Act of 1968.

In essence, suppressors would no longer be treated like machineguns, requiring a lengthy and expensive federal process. They’d be treated like other lawful firearm accessories.

And Rep. Richard Hudson has introduced the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act, which would require states to treat concealed carry permits essentially as driver’s licenses.

Both more than reasonable laws have never been up for a vote in the past, even when Republicans held the House, Senate and White House, because Republican “leaders” said the time wasn’t right. Perhaps it finally is. Free Americans may never get a better chance to claw back essential liberty and foil blue, anti-liberty/gun states.

Perhaps most encouraging is President Trump’s Second Amendment Executive Order, which strongly suggests he’d sign the aforementioned bills and other legislation that would preserve and strengthen individual liberty. His EO requires (in part):

Sec. 2.  Plan of Action.  (a)  Within 30 days of the date of this order, the Attorney General shall examine all orders, regulations, guidance, plans, international agreements, and other actions of executive departments and agencies (agencies) to assess any ongoing infringements of the Second Amendment rights of our citizens, and present a proposed plan of action to the President, through the Domestic Policy Advisor, to protect the Second Amendment rights of all Americans.
     (b)  In developing such proposed plan of action, the Attorney General shall review, at a minimum:
          (i)    All Presidential and agencies’ actions from January 2021 through January 2025 that purport to promote safety but may have impinged on the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens;
          (ii)   Rules promulgated by the Department of Justice, including by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, from January 2021 through January 2025 pertaining to firearms and/or Federal firearms licensees;
          (iii)  Agencies’ plans, orders, and actions regarding the so-called “enhanced regulatory enforcement policy” pertaining to firearms and/or Federal firearms licensees;
          (iv)   Reports and related documents issued by the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention;
          (v)    The positions taken by the United States in any and all ongoing and potential litigation that affects or could affect the ability of Americans to exercise their Second Amendment rights;
          (vi)   Agencies’ classifications of firearms and ammunition; and
          (vii)  The processing of applications to make, manufacture, transfer, or export firearms.

Sec. 3.  Implementation.  Upon submission of the proposed plan of action described in section 2 of this order, the Attorney General shall work with the Domestic Policy Advisor to finalize the plan of action and establish a process for implementation.

In other words, in short order the Trump Administration will eliminate gun control bureaucrats and programs hidden in the government, end any on-going anti-Second Amendment litigation, end unconscionable government harassment of law-abiding Federal Firearm License dealers and even end the ATF’s prior unjustified reclassification of guns and accessories that made instant felons of millions of law-abiding Americans for possessing previously lawful things.

And that wasn’t the only necessary and worthwhile step Trump has taken in support of the Second Amendment. Within little more than a day after taking office, Trump shuttered the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, a thinly veiled anti-liberty/gun bureaucracy--as if the ATF wasn’t enough-- started by the Harris/Biden Administration that would have done nothing to prevent violence but much to steal additional liberty.

As with the efforts of DOGE in exposing outlandishly costly fraud, graft and funding for American’s domestic and foreign enemies, Democrats/socialists/communists are screaming in anguish and rage at the thought of Americans once again having accountability over unaccountable bureaucrats and politicians and regaining stolen liberty. 

That’s discordant music to the ears of free Americans, and it’s long past time.

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Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer and high school and college English teacher. He is a published author and blogger. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.