How the Big, Beautiful Bill Threw Gun Owners and Second Amendment Advocates Under the Bus
BY Herschel Smith
1 week, 2 days ago
The House and Senate versions of the reconciliation bill will have to be themselves merged and reconciled, but at least in the senate, gun owners have been thrown under the bus.
It begins with the House version of the bill, which not only repeals the $200 tax stamp for suppressors but also removes them entirely from the NFA. We had to push very hard to get this through committee and the house.
On to the senate. The senate version initially had the same language, but the senate parliamentarian judged removal of suppressors from the NFA to be outside the scope of what can be done in the bill. John Thune, ever the GOP wallflower, has said that he will not overrule or discharge the senate parliamentarian.
When this came to light, as if clockwork, a number of gun “influencers” and YouTubers came out with the same language. Removal of the $200 tax is the “next best win.” Surprisingly and disappointingly, I also saw a post on X by Gun Owners of America using the same language. It was everywhere I looked and listened – “next best win.”
Someone, somewhere, was in charge of this push to get gun owners to accept less than perfect but still a win. These talking points came from someone, but I don’t know who. I will neither embed nor link the posts or videos with “influencers” uttering this phrase. I find the phrase and the posts and videos to be disgusting and repulsive. I do so for a number of reasons.
Gun owners have been used and abused for decades now, and our support has always been presumed and taken for granted. Once again into the breach, the pols must have figured. We can pass this one off to the proles as a “next best win.” But moreover, this tactic assumes that gun owners are an impressionable monolith. Have some influencers says some things and they’ll be fine.
But anyone who reads the comments on posts or videos knows that gun owners are the first to point out stupidity, waste and shilling for companies. We aren’t a monolith, and we don’t influence easily. Actually, we’re a rather disagreeable bunch.
As to the bill, it may be even more complicated that what I just outlined. John Thune has said he won’t overrule the senate parliamentarian. But he (and the GOP) already has. They did it for the California EV mandate, which the parliamentarian also said is outside the bounds. The vote was 51 – 44. They didn’t do it by 2/3 of the senate. So that excuse is clearly a lie.
There are two possible reasons for this, and perhaps they both apply. First, the GOP is not as quick or willing to protect your second amendment rights as they seem. They usually feign support and then buckle at the last minute, finding some political reason why whatever they proposed couldn’t really be done.
The second reason, while a bit more difficult to prove, is a likely reason (or at least outcome) of their feigning support for the Hearing Protection Act right up until the last minute.
John Cornyn is going to be in the fight of his career against a strong challenger in Texas, Ken Paxton. Cornyn played gun controller himself in his support for the Safer Communities Act. The democrats needed the support of two GOP senators, and they got them with Cornyn and Thom Tillis.
So Cornyn’s reputation needed to be repaired in his upcoming fight. Enter Thune and Cornyn in reinserting the $200 tax stamp repeal in the “big beautiful bill.” Not removal from the registry, mind you, but repeal of the $200 tax, as if that’s what the problem is with having suppressors in the NFA.
This way, not only has the senate effectively killed the repeal of suppressors as NFA items, but Thune has given Cornyn talking points back home. Or so he thinks he has. Rather, I think what will happen is voters will remember this treachery. This will become yet another ball and chain around Cornyn’s neck. John Thune will go down as one of the weakest and most treacherous senate leaders in history, at least with gun owners.
We have never had an opportunity as good as this one, with a GOP president, house and senate. Thune has thrown this away under the guise of not overruling the parliamentarian, when in fact he has done this before.
In Pennsylvania, gun owners were mostly silent in elections and hadn’t made their voices heard. That was true up until 2024 when they came out in droves. It handed Pennsylvania to the GOP. I wouldn’t expect that to happen again. John Thune may have just single handedly and forever handed Pennsylvania to the democrats.
The big beautiful bill is a dud to gun owners and second amendment advocates. There is nothing whatsoever in it for us. And the influencers who used the phrase “next best win” have to live with the shame of having used talking points handed to them by someone, we still don’t know who.
Either Thune was pushed around like an Afghan dancing boy by the senate parliamentarian, or he didn’t really want suppressors removed as an NFA item and used all of this to help his buddy, John Cornyn. There is plenty of shame to go around.
@BrutusMaximus50 Halo! the unroll you asked for: https://t.co/oLSoTiDn3y Talk to you soon.
— Thread Reader App (@threadreaderapp) June 29, 2025
On June 29, 2025 at 10:45 pm, MTHead said:
And J.D.Vance is still the president of the senate. He can just over-rule the communist bitch and have done with it.
It’s been done before.
Thune would have nothing to say about it either. It says right at the pre-amble of the 34′ act that it is for taxation proposes.
This is the congressional intent of ’34 NFA.
” To provide for the taxation of manufacturers, importers, and dealers in certain
firearms and machine guns, to tax the sale or other disposal of such weapons,
and to restrict importation and regulate interstate transportation thereof.”
It’s a tax bill. Reconciliation is all that’s required. Oh, and to get rid of the commie bitches!
A F-k’in Harry Reid appointee? Telling the duly elected senate what they can and cannot vote on?
What a bad joke.
On June 30, 2025 at 3:49 am, Nosmo said:
“And J.D.Vance is still the president of the senate. He can just over-rule the communist bitch and have done with it.”
The result of which may determine who gets sworn in January 20, 2029.
On June 30, 2025 at 11:37 am, Hoss Green said:
I’ve been saying for years that this country is done! I have held out hope after Trump won, but now once again I’m losing hope.
On July 1, 2025 at 10:41 am, Don't mind me. said:
The same people in charge of the country today have been in charge for decades. I don’t understand why people get their hopes up every time there’s an election. It’s such a Pavlovian response. We’re a country of Charlie Browns.
The ones in power will never relinquish it.
On July 1, 2025 at 9:22 pm, X said:
Cop enters home without warrant, shoots dog, get 60-day paid leave, is reinstated:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pe_IKup2CU8
“Freedom,” LOL. The Fourth of July is a charade.
The Founders would never have tolerated this… indeed, they mobilized the militia in 1775 due to warrantless searches in Boston…
On July 2, 2025 at 11:07 am, Bear Claw said:
I would bet $10 that during reconciliation the tax stamp allowance will be stripped out, and no more votes after reconciliation. Just like Harry Reid made obummercare law during reconciliation.
On July 2, 2025 at 2:16 pm, J J said:
As a Texan I hope I am correct that Cornyn has worn out his welcome here. His posturing on the BBB is too little too late. Texas’ have long memories and his betrayals of not just gun owners, but Texans in general aren’t fading away.
Ditto Ted Cruz who has shown Texans his true colors aren’t red, white and blue.
On July 2, 2025 at 2:19 pm, J J said:
On another note I forgot to put in the first comment – this “incremental victory” crap came straight out of the NRA’s playbook. That has always been their reasoning for not taking a hard line on overturning infringements, “well, we just have to take small victories as they occur rather than not get anything.” Of course, then there’s their reasoning for all the small infringements they supported.
On July 2, 2025 at 3:11 pm, MTHead said:
What the house should do is package it right back up the way it was and send it back to the senate.
Tell Vance to overrule the commie whore and pass the thing.
If Harry Reid could pass Obamacare with reconciliation. But we can’t drop the NFA tax and cut medi-care tax for criminals and fraud?
If they can’t do that? F-it. Vote for the communists and let’s show them what 2A was wrote about.
On July 3, 2025 at 10:18 am, Georgiaboy61 said:
@JJ
Re: “On another note I forgot to put in the first comment – this “incremental victory” crap came straight out of the NRA’s playbook. That has always been their reasoning for not taking a hard line on overturning infringements, “well, we just have to take small victories as they occur rather than not get anything.”
Since the NRA is a quasi-governmental organization, they operate according to very much the same set of rules as fed.gov. One of those is that no problem must be conclusively solved, lest it imperil next year’s fund-raising drive and budget.
Since the absolute imperative of any bureaucracy is its own survival and prosperity, with its actual mission coming second at best, it becomes easy to see why the needle never seems to move much where the rolling back of infringements is concerned.
In light of these realities, it is laughable to term the NRA a “gun rights” organization. They’re just another regulatory agency disguised as a non-profit.
And don’t even get me into the abuses of former executive V.P. Wayne LaPierre, who proved during his time at the NRA that crime does in fact pay – and pay very well. Unless I am seriously mistaken, he got to hang on to most of his ill-gotten loot, and escaped criminal charges entirely.
On July 4, 2025 at 8:13 pm, RCW said:
Just stumbled over a peculiar happenstance occuring around the time of NFA ’34. The 1st NRA, the National Rifle Association founded 1871, was bookended by the 2nd NRA, FDR’s National Recovery Administration, which was formed in 1933 & disolved in 1935. It might be my overactive conspiracy connecting overactive imagination but how convenient, possibly confusing the commoners. Then again, pure as the driven snow demigod FDR purportedly said if it happens in government, it’s a good bet it was planned. Riiight.
On July 5, 2025 at 1:20 pm, Fitty said:
I still vote, whatever that means, maybe I am just numb to the fisting that seems to be associated with anytime individual liberties are restored and the government is limited. I pray that we can use the ballot box.