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.
