WASHINGTON — New Jersey representatives seem to lead the charge on infringing the civil liberties of Americans, and their favorite target seems to be the Second Amendment.
On June 8, Representative Bonnie Watson Coleman (NJ-12) reintroduced an act to ban the importation, sale, manufacturing, transfer, and possession of suppressors.
The so-called “Help Empower Americans to Respond (HEAR) Act” seems to mock the purpose of suppressors, which is to protect hearing, and characterizes this critical hearing protection component as a “gun silencer,” which is inaccurate, as no suppressor completely removes the report of a firearm.
“Silencers are not tools of self-defense; they are tools of murder,” said Watson Coleman, who also championed a bill introduced in January to ban online ammunition sales nationally.
H.R. 9208 was first introduced in 2019, and its current version has six co-sponsors, all Democrats. It currently sits in the House Judiciary Committee. The bill would create a 90-day period and implement a “buy-back.”
The bill’s sponsors have the backing of Newtown Action Alliance, a gun control group that itself has been funded by The Sixteen Thirty Fund, widely considered a “dark money” advocacy group, which receives its own funding from left-of-center ultra-high net worth individuals.
Suppressors are legally owned by millions of law-abiding Americans, and even the Justice Department is now defending their possession, with an amended lawsuit brought by the Second Amendment Section against Washington, D.C. in May that explicitly defends the ownership of suppressors.
There are currently at least four major national lawsuits challenging the National Firearms Act, which regulates the registration of suppressors, and 31 members of Congress have written to the DOJ encouraging it not to defend the NFA in litigation.
In a recent decision, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled simultaneously that suppressors are “optional accessories to firearms are not ‘arms’ covered by the Second Amendment…” and upheld a conviction for the unlawful possession of an unregistered firearm silencer. Such confusing decisions invite further scrutiny by the Supreme Court.
