Heritage Foundation Pushes Back on Gun Export Ban

AP Photo/Philip Kamrass, File

The Biden administration's gun export ban isn't something most of us are going to feel. At least, we won't feel it right away. If we are impacted, it'll be through second-order effects like gun manufacturers shutting their doors for good because they needed overseas contracts to be profitable.

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So yeah, the export ban matters to people like you or me.

What's more, I still can't really see any reason for it other than to hurt gunmakers. It's not like they could ship to other countries without getting State Department permission anyway, so it's not remotely likely they were arming criminal gangs in London or anything.

The ban is stupid and malicious.

Now, folks at the Heritage Foundation are pushing back.

One of the biggest think tanks in Washington, DC is gearing up to oppose the Biden Administration’s plan to restrict firearm exports.

Heritage Action, the 501(c)(4) arm of the right-leaning Heritage Foundation, announced a plan on Wednesday to motivate activists to comment in opposition to the Commerce Department’s rule pairing back the ability for American companies to export guns. The group said it is hoping to “activate millions of grassroots conservatives” in an effort to have the rule withdrawn. It told The Reload it plans to start by reaching out to activists with digital communications and in person at the NRA’s Annual Meeting in Dallas, Texas this weekend.

“The Department of Commerce’s rule undermines Americans’ constitutional right to bear arms by villainizing a crucial sector of the American economy,” Ryan Walker, Heritage Action Executive Vice President, told The Reload. “Banning the sale of American-made firearms to dozens of countries is a cunning way to target lawful gun manufacturers and owners at home by claiming free citizens around the world can’t be trusted with firearms.”

The effort is the latest to try and undo one of President Joe Biden’s executive actions on gun policy before it becomes active. If the rule receives enough negative comments, the Commerce Department could modify or rescind it. That’s happened before, with a proposal to ban certain kinds of ammunition under President Barack Obama being pulled after backlash and one to restrict pistol braces seeing the same fate under President Donald Trump.

However, President Biden’s administration has been much less receptive to public opposition to gun restrictions imposed through federal rulemaking. The ATF has pushed through a number of new rules, including the previously abandoned pistol brace restriction, despite an overwhelmingly negative response during the public comment period.

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Interestingly, one nation that can still receive guns under the Biden order? Mexico.

That would be the same Mexico that's suing firearm companies here in the United States, blaming them for the cartels being armed, all while also having a major issue with military and police sources selling guns to the cartels.

Yeah, they can still buy guns from American companies but many other nations that don't have such an issue can't.

I'm glad to see the Heritage Foundation take this on because, frankly, someone should. There's nothing about this that passes the sniff test to anyone remotely familiar with firearm export laws. The only reason for this rule existing that really makes any sense is that it exists to hurt firearm manufacturers.

After all, if more of them are shuttered because of this--which I think is the real goal here, obviously--then it becomes harder for Americans to buy firearms at all. That's the overall goal for the Biden administration. They want to make it so difficult to buy a gun that most won't fool with it or potentially even be able to afford it.

The Law of Supply and Demand is a merciless mother, after all.

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