When it comes to gun rights, we can never have enough Second Amendment absolutists in Congress. The problem is that a lot of people talk a big game while campaigning, but then fail to deliver when they get into office. A good indicator is when they don't talk about policies, only that they'll support the Second Amendment.
That often means they're anti-gun control, not pro-gun, and there's a massive difference.
In some places, anti-gun control is good enough. In many other places, it's not, and in the halls of Congress, we deserve a whole lot better.
In Wyoming, House candidate Steve Friess is talking policies.
Republican Wyoming House candidate Steve Friess discussed gun ownership and the little-known rules impacting ranchers in an interview with the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Freiss is vying in a crowded GOP field to replace Republican Wyoming Rep. Harriet Hageman, who is running for Senate. The son of the late conservative businessman Foster Friess discussed the federal legislation he would support to protect the Second Amendment and push back on restrictive gun bans.
Friess said that one such law he would support is “requiring all for manufacturers of pistols and rifles providing threads so that we can put suppressors on all of our guns.” He stressed that suppressors, which decrease the noise of gunshots, are necessary for protecting gun owners’ ears.Left-wing lawmakers have recently sought to restrict the firearm accessory, also called “silencers.” Democratic New Jersey Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman re-introduced a bill in early June that would establish a so-called “buyback” of suppressors.
“Silencers are not tools of self-defense, they are tools of murder,” Coleman said.
Freiss told the DCNF that the left has suppressors all wrong.
“Liberals have this goofy idea from spy movies that these suppressors turn everything into a silent little blow dart or something. That is not the case,” he argued. “There is still a lot of noise generated by any gun that has a suppressor on it. This is just to protect our ears.”
...
“James Bond is not real life,” Friess said, agreeing with the DCNF’s summary of his argument.
Friess also brought up how they're useful in hunting, which isn't untrue. It seems, though, that he brings it up to undermine the argument that there's no use for suppressors for lawful activity, and since hunting is what every anti-gunner seems to think gun rights were intended for, it's a useful argument.
I'm not fond of any dictate that tells gun manufacturers they have to thread barrels, because while that's really a fairly trivial step in making a barrel like that, it's still something that will drive up the costs and not have an appreciable benefit for those who don't want to fool with suppressors.
I'd like to believe he's joking about that, but I'm not sure he is.
Still, this isn't something I'd lose sleep about, in part because suppressors are great for self-defense, particularly in the home, and Coleman is an idiot who doesn't know what she's talking about. Then again, which anti-gunners out there actually do?
The whole "James Bond is not real life" thing is the perfect encapsulation of what anti-gunners seem to think about suppressors.
Now, support for suppressors may not sound quite the same as someone being a Second Amendment absolutist, but we also need to remember that these are still NFA devices, and it's pretty clear he wants them to become stupidly common in American households, even more so than they've become after the tax stamp was removed. If he's going to side with suppressors, one has to wonder just what restrictions out there he would possibly be in favor of, and I can't think of any.
Granted, the sample size here isn't all that great, but I also want to see suppressors become standard accessories for all gun owners. I view them as a safety device, particularly in home defense, when absolutely no one is going to have time to put on hearing protection.
I can't say that Friess is the next Thomas Massie on gun rights--minus the antisemitism of late, hopefully--but can you picture a Congress with people like him joining with Brandon Herrera, Chip Roy, and other hardcore Second Amendment supporters? Get enough of them, and we can finally get the NFA voted out, along with the 1986 machine gun ban.
Or, like most politicians, he's really just full of crap.
I guess we'll have to wait and see, should he win.
