I started to respond to some of the comments on my article on NFA repeal, but I wrote so much that I decided to devote a whole 'nother post to it.

Suppressors (aka "silencers"):
The proper terminology for this technology is "suppressor", mainly because supersonic rounds cannot be silenced. A suppressor silences the report from a gun by slowly venting the gases out of the end of the barrel instead of releasing it quickly. (Imagine letting the air out of a balloon slowly, versus popping it with a needle.) But you will still have the *crack* from the sonic boom that the round makes traveling through the air at supersonic speeds. Pistol calibers can be silenced to the point where you will only hear the bolt moving back and forth. Just about all rifles are supersonic, can cannot be silenced completely.

Suppressor technology has been around for decades and generally makes shooting more enjoyable for shooters and non-shooters alike. It would be easy to integrate into the barrel of a gun, but government regulation prevents that. There is also a huge safety benefit. Even good ear protection doesn't adequately muffle the boom from some of the larger rifles that people may be shooting on the range. Lots of times you see people wearing ear plugs inside of ear phones to try to escape the noise. But that prevents shooters from hearing range commands and can create an unsafe condition. Preventing the technology from being adopted is simply anti-capitalist. I also find it pretty hypocritical that the people who are griping about noise coming from gun ranges also gripe about the availability of suppressors and barrels that are threaded to support them.

To me, discouraging the use of suppressor technology is a bit like outlawing mufflers for cars on the basis that pedestrians won't hear you coming, or banning smokeless powder because people aren't able to immediately pinpoint where a shot came from. For what it's worth suppressors are already legal, they just require a $200 tax and about 4 to 6 months of government paperwork. That discourages gun manufacturers from integrating the technology into their firearms, and discourages people from buying them. (Which is the idea)

Given that we now have "instant" NICS checks, I would propose eliminating the $200 tax and paperwork cycle completely.

Short barreled rifles:
This should also be a no-brainer. Rifles with a barrel shorter than 16" and shotguns with a barrel shorter than 18" require a $200 tax and mountains of government paperwork ($5 tax for AOW). There is no real benefit to this regulation, other than it prevents law abiding citizens from buying them which is what the gun grabbers want. Shorty rifles are fun to shoot on tactical ranges - where targets pop up at you - but they don't seem very practical for long distance target shooting. But aside from being shorter than usual they function just like other semi-automatics.

Of course the gun grabber argument is that shortened barrels make rifles easier to conceal, and bad guys will roam the streets shooting up the town like all those old Wild West movies. Of course bad guys can already do that simply by purchasing a $5 hacksaw from Home Depot.

Automatics:
The government defines automatic firearms as any firearm that fires more than one round per pull of the trigger. This would include machine guns and submachine guns, but not hand cranked Gatling guns or semi-automatic look-a-likes. You pull the trigger and you get two or more projectiles coming out of the business end. Other than that, the guns often look and feel just like their semi-automatic (auto-loading) brethren. The technology has evolved over hundreds of years, and was widely adopted for military use during WWI.

Now, contrary to popular belief machine guns are not enough to overthrow a government. (At least not our government.) My advocating their deregulation does not make me a militant, anti-government, or mean that I want to wage war against America. I don't own a compound, and I'm not on some holy mission against the establishment. But gun grabbers refer to these guns (and their semi-automatic replicas) as "weapons of war", so I want to point out that you need much more than just machineguns to wage war.

When it comes to guns, it does not make sense to me that we would allow our local police departments to have firearms that everyday citizens cannot possess themselves. What reason do police departments have for possessing automatic firearms in the first place? Well if you ask a cop, they're likely to say self-defense. Historically police departments didn't have anything more powerful than a shotgun. But then the infamous North Hollywood shootout - where the police were outgunned and had to rely on civilian provided firearms to fight back against heavily armed bank robbers - served as the catalyst for a sort of arms race among police departments. Now it's common practice for police departments to compliment their arsenal with automatics.

But if police are justified in having machineguns for self-defense, why aren't civilians? Crime can happen anywhere and the police have no responsibility to protect individual citizens. And let's face it, there may be those rare times when auto-loaders just aren't enough. The recent civil unrest in New Orleans is one such example. Armed thugs roamed the streets looking for victims while police protection was ineffective and non-existent. Aid workers, the police, and even military helicopters were fired upon. Imagine being a law-abiding citizen, and feeling outgunned with only an old hunting rifle to protect yourself.

Not to mention there is the ever present danger of terrorism. While international and domestic terrorists do not pose much of an invasion threat, they can certainly wreak havoc with small parts of it. If terrorists or street tufts wanted to take over your neighborhood, do you think the thought of breaking gun control laws would stop them?

In addition to self defense against thugs and terrorists, the Second Amendment clearly was intended to protect citizens from an oppressive tyranny. The whole Bill of Rights outlines what government cannot do, and serves to protect the individual freedoms of Americans. Just like the government "shall make no law" establishing religion or abridging free speech, the right of people to keep and bear arms "shall not be infringed". Limiting access to certain types of firearms is an infringement. Over time we have come to accept certain infringements on our right to keep and bear arms, but they are infringements just the same. And given recent laws and Supreme Court decisions which have limited political speech 60 days before an election, legitimized land seizures for private use, and permitted papers please demands from government agents, is it so radical to think that we will never need to defend ourselves against a tyrannical government? To think that our government is incapable of tyranny is arrogant and foolish. Not only that, it's dangerous.