Republican Representative Chip Roy (R-Texas) introduced legislation on Wednesday to further curb the power that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has to restrict the Second Amendment rights of the American people.
Rep. Roy's bill aims to roll back a provision within the National Firearms Act (NFA) which serves as a loophole to restrict certain types of firearms, classed as “any other weapon” or an AOW by the ATF.
Current law defines an AOW as:
“Any weapon or device capable of being concealed on the person from which a shot can be discharged through the energy of an explosive, a pistol or revolver having a barrel with a smooth bore designed or redesigned to fire a fixed shotgun shell, weapons with combination shotgun and rifle barrels 12 inches or more, less than 18 inches in length, from which only a single discharge can be made from either barrel without manual reloading, and shall include any such weapon which may be readily restored to fire. Such term shall not include a pistol or a revolver having a rifled bore, or rifled bores, or weapons designed, made, or intended to be fired from the shoulder and not capable of firing fixed ammunition.”
According to a press release from his congressional office, Roy believes “bearing arms in self-defense is a human right. It is evident from the ATF's behavior that, under Joe Biden's Department of Justice, the agency is hellbent on attacking the Second Amendment through every means at its disposal.”
As noted by Cam Edwards of Bearing Arms, there are several pieces of legislation including “HR 4312 and HR 1758, which would remove short-barreled shotguns and short-barreled rifles from being regulated under the National Firearms Act.”
Rep. Roy noted these efforts while filing his own legislation, including in his press release that he is grateful for his “colleagues' work in Congress to remove short-barreled rifles and shotguns (SBRs, SBSs) from regulation under the National Firearms Act.”
However, he continued “should that legislation be successful in doing so, the NFA's ‘Any Other Weapon' provision would still allow an anti-gun administration to use the ATF to unilaterally regulate these firearms, and, more importantly, target their owners. The No Backdoor Gun Control Act would close this notable loophole and help protect law-abiding gun owners,”
Rep. Roy's legislation is currently supported by over 20 co-sponsors as well as the Gun Owners of America (GOA) and the National Association of Gun Rights (NAGR).
If passed, this legislation would be another nail in the coffin of the once-aggressive gun control agenda rhetoric that Biden pushed on the campaign trail and in his first few months in office – from failing to nominate Beto O'Rourke to be his “gun control czar” to the David Chipman debacle in which Chipman was not even put up for a vote before the full body of the United States Senate to be the head of the ATF.
In the case of Joe Biden and gun control, promises made and promises broken are truly better than “promises made, promises kept”.
Republicans have thus far valiantly fought against every gun control attempt made by the Biden administration and the ineffective Democrat majorities in both chambers of Congress.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
That curbing power of the AFT is excelent biger the Government the more problems we honest citizens have if they are allowed to make the rules just about everything in our 2nd amendment will be lost with that gone so will our country as we know it now. Just look what happened in Canada Trudeau is walking over his citizens he a proclaimed dictator.
Yes curb their power,smaller gov less problems. Gov.have proven their criminal behavior look at Trudeau Canada when leader get too big for their pants disaster follows.
Seems like they are “hell bent” on putting every gun under the NFA. The NFA is the list of firearms owners we do not want them to have. It is getting very close to a time when we will have to show them what the 2A is really all about. They know that, so their haste in cataloging, banning and otherwise encumbering the citizens who want to own guns. They know their time is short.