For 30 years, Republicans in Congress lawmakers have filed the same bill to let people carry concealed guns in all 50 states, regardless of each state’s permitting standards.
Lawmakers have tried to loosen other laws, including the National Firearms Act of 1934, which restricts machine guns and silencers. They have also made several attempts to restructure the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives — or abolish it.
Before now, removing silencers from federal regulation or abolishing the ATF were ideas largely limited to the fringes of the gun rights movement. Some bills passed the House only to stall in the Senate. With a Republican trifecta in Washington, these long-held goals suddenly seem within reach, reports The Trace.
“A key test will be if Republicans can get any of these bills to the floor of the House and get the majority vote behind them,” said political scientist Robert Spitzer of the State University of New York at Cortland. “Because if they pass the House, it’ll put more pressure on the Senate.”
This year, House and Senate Republicans have introduced at least 26 bills aimed at loosening federal gun laws,. Three bills in the House seek to reform the ATF, while two bills call for its elimination. Three bills in the House and two bills in the Senate seek to remove silencers from the National Firearms Act. One House bill seeks to repeal the National Firearms Act altogether.
The gun rights movement’s signature item, national concealed carry reciprocity, has been introduced in both the House and Senate for the 16th consecutive time. The policy, which the National Rifle Association has likened to a driver’s license for guns, is opposed by states with strong gun laws, which don’t want guns carried by residents of states that employ lower permitting standards or don’t require training.
National concealed carry reciprocity “would be the absolute prize” for Republicans, “and they’re going to do everything they can to get that,” said Josh Horwitz, of Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions.
Republicans are better positioned than ever to get their wish list codified into law. Their razor-thin majority in the House — 218 to 215 — and the filibuster in the Senate still stand in their way.
Other congressional GOP bills attempt to reverse novel policies pushed by gun reformers in recent years. One such measure would ban credit card companies from assigning merchant category codes to firearms retailers. Credit cards have employed the codes for decades to categorize many types of businesses, from bakeries to boat dealers. Experts say using a code for gun sellers could make it easier for credit card companies to flag people making large gun and ammunition purchases and alert law enforcement.
Several pieces of legislation seek to relax regulations on gun sellers, some of whom have complained of overzealous enforcement during the Biden administration. One bill would release gun dealers from a requirement to turn over transaction records to the ATF when they go out of business. If passed, the bill would make it harder for the ATF to trace the purchase history of guns used in crimes, hampering investigations.
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