Missouri Guns & Ammo
SNAP benefits and health care may be in limbo with the ongoing federal shutdown, but sales of America’s deadliest weapons must go on!
After relentless lobbying by the gun industry and Republican politicians, silencers, short-barreled rifles, and vintage machine-guns produced before 1986—often called ‘gangster weapons’—will resume. Sales of these items had stopped during the shutdown after federal examiners charged with regulating the purchases were furloughed. The examiners formed part of the NFA division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).
The weapons have long been recognized as posing an outsized risk to public safety, ever since the National Firearms Act under which they are regulated was passed in 1934. They are now among the bestsellers in the gun market, however.
Sales of semi-automatic rifles, shotguns, and handguns were untouched by the government shutdown, and background checks have proceeded as normal. But lobbyists argued that the impediment to sales of silencers, pre-1986 machine guns and short-barreled rifles was a gross violation of Americans’ Second Amendment rights, and was unfairly hurting manufacturer profits.