What the Senate’s Failure to Act on Suppressor Reform Says About America
By Mark Maxwell, Fort Worth, Texas
Last week, the Senate did something predictable, but no less disappointing: it stripped out the very legislation that could have moved America one step closer to restoring some sanity to the way we regulate suppressors and short-barreled firearms. With the Hearing Protection Act (HPA) and the SHORT Act cut from the latest budget bill, millions of lawful gun owners, people like me and the customers we serve were once again told that their rights are simply too inconvenient to be honored.
Let me say it plainly: this isn’t about suppressors. It’s about sovereignty, as I mention all the time. It’s about whether the American citizen has the dignity of choice, or whether they will continue to be second-guessed, sidelined, and punished by a bureaucracy that thinks it knows better.
The Senate Parliamentarian claimed the suppressor provisions “didn’t meet budgetary requirements” under the Byrd Rule. That’s the sort of thing that makes sense to Washington insiders who’ve never changed the oil in their truck, never walked the aisles of a gun show, never shot next to a veteran trying to protect what little hearing they have left.
To the rest of us, it sounds a lot like cowardice dressed up as process.
The HPA would have eliminated the $200 tax stamp, a Depression-era relic meant to punish ownership, not prevent crime, and removed the absurd hoops that law-abiding citizens must jump through to protect their hearing with a suppressor. The SHORT Act would have done the same for short-barreled rifles and shotguns, which are no more dangerous than their full-length counterparts but treated like contraband thanks to a 1934 law written in fear and ignorance.
Yet despite common sense, bipartisan support in the House, and years of education by folks who actually know firearms, the Senate took the easy path: strip it out, punt it forward, and let the bureaucrats make the call. In other words, the system worked exactly as it was designed to do nothing.
What’s worse is that even inside the firearms community, there’s a fracture.
Some wanted incremental progress. Others demanded all or nothing. But while we squabble about purity, the other side moves in unison with a long memory, deep pockets, and a media megaphone that paints anyone who values their rights as dangerous or deranged.
The reality is this: most suppressor owners aren’t Hollywood assassins. They’re veterans with hearing loss, hunters trying not to spook game across county lines, or dads teaching their daughters to shoot safely without blowing out their eardrums. But to the average lawmaker or staffer, these aren’t people, they’re liabilities.
And so the policy gets punted. Again.
I’ve spent the better part of this past month in legal meetings, and not just as a businessman, but as a partner in RW Arms, a company that had to fight tooth and nail just to defend our right to exist when the federal government arbitrarily banned and seized our legally sold inventory. We chose the hard road: compliance through the courts. And we’re still walking it, for one reason, because we believe that if Americans don’t stand up now, we’ll find ourselves standing in line to beg for what used to be ours by birthright.
We don’t need more experts. We need more courage. We need leaders who remember that government exists to serve, not to parent, not to punish, and not to confiscate. And we need voters who recognize that silence isn’t golden it’s how liberty dies.
The failure to pass suppressor reform isn’t just a missed opportunity. It’s a reminder: your rights are only as secure as your willingness to defend them.
We’re not giving up. Neither should you.
Mark Maxwell is a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, Texas entrepreneur, and founding partner of RW Arms, a firearms accessory distributor that has been at the center of constitutional litigation over federal regulations.