Gun rights advocates are cheering a recent ruling that will make it easier for people to obtain firearm suppressors and certain weapons, with a business founder-turned-lawmaker calling it "the greatest restoration" of Second Amendment rights in almost a century.Rep.Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., who founded Clyde Armory in his home state of Georgia before he was elected to Congress, argued that the regulatory barrier was wrong in the first place because it taxed a constitutional right."If you can tax something legitimately, then you can actually destroy it through increased taxation.
You might, quote, 'have a right on paper,' but you don't really have a right because you can't afford the right.Is that really a right? It's not," Clyde told Fox News Digital."So here we are removing the taxation on a constitutional right from a bill that was passed in 1934.
And once you remove the tax aspect of it, then you remove the constitutionality of the registration aspect."Smith & Wesson M&P-15 semi-automatic rifles of the AR-15 style are displayed during the National Rifle Association (NRA) annual meeting at the George R.Brown Convention Center, in Houston, Texas on May 28, 2022.
(Patrick T.Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)GUN RIGHTS GROUPS CAPITALIZE AFTER JUDGE REVERSES DECADES-OLD RESTRICTIONS: 'MONUMENTAL'Clyde led the charge last year to roll back part of the National Firearms Act of 1934, a push that was ultimately successful in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA).Under the 92-year-old law, a $200 tax was established on silencers, short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns and other firearms that also required additional federal registration to obtain.Republicans reduced that tax to $0 in the OBBBA, which gun rights groups then used to successfully argue that the added registration was unconstitutional.
The ruling affects the parties that brought the lawsuit and is not a national injunction on the law, however, according to the Associated Press.But Clyde said it was a...