.@JDVance, you are in a position to do something about the Hearing Protection Act and the SHORT Act. As gun owners, we have gone years with the second amendment being slowly picked apart by Republicans and Democrats alike. None of the half measure victories we get make up for our rights being held hostage.
YOU CAN FIX THIS. We're exhausted from having to fight every day just for our constitutional rights. Give us a win. If we get this ripped away from us, to many, it shows how ineffective the GOP is and we'll just stay home.
Do the right thing here.
🚨ATTENTION GUN OWNERS🚨
GOA is doing everything in our power to fight a two-front battle to restore your rights on the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. As the Senate is moving revised $0 NFA tax language, GOA is still fighting to fully repeal the NFA excise tax on silencers and short-barreled firearms and to eliminate federal gun registration. But there is a lot of misinformation and bad strategy floating around which we must correct.⤵️
1️⃣ Foremost, GOA is fighting the Parliamentarian’s ruling. Elizabeth MacDonough should be fired. And if @LeaderJohnThune will not fire her, her non-binding advice should be ignored and overruled by Senate President @JDVance or President Pro Tempore @ChuckGrassley. GOA is pressing for both of these strategies in the Senate—and all through this weekend, we have been rallying the grassroots with alerts urging gun owners to demand that their Senators support these outcomes.
If the Parliamentarian is fired—or if the Senate President or President Pro Tempore begin overruling the Parliamentarian—Gun Owners of America and our allies will work to re-insert the full NFA repeal language into the bill. However, if none of these elected officials will stand up to this unelected bureaucrat, then her ruling will unfortunately stand.
2️⃣ In the interim, while the Parliamentarian’s outrageous ruling stands, we are also using the Senate rules to gut the NFA as much as possible. Gun owners will remember that when the fight was in the House, we demanded that Representatives go farther than just reducing the tax to $0. We worked for a drastic gutting of the NFA—and we were successful.
Unfortunately, the Parliamentarian’s ruling severely limits that victory. And that is why, even while we still work to overturn her ruling, we are also trying to lessen the amount of infringement that gun owners suffer to the maximum extent allowable under the rules and precedents of the Senate. This would be the case if the $200 tax is reduced to $0. We will keep you posted as the Byrd Bath continues.
❌ Gun owners must realize that there is no alternative to the above strategy and there is no third “Crenshaw Option” for gun owners.
@RepDanCrenshaw has come up with a great strategy for his own language dealing with the transgender issue—but this will not apply to the NFA. Here’s why⤵️
Rep. Crenshaw’s strategy is built on the hope that Democrats will NOT object to his language. And that makes this a win-win situation for him, despite the Parliamentarian’s ruling. Crenshaw is betting the Democrats are afraid to touch the transgender issue because it will bring them bad publicity. So, he is hoping that his language can sail under the radar without Democrats raising a point of order against it under the Byrd Rule—a tactic that allows any Senator to strike non-budgetary language from a budget reconciliation bill. Alternatively, he knows if Democrats raise the point of order and defeat his language, then they’ll receive a public backlash.
This strategy will not work for the NFA. There is no situation where the Democrats will not raise a point of order against our language. @SenSchumer has even promised to fight our language himself! So, pushing forward—without removing or overruling the Parliamentarian—guarantees that gun owners will lose everything and be left with nothing.
❌ Likewise, there is no way that 53 Republicans can vote to overrule the Parliamentarian under the rules of the Senate. Only Senate President Vance or President Pro Tempore Grassley can “overrule” the Parliamentarian by ignoring her non-binding advice—which is exactly what GOA has been pushing for.
Without the help of the Senate President or President Pro Tempore, it will require 60 votes to waive or bypass the Byrd Rule for our NFA repeal language. That would essentially force gun owners to overcome the equivalent of a filibuster—which is exactly what we are trying to avoid!
3️⃣ One last thing—what about the $0 tax for suppressors and short-barreled firearms? There are two scenarios⤵️
🅰️ First, if the Parliamentarian finds the $0 tax for suppressors and short-barreled firearms to be compliant with the Byrd rule, then Sen. Schumer will have lost all his leverage. He can object to the provision, but he would need 60 votes to get the NFA tax repeal stricken from the bill.
🅱️ Second, if the Parliamentarian finds the $0 tax out of order, then gun owners will get absolutely nothing because @SenateGOP will need to corral the 60 votes to overrule her. If this happens, we will clearly use this second hyper-partisan ruling as even more evidence that the Parliamentarian is NOT performing her job unbiasedly and needs to be fired!
The $0 tax is clearly not everything we wanted, but it’s NOT a compromise—because it would be repealing existing infringements on gun owners. Not only that, it would serve to both proliferate NFA firearms under the common use test and give us greater leverage to challenge the NFA in court. After all, the NFA tax was only considered legal by the Supreme Court in 1937 because it was determined to be a tax. If Congress does away with the tax, then it’s no longer a legal restriction under SCOTUS precedent, and that throws the entire NFA into jeopardy—which is something we would champion!
Gun Owners of America is proud of the work we have done, proud of our grassroots activists who forced Congress to fight for the full repeal of suppressors and short-barreled firearms from the NFA, furious with the Senate Parliamentarian, and ready to keep fighting on all fronts to gut this archaic gun control law. 🇺🇸
So they can out OTHER things back in the bill against the parliamentarian… but for some reason they can’t with HPA or SHORT act… spread this, follow me here, tag everyone you can think of… @GunOwners@GunWashington@gunrights@gunpolicy
🚨PSA TO REPUBLICANS🚨
Gun owners are watching closely.
📈 If you fire or overrule the Parliamentarian to gut the NFA, you will win massive support in the midterms.
📉 If you fail to protect our rights, gun owners will remember in the primary or just stay home.
@tedcruz
Please add the SHORT act into the HR 1 bill and make sure the HPA in its entirety is kept in as well.. I know you're do the right thing. You have always been a Patriot for gun rights and I thank you very much for that