American gun manufacturers can’t just ship guns all over the place. While some want to blame them for illegal guns in other nations, it’s not like Colt can just ship a pile of rifles to Guatemala simply because it thinks there’s a market for them.
You can do that with almost any other product, just not anything firearm-related.
Instead, there needs to be permission for weapons and weapons-related exports. You have to get the OK from the State Department.
And no one is going to get that OK, and they haven’t been getting it for months now.
It seems at least some senators are bothered by that:
United States Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN), a member of the Senate Banking Committee, today announced his plan to file a Congressional Review Act (CRA) Resolution of Disapproval to block the Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) interim final rule that prohibits Americans from exercising their Second Amendment Rights. The Resolution of Disapproval is co-sponsored by Senators Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Ted Budd (R-NC), Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Tom Cotton (R-AR), Kevin Cramer (R-ND), Mike Crapo (R-ID), Steve Daines (R-MT), Deb Fisher (R-NE), Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), and Jim Risch (R-ID).
The interim final rule severely restricts the ability of American firearm, ammunition, and related-component manufacturers to obtain a license to export their products for sale. This is an attempt to effectively permanently extend the current “pause” on such export licenses and will rescind approximately 2,000 active export licenses for certain firearms. In addition to being an unlawful, unjustified exercise of regulatory authority, this will have a substantial, negative impact on these American manufacturers, their suppliers, and the jobs they support.
“This rule is another Operation Choke Point—a politically motivated effort that significantly harms Tennessee manufacturers—and will consequently destroy U.S. jobs and small businesses that support the firearm and ammunition industry,” said Senator Hagerty. “The Biden Administration has made clear that its goal is to damage the firearm industry that supplies the products that allow Americans to exercise their constitutional freedom. Crushing American exports is just a means to skirt the legislative process and do damage to yet another Biden-disfavored industry. I’m pleased to lead my colleagues in an effort to overturn this unlawful and unwarranted rule and protect American enterprise.”
I like where their heads are at. I just don’t see it happening.
Currently, Democrats have an effective one-vote majority – there are three independents who caucus with Democrats. If there’s a party-line vote, Republicans lose. That would require at least two from the Dem side to cross the line.
That’s not completely out of the realm of possibility, at least in theory, but it would need to be something that would create enough of an issue for gun owners directly that they could push some of those Democrats to cross the aisle.
I just don’t see this being the kind of issue that could actually do that.
Instead, what we have here is an announcement to try and do something that won’t actually go anywhere. I’m not even convinced it would make it out of committee with a GOP-controlled Senate, much less one run by the Democrats.
In other words, it’s a signal these senators don’t approve, but that there really is nothing they can do.
What I want to do is roll my eyes at the whole thing, but the truth is that there really isn’t much they can do. Fixing this depends on us. We, the American people, have to make the right decision in upcoming elections so that this kind of thing can be put down.
The problem is that the mainstream media isn’t interested in giving you the whole story and Big Tech isn’t interested in not taking sides. They want to throttle places like Bearing Arms so that people like you won’t get the truth about anti-gun moves by the Biden administration.
