The Rush Is On.

With the tax on suppressors, short-barreled rifles (SBRs) and short-barreled shotguns (SBSs) set to expire in January, things are looking mighty fine for anyone who makes cans. This is a good thing, because a suppressor is nothing more than a safety device, and subjecting them to a $200 tax stamp is stupid. 

The tax and registration on SBR’s and SBS’s is a little more complectious. The NFA was supposed to include handguns, and SBRs and SBS were added because restricting one kind of concealable firearm made little sense if you didn’t restrict them all. However, there was a brief moment of sanity in the Democratic Party in 1934, and handguns were taken off the list at the last minute, leaving the SBSs and SBRs behind. 

Open Source Defense has some interesting insights on this (a home defense SBS sounds MIGHTY tasty), and I agree with them that the PDW market is overlooked when it comes to this sort of thing. 

And no, that’s not just because I am a PDW nerd. Look at the popularity of the Flux Raider, for example. Take the trigger pack from a P320 or a P365 and drop it into a chassis that gives you four points of contact (shoulder, cheek and hands) versus just two (hands) and all of a sudden you have something that’s slightly larger than a pistol yet is a viable 100 yard gun.

Imagine a PDW version of the Ruger/Magpul RXM. Or the Echelon. Or any modern chassis-based pistol.  Imagine what might happen when the gloves come off at Kel-Tec, and that company turns its mad geniuses loose on an SBR. Or maybe even a 10-shot short-barreled KSG. 

The mind reels. 

Yes, the new zero-dollar NFA is going to be great for suppressors. Heck as I write this, I have a tab open as I search for a new can (I’m thinking a low back pressure hybrid, maybe an Omega 36M or something from Huxwrx). However, let’s not overlook how this is going to affect the entire firearms market. It”s been decades since an entirely new market has opened up in the gun world. Now not one, but three are about to do so. 

Let’s see what happens.