CMR Would Make Mass Shootings More Deadly

While she pretends she’s just protecting your hearing

Jerry LeClaire

Oct 17

In the wake of another mass shooting, this time by a fifteen year old boy in Raleigh, North Carolina, I am reminded that “my” U.S. Representative, Cathy McMorris Rodgers, is so deeply entwined with the NRA that she co-sponsors a bill that could make these deranged shooters even more deadly. 

You all recognize the cylindrical device that an assassin screws onto the muzzle of his gun in spy movies, the device that reduces the discharge of the gun to a muffled “Pfffft!”. The mass shootings that have become so sickeningly common in our country—Sandy Hook, Uvalde, and Parkland to name just a few—have NOT involved such muffled (“silenced”) weapons. Imagine if these shooters had ready access to devices that muffle the sound of their weapons, maybe not to a “Pfffft” like in the movies, but enough to make the killing less obvious and the shooter harder to localize. How many more would die?

There is a simple reason why these deranged shooters aren’t already using silencers on their weapons: the purchase and ownership of a silencer is highly regulated under the National Firearms Act of 1934—along with other people-killing devices like full-on machine guns and sawed-off shotguns. Republicans would like to change that—and they want to hide their intent.

Cathy McMorris Rodgers, our soccer-mom-lookalike from eastern Washington (CD-5), the woman who solemnly offers her “thoughts and prayers” after every mass shooting, is a consistent co-sponsor of The Hearing Protection Act. The 2021-2022 version of this bill has 95 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives—every last one of them a Republican. As a shooter myself, McMorris Rodgers’ co-sponsorship of this disingenuously named bill makes me hopping mad. Read the bill. Not only would it remove federal restrictions on the purchase and ownership of silencers, but it would preempt any state and local laws that restrict silencers (See Sec 4). So much for “states rights”—a term that Republicans drag out only when it happens to suit their purpose—e.g. abortion regulations. 

Has our smiling soccer mom been duped by the NRA into somehow imagining “The Hearing Protection Act” is actually about protecting our hearing? No, she fully understands what she is co-sponsoring. In May of 2018 at a small Cathy-friendly town hall in Green Bluff, when confronted with the reality of her co-sponsorship of “The Hearing Protection Act” she assured the audience, “I’m definitely going to take a look again.” She also said, “…with everything going on [this was just three months after Parkland] I tend to think that this is…that now is not the right time.” In 2022 she is still a co-sponsor. She knows what she’s doing—and she thinks she can pull the wool over the eyes of enough voters to keep her in office. 

Remember McMorris Rodgers’ willful deception as you fill out your ballot this weekend. Vote for Natasha Hill. 

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

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