Chris Jahn’s reminder that the Empire State Building went from groundbreaking to ribbon-cutting in just twenty months lands like a gut-punch to anyone who has waited three years for a simple Form 1 approval or watched an FFL sit on a 4473 for weeks because the NICS “delay” queue never clears. The same federal machinery that once moved steel and rivets at record speed now treats every suppressed .22 or braced pistol as a regulatory moon-shot, complete with environmental impact statements, tribal consultations, and multi-agency sign-offs that stretch into election cycles. When the chemical industry can’t get a new reactor online without a decade of paperwork, the message for gun owners is unmistakable: the permitting state isn’t broken by accident; it is a feature that rations liberty as effectively as it rations industrial capacity.
That slow-rolling bureaucracy doesn’t just inconvenience manufacturers of primers or propellants; it directly starves the 2A supply chain. Every extra month a powder plant sits in permitting limbo is another month of empty shelves, inflated prices, and frustrated reloaders who already navigate a thicket of excise taxes, serialization mandates, and “ghost gun” rules. Meanwhile, states that streamline their own processes—constitutional carry expansions, shall-issue reciprocity, or even shall-issue suppressor permits—prove that faster government can coexist with robust public safety metrics, undercutting the narrative that endless review equals responsible governance.
The takeaway for the firearms community is strategic as much as philosophical: the same coalition pushing permitting reform for LNG terminals and semiconductor fabs should be natural allies for anyone tired of watching rights languish in regulatory purgatory. If Congress can be persuaded that two-year skyscrapers are once again possible, the logical next step is applying that same urgency to shall-issue NFA trusts, streamlined FFL licensing, and an end to the de-facto permitting tax on every new model of firearm or accessory. Liberty, like infrastructure, atrophies when the paperwork never ends.
