Imagine the scene: New Year’s Day, and a horde of eager gun owners unleashes a digital blitzkrieg on the ATF’s eForms website, slamming it with over 60 times the normal submission rate for NFA items like suppressors. The site buckles like a wet cardboard box, crashing spectacularly and staying broken even now. This wasn’t some cyberattack—it was the free market flexing its muscles, a spontaneous protest against the bureaucratic stranglehold on our Second Amendment rights. Suppressors, those humble hearing protectors misbranded as silencers, flooded the system because patriots are done waiting months (or years) for ATF permission slips to exercise their freedoms.
Enter the NSSF, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, which you’d think would be riding shotgun for industry innovation and reform. Instead, they’ve urged their 10,000+ members to lobby Congress for *more* funding for the ATF—the very agency whose incompetence just got exposed. This is peak irony: the organization representing firearm manufacturers begging to supercharge the machine that’s throttling suppressor sales and innovation. Why? Perhaps it’s naive faith in fixing the system from within, or worse, a craven bid to play nice with D.C. insiders. But let’s call it what it is: a self-inflicted wound. Pouring cash into ATF coffers without demanding radical overhaul—like ditching the NFA entirely or at least tax-free suppressors—guarantees longer wait times, more backlogs, and suppressed (pun intended) market growth.
The implications for the 2A community are seismic. Tax-free suppressors are going to break the NFA, as the insiders whisper, and they’re right—this eForms meltdown proves demand is exploding. With pistol braces under siege and new regs looming, wait times could balloon to 12+ months, killing small FFLs and alienating new shooters. NSSF’s plea hands ammo to gun-grabbers who’ll spin it as proof the system needs more cops, not less red tape. 2A warriors, don’t fund your own jailers—rally for Hearings Modernization, piston reform, and full NFA repeal. Crash their site again if you must, but let’s crash the outdated regime for good. The revolution starts at your keyboard.
