By Mark Heinz
Wyoming Republican U.S. Sen. Cynthia Lummis is backing a push to lift 90-year-old restrictions on short-barreled rifles and pistols, which a Wyoming firearms law expert called “silly.”
Lummis on Thursday jointed the co-sponsors of S. 1162 the SHORT Act, in the U.S. Senate. The bill calls an amendment of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as it relates to the 1934 National Firearms Act (NFA).
The NFA restricted civilian access to such things as fully-automatic weapons and “short-barreled” rifles and shotguns.
The NFA was implemented over worries about weapons wielded by Prohibition-era gangsters, said George Mocsary, director of the Firearms Research Center at the University of Wyoming and professor at the UW College of Law.
Even back then, restrictions on short-barreled firearms didn’t do anything to make the public safer, Mocsary told Cowboy State Daily.
“It’s silly. Just silly,” he said.