#Congress

The U.S. House of Representatives passes House Joint Resolution 44 on June 13th. What does this mean for owners of pistol braces? Is this really that big of a deal?

In April, the US Marine Corps announced an ambitious procurement programme to purchase 15,000 M27 Individual Automatic Rifles from Heckler & Koch. The contract, worth $30 million, was to begin to be fulfilled with funds from fiscal year 2019.

Until now, the US Army’s 7.62mm XM1158 Advanced Armor Piercing (ADVAP) round has been a mystery. The round, which was rumored to be the basis for the now-cancelled Interim Combat Service Rifle (ICSR) program, is supposed to allow existing weapons in the 7.62x51mm caliber to defeat advanced body armor out to combat ranges. Speculations about its configuration ranged from an improved traditional tungsten cored round to a discarding sabot design firing uranium flechettes, but the answer to this mystery was recently revealed in an issue of the Picatinny Voice. The ADVAP, it seems, is built on the technology of the 7.62mm M80A1 EPR, but using a tungsten core. From the Picatinny Voice article by Audra Calloway:

The CMP Board of Directors has discussed at length how the sales of 1911s would be handled, if the CMP were to ever receive them from the United States Army.

The US Army’s new centralized procurement organization has been named: In his address at the Eisenhower Luncheon at the 2017 Association of the United States Army, US Army Chief of Staff General Mark Milley announced the creation of a Futures and Modernization Command (FMC), which would oversee the process of research, development, testing, evaluation, and procurement (RDTE&P) from start to finish. In his address, General Milley outlined a new process which would fundamentally change the current procurement model to a new one based on that used by US Special Operations Command:

US Army, what on earth are you doing?

After being cancelled in mid-2016, could the M4 Carbine upgrade program still be alive? That is the suggestion from a line in the US Army’s justification for its research budget in the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act, which references an “M4A2 Plus Rifle” as a new weapons development effort:

With the termination of the Interim Combat Service Rifle, the CSASS program on hold, and the XM25 CDTE dead and buried, many are wondering: When will the Army get its act together on small arms? Given the long history of Army program failures, though, maybe a better question would be: If the Army can’t take the lead on small arms development, who can?

The effort to deregulate of silencers has reached an important milestone: The Hearing Protection Act has made it out of committee, and been incorporated as part of another larger bill. House Resolution 3668 – the Sportsmen Heritage and Recreational Enhancement (SHARE) Act – has been introduced to the House floor with a new subsection, Title XV, Hearing Protection. The new subsection provides for the change in classification of silencers from NFA items to standard firearms such as long guns, just like the HPA. Its text is reproduced at the bottom of this post.

Could the complete deregulation of silencers (also called “suppressors”) be near? That’s the goal of a new bill introduced simultaneously to the House and Senate, which seeks to invalidate the provisions pertaining to silencers of the National Firearms Act, entirely. The bill, called the SHUSH (Silencers Help Us Save Hearing) Act, would nullify the NFA’s requirements for silencer registration via two modifications: First, by making anyone seeking to purchase a silencer (who is otherwise acting within the law) automatically meet the NFA’s requirements; and second, by invalidating all state regulations regarding silencers. Further, these changes would retroactively apply to all silencer transfers more recent than October 22, 2015.

According to a Military.com article, an element of 1st Battalion, 6th Marines will be deploying a 13-man squad of Infantry fully equipped with M27 IARs, suppressors, drum magazines, and other pieces of experimental gear. Called the “Über Squad”, it will be chosen from companies within 1/6, and will use the gear through an entire workup, training, and deployment cycle to Europe. From Military.com:

In recent testimony to Congress, USMC leadership Lieutenant General Robert Walsh and Brigadier General Joseph Shrader officially acknowledged that the USMC’s M27 Infantry Automatic Rifle, made by Heckler & Koch, encounters durability issues when used with the US Army’s new M855A1 Enhanced Performance Round. The testimony is transcribed below:

In the wake of Army Chief of Staff General Mark Milley’s testimony to Congress on the present and future state of the US Army, there has been a significant amount of speculation and in some cases misleading reporting regarding his statements on small arms and ammunition. Authors such as Todd South with Army Times and Eric Graves of Soldier Systems have presented their take on General Milley’s comments, but in doing so have presented an interpretation of his testimony that I do not think reflects what he said or meant. Therefore, briefly, I’d like to go over some of these interpretations and explain why I think they are not accurate and what General Milley meant, instead. After each bullet I will list the interpretation that I think is incorrect, followed by General Milley’s statement regarding it, and then my own explanation.

During Thursday’s hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Army Chief of Staff Mark Milley spoke before the Senate and answered questions about the Army’s readiness and future modernization efforts. One of the concerns raised by the hearing’s members was that of the inability of current US Army small arms ammunition to penetrate current Level IV-type hard ceramic plates, such as the Army’s own E-SAPI plates. A transcript of a conversation between General Milley and Senator Angus King is given below:

*Don’t worry, we’re not getting into politics, just legal mechanics.