USW-style pistols with integral suppressors are going to replace a lot of full-size pistols. If you're going full-size anyway, the extra functionality is worth the size/weight increase.

The question of whether the NFA is going to spring back to life depends largely on how many millions of suppressors and SBRs we can create in the next two years. It does need to be millions. Preferably tens of millions.

Having ridden in a bunch of Cybercabs over the past few weeks here in Austin, Texas, the most striking thing is how much the design of a car changes when you can really lean into it being a self-driving taxi. Here’s a non-exhaustive list of things you can delete: - The rear windshield and its wiper - All mirrors -All mechanical switches other than door handles -Pedals, steering wheel, and steering wheel stalks -The rear seats and doors (it turns out that 90% of cab rides have ≤2 passengers) -A lot of complexity in the front seats — you can eliminate the center console and turn the front into a bench seat The same design clarity also lets you add some things that the same car couldn’t have if it were intended for general purposes. A massive trunk, for example, or an oversize screen that automatically shows the rider’s favorite music app. Firearms are at the dawn of a similar leap in design clarity, brought on by the de facto repeal of federal suppressor regulation. Imagine designing a gun from scratch with a suppressor baked into it. Some things you’d do are: - Bring the weight and bulk of the suppressor closer to the shooter, for better weight distribution -Have a bigger suppressor, since you can spread its volume out over more of the barrel length rather than needing to hang it all off the end of the barrel -Make pretty much all bolt-action rifles integrally suppressed -Make the mounting system more reliable, because you can integrate the suppressor’s design into that of the gun instead of needing to rely exclusively on the threads on the end of the barrel. - Replaceable baffles or wipes - Better management of gas blowback, since you could design the gun under the assumption that it will only be shot suppressed As an industry observer, you should also expect to see the line between gunmakers and suppressor makers get blurry. Some gunmakers will buy suppressor companies, or double down on their homegrown suppressor efforts. And some suppressor companies will start making guns, carrying on the tradition of the SilencerCo Maxim 9. In a few years, it will be rare to see a gunmaker that doesn’t sell suppressed guns from the factory. A corollary is that integral suppressors will get a lot better over the next few years. To this point they’ve been a niche product, and they’ve gotten niche-level R&D investment. We’re excited to watch them go mainstream.

Are they going to release the people in prison for unregistered suppressors/SBRs?

This would be a good time for the ATF to delete all copies of the NFRTR with respect to the newly-4473-only items. If the registration requirements are now void in the ATF’s view, there’s no reason to retain a registry of ownership.

The biggest unlock for gun design since the invention of CNC.

This Care Bears reboot is going to be crazy.

The reason for this is simple: when people learn facts about guns, they tend to support gun rights more. It follows that the only way to increase support for gun control is to stop people from learning facts about guns. That requires silencing people sharing those facts.

YouTube has been an outlier on content policy for the past few years. Other platforms in several industries have made good faith efforts (and real progress) to be neutral on guns. YouTube has stood out for continuing to get more hostile. Their team is out to lunch compared to their peers at other companies, still in thrall to nonprofits and government efforts that others correctly wrote off as discredited years ago.