Is NFA, is made of money...

Robb is agog about the price of suppressors.

Every point he makes is true.  Sadly.

WizardPC's purchase of his suppressor includes the cost of establishing a trust.  It's expensive out of the box, but reusable.  He'll never have to establish that trust to buy an NFA item again.  Me too.

At least WizardPC is paying $200 to register SOMETHING.  I've paid $200 each to have nothing.

For the first SBR I paid about $44.44 per missing inch and the second is $133.33 per inch of air.

All of the stuff on the NFA list are "gangster" weapons.  Prohibition era gangsters.  Great Depression era gangsters.

These items really were being used by criminals.  Bonnie and Clyde used Colt Monitors (Browning Automatic Rifles) cut down for concealment.  The Thompson is notorious for its use by mobsters.  EVERYONE knows that only assassins use silencers.

Sound suppressors are on the gangster weapons list because the movie version of gangsters used them rather than in real life.

Are you a "gangster"?  I'm not.

That $200 tax was supposed to be a crushing burden that made you say, "screw this, that's not worth the money."  The background check is supposed to be onerous enough to make you say, "this is more trouble than it's worth."  The goal is to remove these items from common usage.  I don't accidentally use that phrasing.  Common usage is exactly how Heller v DC described what guns one had the right to own.

It's working isn't it?

Economics plays into it here too.  Every person who refuses to buy an NFA item that's still being manufactured makes them more expensive because that lowers the volume made.  If AAC sold twice as many cans they'd be cheaper.  That $200 tax and background per can are barriers to purchase that many people don't wish to climb.

But consider this: if you have a conceal carry permit, you've already submitted to this "anal probing."  You've also demonstrated that you can pass the probe.  What did that permit cost?  Is it an ongoing expense or one-time?  Virtually any cost or privacy objection to NFA can be applied to a carry permit.

CCW has something else in common with NFA: We shouldn't have to pay special for it!  The price of buying the gun should be the only cost to carrying it concealed.

Why do many meekly submit to the process of getting a carry permit then turn around and rage about the intrusiveness and excessive cost of getting a sound suppressor?

Sorry to pick on you, Robb.  You're not the first person I've heard with your complaint, you just happened to wake up my muse about it.