Republican Wyoming House candidate Steve Friess discussed gun ownership and the little-known rules impacting ranchers in an interview with the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Freiss is vying in a crowded GOP field to replace Republican Wyoming Rep. Harriet Hageman, who is running for Senate. The son of the late conservative businessman Foster Friess discussed the federal legislation he would support to protect the Second Amendment and push back on restrictive gun bans. (RELATED: Why Son Of Conservative Megadonor Is Running For Congress In Wyoming)
Friess said that one such law he would support is “requiring all for manufacturers of pistols and rifles providing threads so that we can put suppressors on all of our guns.” He stressed that suppressors, which decrease the noise of gunshots, are necessary for protecting gun owners’ ears.
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Left-wing lawmakers have recently sought to restrict the firearm accessory, also called “silencers.” Democratic New Jersey Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman re-introduced a bill in early June that would establish a so-called “buyback” of suppressors.
“Silencers are not tools of self-defense, they are tools of murder,” Coleman said.
Freiss told the DCNF that the left has suppressors all wrong.
“Liberals have this goofy idea from spy movies that these suppressors turn everything into a silent little blow dart or something. That is not the case,” he argued. “There is still a lot of noise generated by any gun that has a suppressor on it. This is just to protect our ears.”
The candidate also stated that suppressors serve a practical use in hunting, which is ubiquitous in Wyoming.
“If you’re out stalking some elk with a couple friends, you want to go with guys that have got suppressors. Because that way, three of you might get shots off instead of just one, and then the entire herd bolts up into the hills,” he noted.
“James Bond is not real life,” Friess said, agreeing with the DCNF’s summary of his argument.
Friess states on his campaign website that in heavily rural Wyoming the Second Amendment “isn’t just a policy stance” but “a way of life.”
A bull elk bugles in a pasture meadow near the Madison River in Yellowstone National Park October 16, 2003 in Wyoming. (Photo by Bill Schaefer/Getty Images)
The candidate also discussed the Waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule, which he calls “radical” and believes should be permanently repealed.
“When I travel around the state and visit town halls, and I mention WOTUS, a lot of heads start shaking. This was a real issue across Wyoming, in many communities,” he told the DCNF. “What the Biden EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] did was that they had control and authority over navigable waterways.”
“But they [the Biden-era EPA] redefined what a navigable waterway was. And it could include a seasonal pond on your land. And if you wanted to smooth out a field so you could grow more, if you didn’t have the right permits … they could come in with thousands of dollars of fines a day,” Freiss explained.
He also raised concerns that there may have been “selective enforcement” of the rule.
“I wonder how are they choosing the people to go after. Because they define this rule so broadly that it allowed them to insert themselves and come in. Just punitive fines that were very hard to unwind,” Friess told the DCNF.
Friess’ campaign website states that WOTUS “threatened to give the federal government jurisdiction over every mud puddle on a rancher’s property.”
The Wyoming Republican also shared that even before President Donald Trump was nominated, he had “recruited some very smart conservative lawyers in D.C. who had served in past administrations and really knew the agencies inside and out.”
“They identified a legal fix for this. It was temporary. There’s still work to do on the WOTUS issue,” he stated. “But President Trump was provided a document he could sign, which gave immediate relief to folks that were undergoing WOTUS issues.”
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