Sponsors (193)
Official title: To regulate assault weapons, to ensure that the right to keep and bear arms is not unlimited, and for other purposes.
Introduced April 30, 2025 by Lucy Mcbath · Last progress April 30, 2025
The bill aims to reduce the availability and lethality of assault‑style firearms and improve enforcement and oversight, but does so by imposing compliance costs, new transfer rules, and broader prohibitions and penalties that significantly affect lawful owners, businesses, and raise civil‑liberties concerns.
Millions of Americans (general public, students, and middle‑class families) and law enforcement could face fewer assault‑style semiautomatic weapons and large‑capacity magazines in circulation, which may reduce mass‑shooting lethality and related public‑health harms.
Law enforcement and prosecutors gain clearer, standardized federal definitions, enhanced charging authority, and better public data (Attorney General reporting), improving consistency of investigations, prosecutions, and Congressional oversight.
People who lawfully possessed non‑exempt firearms before enactment can keep grandfathered weapons, preserving possession for many existing owners.
Many lawful gun owners (middle‑class families and individual possessors) will face out‑of‑pocket costs and hassle to divest, register, modify, securely store, or turn in firearms and magazines, plus lost resale value—creating substantial economic burdens.
Broad, product‑and‑feature‑based definitions plus expanded predicate offenses and forfeiture authority risk criminalizing owners of commonly held firearms, increasing prosecutions and enhanced penalties and raising civil‑liberties and proportionality concerns.
Manufacturers, retailers, and licensed dealers face higher compliance costs, potential inventory losses, administrative burdens, and increased liability from handling transfers—risks that could reduce business viability or willingness to facilitate required services.
Based on analysis of 7 sections of legislative text.
Makes it illegal under federal law to import, manufacture, sell, transfer, or possess many defined semiautomatic assault weapons and large-capacity magazines, with limited exemptions and buy‑back grant authority.
Prohibits the import, manufacture, sale, transfer, and possession of defined semiautomatic assault weapons and large-capacity ammunition feeding devices, while preserving specific narrow exemptions (antique guns, certain manually operated firearms, qualified law-enforcement uses, and weapons listed as grandfathered). It also tightens criminal penalties for violations, requires dealer-facilitated transfers of grandfathered assault weapons between private parties after 90 days, and authorizes Byrne grant funds to reimburse state and local buy‑back programs that compensate people who surrender prohibited weapons or large-capacity magazines. The bill includes detailed new statutory definitions for covered firearms, parts, and feeding devices and a severability clause to preserve the remainder if part is struck down.