Sponsors (186)
The bill aims to reduce availability of certain semiautomatic weapons and large-capacity magazines and increase public-safety oversight (through grandfathering, secure storage, regulated transfers, and buy-backs), but it imposes substantial compliance costs, legal risks, and administrative burdens while leaving a significant existing stock of covered items in private hands.
Middle-class families, students, and community residents will likely face fewer semiautomatic assault weapons and large-capacity magazines in circulation, which should reduce the risk and potential severity of mass shootings and some gun crimes.
Current private owners of covered weapons avoid immediate confiscation through grandfathering while being required to secure grandfathered weapons and submit to licensed background-checked transfers, reducing abrupt disruption and unauthorized access.
Law-enforcement agencies retain exemptions and access to banned weapons and magazines for official duties, preserving public-safety capabilities and operational readiness.
Owners, private sellers, dealers, and related small businesses will face direct financial losses, reduced markets, and compliance costs (including potential buybacks and altered resale values).
Grandfathering keeps a sizeable stock of banned weapons and magazines in circulation and buy-back programs can be exploited or limited in reach, reducing the law's long-term effectiveness at removing dangerous items.
Expanding federal offenses and references to seizure/forfeiture increases the risk of longer federal penalties, more prosecutions, and higher incarceration rates for people convicted of newly-covered conduct, with corresponding taxpayer costs.
Based on analysis of 7 sections of legislative text.
Introduced April 30, 2025 by Lucy Mcbath · Last progress April 30, 2025
Prohibits the manufacture, sale, import, transfer, and most possession in interstate or foreign commerce of defined “semiautomatic assault weapons” and “large-capacity ammunition feeding devices,” while exempting certain government and law-enforcement uses and grandfathering items lawfully possessed on the date of enactment. It adds detailed technical and model-based definitions, requires secure storage for grandfathered weapons, creates a new rule requiring licensed dealers to oversee private transfers of grandfathered weapons (after 90 days), authorizes Byrne grant funds for buybacks, and directs the Attorney General to publish an annual public record of assault weapons used in crimes. Establishes new criminal references and identification text in federal firearms law, allows limited regulated testing/manufacturing exemptions, and includes a severability clause so the rest of the law stays in effect if parts are struck down by a court.