Sponsors (125)
Official title: To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to remove silencers from the definition of firearms, and for other purposes.
Introduced January 15, 2025 by Benjamin Cline · Last progress January 15, 2025
The bill significantly reduces federal and local regulatory burdens and increases owner privacy and interstate commerce for silencers while trading off reduced federal/state tracking and registration (and associated revenue), which could hinder investigations and increase public-safety risks despite added marking and a new excise tax.
Gun owners, manufacturers, dealers, and related small businesses face substantially lower federal NFA compliance burdens and paperwork for silencers (fewer registrations, duplicate processes eliminated), reducing costs and time spent on regulatory compliance.
Individuals who own or buy silencers will have identifying NFA records removed/destroyed from the federal registry, reducing federal retention of personal silencer ownership data and lowering risks from a federal data breach.
Owners and buyers can buy, possess, transport, or transfer silencers across state lines without incurring special state/local marking, registration, or transfer requirements (beyond general sales/use taxes), reducing paperwork and barriers to interstate commerce.
Members of the public and law-enforcement: making silencers no longer treated as 'firearms' under the NFA and removing duplicate registration/marking requirements will generally ease access and reduce tracking, increasing public-safety risks from wider silencer possession and use.
Law-enforcement and investigators lose centralized federal registration/transfer records (and some state/local records), which will hinder tracing, criminal investigations, and cross-jurisdictional tracking of silencers used in crimes.
State and local governments will lose a regulatory tool and revenue source (state/local marking, registration, or transfer-related income) and will have reduced ability to set stricter local public-safety rules on silencers.
Based on analysis of 7 sections of legislative text.
Removes silencers from the NFA firearm definition, aligns NFA compliance with Title 18, preempts many state silencer taxes/registration rules, destroys federal silencer records, requires serial marking, and adds a 10% excise tax.
Removes firearm silencers (often called suppressors) from the statutory definition of "firearm" under the National Firearms Act and aligns federal licensing, registration, and manufacturing rules to treat silencers under Title 18 criminal provisions. It preempts most state and local taxes and registration/marking requirements on silencers that affect interstate or foreign commerce, requires the Attorney General to destroy existing federal NFA records for silencers within one year, creates new federal definitions and serial-number marking rules for silencers, and imposes a 10% federal excise tax category on silencers and mufflers. The bill changes multiple federal statutes so that compliance with Title 18 silencer requirements satisfies NFA obligations, requires manufacturers and importers to mark silencers with serial numbers, bars state/local taxes and registration rules for silencers affecting commerce, and mandates destruction of silencer records in the federal NFA database; several provisions take effect for calendar quarters beginning more than 90 days after enactment and the record-destruction must occur within 365 days of enactment.