Sponsors (146)
The bill reduces the availability of high-capacity magazines and gives law enforcement clearer authority and funded buy-back options to improve public safety, at the cost of creating new federal criminal exposure, compliance costs, and enforcement distinctions that will affect private owners, businesses, and taxpayers.
General public (students, middle-class families, communities) will likely face reduced availability of large-capacity magazines, which should lower the potential lethality of mass shootings in public spaces.
People who lawfully possess covered devices on enactment can keep them, avoiding sudden confiscation and abrupt loss of use for existing owners.
Qualified law-enforcement officers, campus officers, certain Atomic Energy Act licensees, retired officers, and manufacturers/importers retain limited uses and exceptions, preserving operational readiness and authorized training.
Private owners who acquire, modify, or possess magazines that accept more than 15 rounds after enactment face new federal criminal exposure, potential arrests, enhanced penalties, and forfeiture risk.
Owners of aftermarket or coupled devices — and licensed manufacturers/importers/sellers — may incur costs to alter, surrender, destroy, or halt sales of covered equipment, creating compliance burdens and potential business losses.
Expanded seizure and forfeiture authority plus broader criminal predicates could increase property loss, legal fights, prosecutions, and incarceration costs borne by defendants and taxpayers.
Based on analysis of 6 sections of legislative text.
Bans import, sale, manufacture, transfer, and possession of large-capacity ammunition feeding devices over 15 rounds, with limited exceptions and grandfathering for existing lawful possession.
Official title: To regulate large capacity ammunition feeding devices.
Introduced February 27, 2025 by Diana DeGette · Last progress February 27, 2025
Prohibits the import, sale, manufacture, transfer, and possession of large-capacity ammunition feeding devices (magazines, belts, drums, etc.) that hold, or can be readily restored to hold, more than 15 rounds, while protecting existing lawful possession and creating limited exceptions for government and law enforcement uses. It adds the new offense and related forfeiture/seizure provisions to federal firearms law, expands Byrne grant allowable uses to permit buyback compensation, and includes a severability clause.