Sponsors (25)
The bill aims to reduce the circulation of high-capacity magazines and fund local buy-backs to improve public safety while balancing law-enforcement access and grandfathering existing owners — but it expands criminal liability, seizure authority, and compliance costs for many gun owners and businesses, shifting trade-offs between public-safety benefits and rights, market impacts, and federal/local costs.
Community residents (including middle- and low-income families) will face fewer large-capacity magazines in circulation, which may reduce the scale of casualties in mass-shooting events.
Law enforcement, campus officers, and security staff at Atomic Energy Act licensees retain access to large-capacity devices for official duties, preserving public-safety and critical-facility protections.
People who lawfully owned covered devices before enactment are grandfathered, avoiding immediate criminalization of existing owners.
Private gun owners who possess magazines or devices that accept more than 10 rounds — or that meet the bill's coupled-device language — could face new criminal liability or be classified as possessing prohibited weapons.
Expanded federal seizure and forfeiture authority combined with a broader enforcement/prosecution scope increases the risk of property loss and legal exposure for individuals and may raise enforcement costs.
Collectors, sport shooters, and some firearms businesses could incur compliance costs, face seizure risk, and see reduced market resale liquidity for affected devices.
Based on analysis of 6 sections of legislative text.
Bans import, sale, manufacture, transfer, and possession of magazines and similar devices that hold or can be restored to hold more than 10 rounds, with narrow law‑enforcement and other exceptions and Byrne grant authorization for buybacks.
Introduced February 27, 2025 by Mazie Hirono · Last progress February 27, 2025
Prohibits the import, sale, manufacture, transfer, and possession of "large capacity ammunition feeding devices" (magazines, belts, drums, helical devices, etc. that accept or can be converted to accept more than 10 rounds), while allowing possession for devices lawfully owned when the law takes effect and creating specific exemptions for federal/state/local law enforcement, certain retired officers, licensed manufacturers/importers for testing, and Atomic Energy Act licensees for on-site security needs. The bill also updates federal criminal and seizure laws to cover these devices and authorizes Byrne Program grant funds to be used for buyback compensation when people surrender covered devices.