Sponsors (96)
The bill expands legal access and market clarity for less‑than‑lethal projectile devices and lowers costs for producers and buyers, but it increases public‑safety and civil‑liberties risks and reduces federal excise revenue while creating new regulatory workloads.
Law enforcement agencies can obtain and use qualified less‑than‑lethal projectile devices without being subject to the statutory "firearm" restriction, expanding non‑lethal response options for crowd control and arrests.
Manufacturers, importers, and sellers get clearer, faster regulatory guidance because the bill creates formal determination processes (Attorney General and IRS) and public lists identifying qualifying products, improving market predictability and reducing legal uncertainty.
Devices meeting the bill's definition are removed from the statutory "firearm" category and are exempted from the federal excise tax, lowering compliance burdens and purchase costs for producers and consumers.
Urban communities and broader public safety are at greater risk because the combined carve‑outs and reclassification make forceful crowd‑control tools more available and likely to be deployed, and those tools can still cause serious injury.
People in marginalized communities may face increased civil‑liberties risks because looser regulation and wider availability can enable misuse by private actors or agencies with weaker oversight.
Removing these items from the "firearm" definition could limit firearms‑related safeguards (e.g., background checks), potentially increasing public safety risks if devices are obtained or used by dangerous actors.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Exempts defined less‑than‑lethal projectile devices from certain federal firearm rules and from the federal excise tax, and requires AG/IRS classification determinations and public lists.
Removes certain "less-than-lethal projectile devices" from the federal legal definition of "firearm" and exempts those devices and their shells/cartridges from the federal excise tax. The bill defines qualifying devices by three technical criteria (not accepting common firearm ammunition, designed to avoid causing death/serious injury, and not modifiable to accept certain feeding devices) and requires the Attorney General and Treasury/IRS to make classification determinations within 90 days and to publish/maintain public lists of qualifying items. The tax and definition changes apply to articles sold after enactment; the IRS must also publish an annual list of devices that exceed a 500 ft/s velocity limit but would otherwise qualify, and report that list and reasoning to key tax committees. A 180‑day transitional rule governs requests received soon after enactment.
Official title: To modernize Federal firearms laws to account for advancements in technology and less-than-lethal weapons, and for other purposes.
Introduced March 18, 2025 by Scott Fitzgerald · Last progress February 24, 2026