The Big Beautiful Bill will probably be looked back upon as one of the most important moves by the second Trump administration, and part of that is the Hearing Protection Act, which killed the $200 tax stamp on suppressors.
While suppressors, also called "silencers" by some, aren't as expensive as some NFA items might be, the tax stamp added a significant cost to the products, thus artificially making them out of reach for many people.
Couple that with the hassles of paperwork and having to hand all that information directly to the feds, and there wasn't a lot of reason for many to pony up the money to have a legal suppressor.
Now, that's gone, and what happened?
Pretty much what you'd expect.
American gun owners are stocking up on sound suppressors.
National Firearms Act (NFA) registrations rose 129 percent year over year in September, according to a report released by the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) on Monday. The group, which obtained Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) records through a Freedom of Information Act request, said suppressors–officially labeled silencers by the agency–were the NFA items primarily driving that surge, and they’ve already topped 1.1 million for the year–about 22 percent of the 4.9 million suppressors on the ATF’s books. The group also told The Reload that more than 100,000 additional suppressor registration applications are pending and attributed much of the increased demand to a silencer tax cut Republicans passed last year.
“This is the direct result of NSSF working with Congress and the Trump administration to remove burdensome tax stamp fees previously required to obtain a suppressor at retail,” Mark Oliva, NSSF’s managing director of public affairs, said in a statement. “Americans are showing that when barriers are removed to lawful firearm and firearm accessory ownership, they will make that investment, in this case, to preserve their hearing.”
The shifting legal ground underlying the NFA may actually lead to even more suppressor sales over the rest of the year. With a federal judge enjoining enforcement of registration requirements for suppressors and some other NFA items for many Americans in August, and the Department of Justice officially declining to appeal this month, the ATF is poised to announce new regulations this week and the barrier to legally owning the devices is about to drop again. Sales could climb further before the year ends.
The DOJ and ATF issued their guidance on Friday afternoon, and it's about as good as we could have hoped for. NSSF wants Congress to formalize this arrangement so that this is statute, not just policy, which I get. An alternative would be for the Supreme Court to rule similar to the lower court, thus essentially codifying it for everyone, but that's the cheap way out. Congress needs to act and get this done once and for all.
They won't, though. Not before the midterms, at least, and if those go the way the media say they're going to go — which I'll believe when it happens, because I've heard this song and dance a few times already — the lame duck Congress might do it out of spite.
I'm fine with this.
And now, suppressors are becoming "in common use," which might not be the standard I approve of, but I'll still take it. If that happens, though, there's nothing the anti-gunners will be able to do.
Aw, darn.
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