After 90 years of tightly controlled regulation and taxation originally intended to create a de facto ban, it appears firearm suppressors may be delisted from the National Firearms Act of 1934 by Independence Day, 2025. On Thursday, May 22, Congress passed President Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill,” which mostly addresses tax and energy concerns, but that also included a provision for removing suppressors from NFA regulation.
“This morning, the U.S. House of Representatives passed President Trump’s One, Big, Beautiful Bill, which includes complete removal of suppressors from the National Firearms Act,” NRA-ILA Executive Director John Commerford said. “This represents a monumental victory for Second Amendment rights, eliminating burdensome regulations on the purchase of critical hearing protection devices. The NRA thanks the House members who supported this bill and urges its swift passage in the U.S. Senate.”
The bill, H.R. 1, barely passed the House by a single vote along party lines, with two Republican defectors and a third sleeping through the vote. It appears delisting suppressors from the NFA wasn’t a controversial issue; 20 minutes of skimming online postings from major news outlets reporting the bill’s passage showed not a single mention of suppressors. Nearly all of the debate and controversy was about taxes, energy and a requirement to work 80 hours per month to be eligible for Medicaid.
The bill now moves to the Senate, where Republicans enjoy a majority. However, the controversies continue and some revision of the bill in the Senate is expected. Republican leaders want to land the bill on President Trump’s desk by July 4, 2025, but no date has yet been set for a Senate vote.
Why Regulate Suppressors?
Suppressors joined machine guns and short-barreled rifles and shotguns in passage of the National Firearms Act of 1934 (H.R. 9066). At the time, the Act was intended to thwart the use of machine guns and short-barreled shotguns and rifles by organized crime syndicates that operated with considerable impunity during Prohibition. Grisly murders garnered considerable media attention and spawned popular, violent Hollywood fictions.
However, some researching of the Congressional Record during the debates over the NFA found no mention of argument over why suppressors should be added to the list—the focus was entirely on criminal use of machine guns and “sawed-off” shotguns and rifles, one of which was a favorite of Clyde Barrow of Bonnie and Clyde infamy, who named his “Whippet” because, he said, with a shortened barrel he could hide it under a coat and “whip it out.”
The Congressional Record does imply that it was the Department of the Interior that requested adding suppressors to the NFA. The Department of the Interior includes National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Land Management and other agencies unconnected to crime control. A conjectured reasoning for including suppressors in the NFA is that one or more of these agencies wanted to prevent their use in poaching wildlife. Wildlife management was still a fairly new concept and not universally accepted, it was the Great Depression and people were hungry. As well, wild game still appeared in some restaurant menus, though not as commonly as 20 years earlier. The impetus for regulating suppressors, then, came not from Congress or the Department of Justice, but from a government department uninvolved with violent crime.
The NFA did not overtly ban suppressors (or machine guns or short-barreled rifles), but it did place a $200 “transfer tax” on their purchase. Two-hundred dollars in 1934 equates to about $4,315 today; during the Great Depression, only the wealthy could afford to pay such a burdensome tax, which effectively banned suppressors until 80-plus years of annual inflation rendered $200 into little more than pocket change by 2025.
Interestingly, in 1934 NRA President Karl T. Frederick testified before Congress in favor of H.R. 9066, the National Firearms Act, which perhaps illustrates the true pervasiveness of organized crime and the fears generated by popular media of the day.
Regarding the addition of Section 2 of the Hearing Protection Act to H.R. 1 and its subsequent passage by the U.S. House of Representatives, NRA-ILA thanks Speaker Mike Johnson, Majority Leader Steve Scalise, Whip Tom Emmer, Chairman Jason Smith, Chairman Jodey Arrington, Chairwoman Virginia Foxx, Representative Richard Hudson, Representative Kevin Hern, Representative Ben Cline and Representative Andrew Clyde for their dedication and commitment to this issue, along with all Members of Congress who voted to pass H.R. 1. —Ed.
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