Hearing Protection Act
Current understanding
The Hearing Protection Act (HR404, 119th Congress) would remove firearm silencers/suppressors from the definition of ‘firearm’ under the National Firearms Act, eliminating the $200 NFA making/transfer tax stamp, ATF registration, and associated transfer restrictions for suppressors. Suppressors would remain regulated as firearms under the Gun Control Act (subject to FFL sales and NICS background checks) but not under the NFA. Status: introduced in the 119th Congress; fiscal implications include loss of NFA transfer/making tax revenue on suppressors and reduced ATF processing workload for Form 1/Form 4 suppressor applications.
Evidence log
- 2025-03-27 — SHORT Act: cross-connection with short-act: Both bills use the same mechanism — statutory removal of a class of firearms (SBRs vs. suppressors) from NFA coverage — and represent parallel legislative tracks to eliminate NFA registration/tax for specific categories. (novelty: 2)
- 2025-02-03 — Hearing Protection Act: S.364 (119th Congress) introduced as Senate companion to HR404, referred to Senate Finance Committee, proposing removal of suppressors from NFA regulation and elimination of associated tax requirements. (novelty: 2)
- 2026-07-23 — International Traffic in Arms Regulations: USML Category I Firearm Suppressors: cross-connection with usml-category-i-firearm-suppressors: Both reduce federal controls on firearm suppressors—one via export-control decontrol (ITAR to EAR), the other via domestic NFA reclassification. (novelty: 3)
- 2025-01-15 — Hearing Protection Act: cross-connection with nfa-tax-remittance-obbba: Both alter NFA tax obligations: OBBBA implementation changed NFA tax remittance procedures, while the Hearing Protection Act would eliminate the NFA tax entirely for suppressors by removing them from NFA coverage. (novelty: 2)