By Bo Erickson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. Republican tax writers pushing through President Donald Trump’s signature tax cut priorities proposed to eliminate a customer tax on firearm silencers, a tax potentially undoing the almost 100-year-old tax.
If the bill is passed by Congress and enacted into law, Americans would no longer be charged $200 when purchasing a firearm silencer, also called a suppressor, an add-on feature that reduces the sound of a gunshot.
The firearm silencer tweak is only 12 lines in the almost-400-page bill, but represents a potential grassroots win for gun-rights groups that want to deregulate purchases of firearm suppressors, which currently require special approval from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
The suppressor tax has been on the books since the 1934 National Firearms Act, and 4.5 million suppressors were registered with the federal government by the end of 2024, according to data from the National Shooting Sports Foundation.
On average, a firearm suppressor costs about $830 at retail, the group said.
Repealing this tax would cost $1.4 billion dollars over a decade, according to analysis from the Joint Committee on Taxation.
House Republicans applauded Representative Eric Burlison, from Missouri, when he rose at his party’s January meeting in Miami to push tax committee leadership to eliminate the suppressor tax.
“This is about making sure that people keep their hearing at the end of the day,” Burlison said in an interview, noting he also questions whether the tax infringes the right to bear arms enshrined in the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
Burlison said he worked with Representative Rudy Yakym, a Republican tax writer from Indiana, to make progress on the silencer tax cut while foregoing a repeal of the same tax for short barrel rifle purchases due to “heartburn” from the larger tax committee.
Democrats tried to strike this silencer tax provision from the bill during legislative debate in the middle of Tuesday night. Republicans defeated the amendment.
Representative Mike Thompson, a California Democrat, argued the silencer change will “make it harder for victims of mass shootings to know where the shots are coming from as they’re trying to run for cover.”
“As a combat veteran, a lifelong hunter and gun owner, I can tell you this has nothing to do with hearing protection, but everything to do about making money for one segment of the gun industry,” Thompson said.
The Fraternal Order of Police and the National Association of Police Organizations did not respond to requests for comment about the tax change.
Meanwhile, pro-gun lobbyists like the American Firearms Association said this tax tweak does not go far enough, calling the change “nothing more than a crumb dropped from the King’s table.”
“It’s vital that Republicans use the majorities they have in the House, Senate and control of the White House to completely deregulate suppressors and short barrel rifles, and even more importantly, abolish the ATF and repeal the National Firearms Act,” said vice president Patrick Parsons.
(Reporting by Bo Erickson; Editing by Scott Malone and David Gregorio)
