Gun Owners of America, a gun rights lobby, joined a coalition of social media influencers and other pro-gun organizations to pen a letter demanding Senators John Thune and Mike Crapo – the Republican Senate Majority Leader, and Senate Finance Chair – include reforms from two separate gun rights bills in the Trump administration’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” Act.
President Trump’s omnibus bill, which sits in limbo on the Senate floor, focuses primarily on income tax restructuring, with exemptions for income taxes on overtime and certain tipped hourly pay. It also permanently extends previous income tax cuts enacted in 2017, and introduces expense-friendly deductions for businesses. Notably absent from the omnibus are provisions for gun laws – save for one.
The Hearing Protection Act (HPA), which would eliminate suppressors from the National Firearms Act, and the Stop Harassing Owners of Rifles Today (SHORT) Act, which would do the same for short-barreled rifles (SBRs), both struggled to get out of committees and onto the Congressional floor for key votes.
But the White House did agree to include Section 2 of the Hearing Protection Act in its bill, which would remove suppressors from the National Firearms Act (NFA). No inclusions from the SHORT Act were present in the omnibus that would also remove short-barreled rifles from the NFA.
The NFA places extra restrictions on the sale and ownership of suppressors and short-barreled weapons. Would-be buyers must submit to enhanced background checks, fill out extensive paperwork for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE), submit fingerprints to the FBI, pay a $200 tax with each purchase, and wait for extended periods of time for applications to be approved.
While supporters of the NFA say its restrictions on suppressors and SBRs make communities safer, federal crime statistics have found suppressors and short-barreled weapons have not contributed to violent crime. Even the agency tasked with policing suppressors seems to agree.
Former Deputy Director of the BATFE, Ron Turk, argued that suppressors should be deregulated. The agency conducted research and found that of nearly 1.3 million suppressors in circulation, just 44 were involved in potential crimes, with most of those prosecutions being referred for prohibited possession.
Advocates for eliminating the NFA say the law is redundant: Would-be buyers for either suppressors or SBRs must still submit to federal background checks and fill out paperwork that is sent to the ATF with each purchase, which is how all other existing firearm sales are conducted.
Elsewhere, gun rights advocates are using the new Republican majority in Congress and the second Trump administration’s power to pursue more federal reforms. The Supreme Court recently ruled that firearm kits that did not contain unfinished frames or receivers, such as the popular AR15 kit, were not, in fact, firearms, because they lacked the necessary components to build a working rifle. Those components must still be purchased through federally licensed dealers, or built by the user separately, using their own equipment and raw materials.
Meanwhile, a federal court in January found, in considering the Supreme Court’s 2022 New York v. Bruen decision, which requires all courts to consider the “text, history, and tradition” of the Second Amendment as a test against modern gun laws, that the federal ban on machinegun ownership was illegal.
That case is stuck in a lengthy appeals process, and it remains to be seen whether the Supreme Court will hear the case for final determination without additional, and likely conflicting, rulings in the lower district courts.
President Trump’s return to the White House also spurred potential gun rights reformation from within the administration itself. The President directed the Department of Justice to assess existing and prior legal challenges to federal gun laws with a more friendly lens, and the BATFE was directed to review prior restrictions put in place by the Biden administration.
The Trump administration also abandoned the fight against drop-in firearm triggers known as forced reset triggers, which, while not technically machinegun components, readily increase the firing rate of semiautomatic weapons. Those devices, which the Biden administration sought to ban, remain legal to purchase and possess.
In Louisiana, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals found in January that the federal ban against firearm dealers selling handguns to 18- to 20-year-olds was unconstitutional, citing SCOTUS’ Bruen decision. In April, the Supreme Court refused to hear a similar petition from gun law advocates over Minnesota’s ban on concealed carry permits for 18- to 20-year-olds, which allowed an appeals court’s overturning of the ban to stand.
Myriad cases concerning prohibitions on gun sales and on specific guns and devices, including challenges to various state-level assault weapon bans, are making their way through circuit and appeals courts across the country, with increasingly favorable rulings for the gun lobby. With the Bruen standard acting as a boon for gun rights, and with new Republican power in D.C. and the Supreme Court’s other recent and favorable rulings on gun laws, the tides appear to be changing in favor of expanding gun rights in America.
