The House Judiciary Committee this month will consider a bill introduced Friday that would redefine firearms “silencers” to make them less subject to federal oversight.
The Protecting Americans’ Right to Silence (PARTS) Act of 2024 would amend the sections of U.S. administrative code that currently define each separate component part of a firearms suppressor as a suppressor itself and thereby subject to the authority of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The Judiciary Committee hasn’t scheduled a hearing for the bill, which might run out of legislative running room in the lame-duck Congress that will conclude on Jan. 3, 2025.
But if it doesn’t get a hearing in the current 118th Congress, the PARTS Act is expected to face little opposition when the 119th Congress convenes later in January, according to its lead sponsor, Texas Republican Congressman August Pfluger who says in case it doesn’t make it out of the House this month he and co-sponsors will be ready to re-introduce it early in the next Congress.
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The bipartisan bill is co-sponsored by representatives Jared Golden (D-ME), Darrell Issa (R-CA), Lauren Boebert (R-CO), Claudia Tenney (R-NY), and Michael Rulli (R-OH).
In a statement Rep. Pfluger noted that “Suppressors make hunting and all shooting sports safer. They help our military personnel, law enforcement, and recreational shooters alike. Unfortunately, we’ve seen the Biden-Harris Administration’s ATF try to criminalize the tools and accessories that actually make using firearms safer. Criminalizing suppressors would only make their manufacturing and use nearly impossible. My bill would prevent that blatant overreach and protect the Second Amendment Rights of Americans.”
The PARTS Act addresses a concern by some manufacturers and suppressor users that they could be subject to criminal liability if they disassemble a modular suppressor and use only individual components at the range or in the field. The bill would define suppressors as both the parts and the sum of those parts.
The federal Gun Control Act, passed in 1968 following the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, his brother Sen. Robert Kennedy, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., currently defines a silencer as each separate component part of the silencer itself, according to the American Suppressor Association, which has lobbied for the PARTS legislation. Critics say the GCA language doesn’t take into account modern suppressor design, in which suppressors are modular and designed to allow users to remove parts for different shooting and hunting applications.
“We do not want to see suppressors weaponized like pistol braces have been,” says Pfluger. “We do not want to criminalize law-abiding gunowners for purchasing a solvent trap, cleaning the threading on a worn-out silencer, or replacing baffles or end caps.”
The PARTS Act follows last year’s introduction of another suppressor bill, the Tax Stamp Revenue Transfer for Wildlife and Recreation Act. That bill, which was the subject of a hearing in the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Water, Wildlife and Fisheries in September, is still stalled in the House.
Also co-sponsored by Maine’s Jared Golden, the bill would direct tax-stamp revenue from the sale of firearms suppressors to the nation’s conservation trust fund and expedite federal approval of silencers. The bill’s language calls for reallocating the $200 tax-stamp revenue, collected by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, to the Pittman-Robertson Wildlife Restoration account to fund wildlife management, habitat, and shooting range infrastructure across the country.
A portion of the tax stamp, which has been required by the National Firearms Act of 1934, would be directed to ATF in order to expedite the approval process to qualified buyers to less than 90 days, though the ATF has drastically cut wait times for suppressor purchases in the past year by reducing duplicative administrative work.
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Suppressors are defined by the ATF as Class 3 firearms, which require the special tax stamp in order to possess. Under the NFA, all applicants seeking to transfer a suppressor are required to undergo a background check and pay the $200 tax stamp. Tax-stamp funding is currently deposited in the U.S. Treasury without any specific direction. Revenue from the tax is expected to approach $200 million this year, as suppressors become more available and normalized as firearms accessories that can reduce shooters’ hearing loss, dampen recoil, and lower game-spooking noise.
If the PARTS Act passes, the ATF would still regulate suppressors as individual firearms components, no matter how many component parts it contains.
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