Liberty doesn’t vanish in an instant. It’s chipped away regulation by regulation, ruling by ruling, until the original shape is unrecognizable. Today, the target is suppressors. Tomorrow, it’s your right to bear arms.
For nearly a century, suppressors have been shackled by a law written during the gangster era: the National Firearms Act of 1934. Back then, suppressors were lumped in with machine guns and short-barreled rifles, not because they posed a widespread threat, but because lawmakers wanted to send a message. The $200 tax stamp placed on suppressors was prohibitive, equivalent to over $4,000 in today’s money.
Fast-forward to 2025, and we still live under that outdated penalty. But now, with a growing movement to deregulate suppressors and remove them from the NFA registry entirely, opponents of the Second Amendment see an opportunity: stop the rollback and maybe start rolling up 2A altogether.
Suppressors: What They Are and Aren’t
Suppressors, often wrongly called "silencers," do not make guns whisper-quiet like in the movies. They reduce noise to hearing-safe levels—think the difference between a jackhammer and a chainsaw. Hunters, sport shooters, veterans, and even law enforcement officers use them to prevent permanent hearing loss.
In countries like New Zealand, Norway, and the UK, hardly bastions of American-style gun freedom, suppressors are sold over the counter, encouraged even. They’re considered good neighbor etiquette. But here in the U.S., to own one legally, you must endure a months-long wait, pay the archaic tax, and beg the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives for approval.
None of this has any meaningful impact on crime. Suppressors are used so infrequently in crimes that even the Bureau of Justice Statistics doesn’t list them in regular crime reporting. A 2007 study by the Western Criminology Review found only two suppressor-related homicides in the U.S. over a decade.
Two.
So why the hysteria now?
Fearmongering as Policy
Because the facts aren’t driving this debate, emotion is. Groups like Everytown and the Violence Policy Center have been flooding media channels with claims that suppressors make mass shootings harder to detect, that deregulation would make America less safe. Yet when pressed for evidence, they offer hypotheticals, not data.
Cam Edwards of our sister site, Bearing Arms, summarized it best:
“The fight over suppressors isn’t really about suppressors at all. It’s about whether the Second Amendment protects more than just the bare minimum necessary to operate a firearm.”
The real strategy is simple: chip away at the Second Amendment by targeting the parts most Americans don’t use. First, it was bump stocks, then braces, and now suppressors. Each one is framed as non-essential and, therefore, expendable. But rights don’t work that way. You defend the whole, or you lose it in pieces.
The Fifth Circuit's Dangerous Redefinition
In United States v. Peterson, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals decided earlier this year that suppressors aren’t “arms” and therefore not covered under the Second Amendment. The court said they’re “accessories,” mere add-ons.
It’s a legal sleight of hand that could have catastrophic consequences. If suppressors aren’t protected, what’s next? Magazines? Optics? Ammo?
This ruling mirrors the logic used in 1939’s U.S. v. Miller, where the Supreme Court upheld a ban on sawed-off shotguns by claiming no evidence they had a military application. The implication then, and now, is that the government gets to decide what’s “covered” and what’s not.
That’s not how rights work.
Mixed Signals from DOJ: Confusion by Design
The Department of Justice has been equally slippery. In March, a DOJ attorney argued in court that suppressors fall outside 2A protection. But mere days later, a spokesman told reporters that the department was “re-evaluating” its position on Second Amendment litigation.
This isn’t indecision, it’s strategy. By creating legal fog, they delay momentum toward reform, stall legislative action, and plant doubt in the minds of judges and voters. As we've seen in so many policy fights, ambiguity becomes its own form of resistance.
Legislation on the Table and Who’s Fighting It
In early May, a group of Republican lawmakers introduced a bill to repeal the NFA tax on suppressors and remove them from the registry altogether. The move was modest, an attempt to normalize hearing protection, but it triggered a full-blown panic from the Left and certain “centrist” Republicans.
Everytown called the proposal “a threat to public safety.” CNN ran a feature equating suppressors with a “new danger on the streets.” Yet again, no statistics. Just talking points.
What’s more shameful is how many establishment Republicans quietly sided with them. They mouthed support for 2A during campaign season but folded when the heat came, more concerned about optics than principle.
The Slippery Slope Isn’t a Theory, It’s the Blueprint
We’ve heard it for decades: “No one’s coming for your guns.” And yet, piece by piece, they do just that, not with mass confiscation, but with redefinition.
Biden’s ATF has already tried to expand the definition of “firearm” to include unfinished parts. California lawmakers want to restrict ammunition purchases to once a week. Others wish to mandate liability insurance for gun owners. Each time it’s framed as "reasonable." Each time, the right shrinks.
It won’t be the last bite if they win the suppressor battle. It’ll just be proof that we’ll let them chew.
What’s at Stake
This isn’t about a tube of steel. It’s about precedent. If suppressors can be redefined as non-essential and unprotected, then so can anything else that makes a firearm functional.
And when bureaucrats get to decide what counts as an “arm,” you no longer have a right, you have a permit. One, they can revoke. One, they can raise the cost on. One, they can deny without recourse.
This is a test case. And if you shrug it off because you don’t own a suppressor, don’t be surprised when they come for something you own next.
Final Thought: Freedom Doesn’t Collapse, It Erodes
No tyrant has to storm the gates if the people are content to watch the walls crumble. Freedom doesn’t collapse overnight; it’s drained away, regulation by regulation, until there’s nothing left to defend.
The suppressor fight is a red flag, a warning. Not because of what the accessory does, but because of what the ruling class wants to do with it: redefine your rights by redefining your tools.
If we don't stand for this now, we may wake up one day and realize we’ve let the Second Amendment bleed out while arguing over whether the wound was deep enough to matter.
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