WASHINGTON — The massive tax and spending cuts package that President Donald Trump wants on his desk by July 4 would loosen regulations on gun silencers and certain types of rifles and shotguns, advancing a longtime priority of the gun industry as Republican leaders in the House and Senate try to win enough votes to pass the bill.
The guns provision was first requested in the House by Georgia Rep. Andrew Clyde, a Republican gun store owner who had initially opposed the larger tax package. The House bill would remove silencers — called “suppressors” by the gun industry — from a 1930s law that regulates firearms that are considered the most dangerous, eliminating a $200 tax while removing a layer of background checks.
The Senate kept the provision on silencers in its version of the bill and expanded upon it, adding short-barreled, or sawed-off, rifles and shotguns.
Republicans who have long supported the changes, along with the gun industry, say the tax infringes on Second Amendment rights. They say silencers are mostly used by hunters and target shooters for sport.
“Burdensome regulations and unconstitutional taxes shouldn’t stand in the way of protecting American gun owners’ hearing,” said Clyde, who owns two gun stores in Georgia and often wears a pin shaped like an assault rifle on his suit lapel.
Democrats are fighting to stop the provision, which was unveiled days after two Minnesota state legislators were shot in their homes, as the bill speeds through the Senate. They argue that loosening regulations on silencers could make it easier for criminals and active shooters to conceal their weapons.
“Parents don’t want silencers on their streets, police don’t want silencers on their streets,” said Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.
The gun language has broad support among Republicans and has received little attention as House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., work to settle differences within the party on cuts to Medicaid and energy tax credits, among other issues. But it is just one of hundreds of policy and spending items included to entice members to vote for the legislation that could have broad implications if the bill is enacted within weeks, as Trump wants.
Passed in the summer of 2022, just weeks after the shooting of 19 children and two adults at a school in Uvalde, Texas, it was the most significant legislative response to gun violence in decades.
Three years later, as they try to take advantage of their consolidated power in Washington, Republicans are packing as many of their longtime priorities as possible, including the gun legislation, into the massive, wide-ranging bill that Trump has called “beautiful.”
