‘One Big Beautiful Bill’…and Guns
The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” signed by President Trump on the Fourth of July is more than a budget bill. It includes all manner of sweeping changes to U.S. law, and firearms policy was not spared. The Act eliminates a longstanding $200 excise tax on short-barreled firearms, suppressors (or silencers), and other items categorized as "any other weapons" under the National Firearms Act (NFA).
Firearms and accessories regulated by the NFA are those determined by Congress to cause a significant crime problem. They include various machine guns, shotguns, rifles, and silencers, among others. They are kept under tight control via tax and registration rules. The elimination of the $200 tax will expand access to these devices.
This represents the most substantial reduction in taxes levied on gun owners since the NFA was enacted in 1934, and marks the first meaningful rollback of NFA-related restrictions since the law’s inception.
The provision does more than reduce a tax. It lays the groundwork for broader legal scrutiny of the NFA itself. By altering core provisions of the Act, it opens the door to new constitutional and statutory challenges, potentially reshaping the legal landscape for federally regulated firearms and accessories in the years to come.
Under the Radar
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the federal unit previously run by billionaire Elon Musk, has been working closely with officials at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to roll back about 50 federal gun regulations. Anticipated changes include:
Extending the validity of a background check for buying a gun from 30 days to 60.
Shrinking the eligibility questionnaire that most buyers are required to fill out when purchasing a firearm from seven pages to three.
Allowing gun dealers to destroy their records after 20 years, instead of keeping them forever.
These changes dovetail with a flurry of other pro-gun executive actions, which we wrote about here and here, as well as sharp cuts to ATF staffing.
The Department of Justice, which oversees the ATF, has called for a 25% budget cut in fiscal year 2026.
That would mean losing more than 500 investigators—the people responsible for inspecting federally licensed gun dealers. Experts suggest that politicizing the ATF by stripping its career officers and cutting inspectors could undermine trust in federal law enforcement and fuel a cycle of reactive rule-making.
According to the DOJ’s own analysis, the cuts would slash the ATF’s ability to regulate the firearms and explosives industries by roughly 40%.
Keep in mind that the ATF also plays another unique role in law enforcement. It’s the only agency in the U.S. that can trace guns used in crimes. It maintains a database of markings left on bullets or shell casings after a gun is fired—kind of like a firearm’s fingerprint. That tracing data is a key tool police nationwide use to investigate and solve violent crimes.
The Bottom Line
On their own, these individual tweaks might not seem like a big deal, but taken together, they represent a foundational reframing of firearms policy in America.
Gun safety advocates warn that gutting inspection capacity, easing licensing requirements, and greenlighting high‑rate-of-fire conversions, combined with reducing ATF oversight, could have a serious impact on criminal investigations, firearm traceability, and gun deaths and injuries.
The coming months will likely be marked by lawsuits, Congressional pushback, and potential regulatory counter-moves at the state level. Stay tuned.
Sources: NPR, The Washington Post, AP News, The Trace