South Dakota is First to Fix What Could Be a Big Problem for a Number of States if Suppressors are Removed From the NFA

Here’s something you probably don’t know. Because of the way the laws in a significant number of states are written, if suppressors are ever removed from the National Firearms Act, owning and buying cans will be illegal there. No, really.

After the Big Beautiful Bill dropped the price of a tax stamp to zero, that opened the door for removing cans from the NFA entirely. The 1934 law passed legal muster at the time by justifying its existence as a tax. With the tax gone, there’s a very good legal argument that the NFA is no longer constitutional.

There are a couple of lawsuits winding their way through the courts right now that use that basis to argue that suppressors should be regulated just like any other firearm (with a simple 4473 and a background check), if at all. But if that happens — and we certainly hope it does — the laws on the books in 16 states will present a problem.

While the laws’ language varies from state to state, they basically classify suppressors as controlled weapons that must be regulated and registered under the NFA. If NFA regulation is struck down by the courts, the laws in those states will, in effect outlaw suppressors there. Not great, Bob.

Fortunately, there’s an effort under way to begin to change that and the first state to jump on the silencer deregulatory bus is South Dakota. The effort has been pushed by the NSSF, NRA and Sioux Falls-based Silencer Central.

How gun-friendly is South Dakota? The bill deregulating silencers in the state in anticipation of cans being removed from the NFA — the bill was named SB2A — passed both houses. Unanimously. You read that right. We live in a time when you can’t get anyone involved in politics to agree on the color of the sky or the shape of quarter. But SB2A passed the SD House and Senate without any opposition. At all.

On Tuesday, Governor Larry Rhoden made the trip from Pierre to Silencer Central’s headquarters in Sioux Falls along with key Senate and House members and the Attorney General to sign the bill into law.

Boiled down to its essence, the bill declares that suppressors are not controlled weapons. In other words, it means that they don’t require regulation under the NFA for South Dakotans to own one.

The good news is that South Dakota’s law was one of the more intricately worded examples and took some work to get the changes made. That means now that it’s law, the work they did can be used as a sort of template for the other 15 states to do the same. The bad news is not all of those other states is anywhere near as gun-friendly as the Mount Rushmore State, so it’s going to take some doing. That said, South Dakota’s bill is a very good start.

While he was there, the Governor helped dedicate Silencer Central’s newly completed 70,000 square foot storage and order processing facility.

Maddox showed off Silencer Central’s massive new Opex order fulfillment system. That three story wall on the left is part of a huge enclosed system that holds about 170,000 suppressors. It robotically fills orders by picking specific suppressors after reading their serial numbers.