Michael Bloomberg’s gun control network is sounding the alarm over suppressors. Again. Everytown for Gun Safety’s The Smoking Gun is attacking a Trump administration reform that will move certain commercial suppressors from State Department export controls to the Commerce Department.
NSSF fired back at Everytown’s attack, arguing the gun-control group is misrepresenting a reform that still leaves commercial suppressor exports subject to federal oversight. But the bigger story is why the government made the change at all.
The Government Just Undercut the Anti-Suppressor Narrative
Beginning November 20, export controls for certain suppressors designed for non-automatic and semiautomatic firearms will move from the U.S. Munitions List to the Commerce Control List.
The change doesn’t eliminate export controls. The Commerce Department says licensing requirements will remain in place while suppressors specially designed for fully automatic firearms will remain under State Department jurisdiction.
But the State Department’s justification for the reform is devastating to decades of anti-suppressor rhetoric. The Department concluded that ordinary commercial suppressors “no longer provide a critical military or intelligence advantage.”
Federal officials pointed to their growing civilian use, noise-reduction benefits, widespread foreign production, and increasing availability. Those findings appear directly in the State Department’s rule. In other words, even the federal government is acknowledging that ordinary suppressors are not some exotic piece of military-only hardware.
Bloomberg Still Wants Americans to Fear Suppressors
Everytown apparently didn’t get the memo. Its Smoking Gun agitprop project has branded suppressors “Quiet Killers” while attacking efforts to reduce federal restrictions.
That framing depends on keeping alive the Hollywood myth that suppressors make firearms silent or transform ordinary guns into assassins’ weapons.
They don’t. Texas Gun Rights President Chris McNutt has previously put the issue plainly:
Suppressors don’t silence anything. They simply reduce the deafening report of a firearm to a safer level. That’s not dangerous — it’s responsible.
That is why Texas Gun Rights has consistently pushed back against efforts to demonize suppressors. And recent court precedent makes the anti-suppressor narrative even harder to defend.
In June, the Fifth Circuit held that suppressors qualify as protected Second Amendment “Arms,” recognizing that they reduce noise, recoil, and muzzle blast while improving the effectiveness of a firearm for lawful purposes. The Fifth Circuit’s opinion explains those functional benefits directly.
The court didn’t invalidate the NFA’s suppressor restrictions, but its recognition that suppressors fall under the Second Amendment was an important step.
The Real Fight Is Getting Suppressors Out of the NFA
The Trump administration’s export reform is welcome. But moving commercial suppressors from one federal export control system to another isn’t the finish line. Suppressors remain regulated under the National Firearms Act and subject to federal registration.
Meanwhile, Bloomberg-funded gun control groups continue trying to convince Americans that a device designed to reduce dangerous firearm noise should be treated like sinister contraband. Now the government’s own findings are helping expose how hysterical and outdated that argument has become.
It’s time for Washington to stop treating suppressors like contraband and remove them from the NFA once and for all.