Suppressed firearms with their magazines removed Top to bottom: Uzi AR-15 Heckler & Koch USP Beretta 92FS SIG Mosquito  credit: Public Domain

September 3, 2026 - WASHINGTON - Subcommittee on Federal Law Enforcement Chairman Clay Higgins (R-La.) delivered an opening statement at Wednesday’s roundtable titled “Suppressing the Second Amendment: Examining DOJ’s Posture Toward Firearm Suppressors.” In his remarks, Subcommittee Chairman Higgins emphasized that firearm suppressors are designed to reduce the decibel levels of gunshots in order to protect against significant and possibly permanent hearing loss, and also noted that there is no statistical evidence that suggests a link between the use of suppressors and criminal activity. He further stated that the Department of Justice (DOJ) continues to uphold Biden Administration-era policies against suppressors. 

Related: Republican Congressman Announces Wednesday, September 2, Examination of DOJ’s Position on Firearms Suppressors, Says “Contrary To Widespread Misinformation, Suppressors Are Not ‘Silencers,’ And No Statistical Evidence Ties Suppressor Use To Violent Crime”

Below are Subcommittee Chairman Higgins’s remarks as delivered:

Today, the Subcommittee on Federal Law Enforcement convenes a roundtable to examine the federal government’s posture toward firearms suppressors—and to ask why the Department of Justice is still defending a regulatory scheme that Congress has already dismantled. 

Few products in America are as badly misunderstood as the suppressor.

Hollywood has taught Americans that these devices are “silencers,” the tools of assassins and hitmen. 

That is fiction. A suppressor is simply a hearing protection device.

A rifle fired without sound protection registers around 165 decibels—louder than a jet engine, and loud enough to cause immediate and permanent hearing loss.

I speak from experience. I have tremendous hearing loss–about 45 percent in. my left ear and 40 percent, my right ear over the course of my service as a soldier and a police officer and pulling the trigger, sometimes without hearing protection.

 So a rifle fired without sound protection is dangerous simply because of its noise. 

A suppressor reduces that report by roughly 30 to 35 decibels, to about the level of a jackhammer.  

So, still loud, still plainly audible, but less dangerous to the gunowner’s hearing. 

The ATF understands this. The Bureau itself issues suppressors to some of its own agents for their “health and safety.” 

What is necessary to protect a federal agent’s hearing should be available to everyday Americans as well. It should be available to every American across the country. 

Study after study has found no meaningful connection between suppressor ownership and criminality. Actually, quite the opposite.

In fact, one review of the decade between 1995 and 2005 found that fewer than one-tenth of one percent of federal homicide cases involved a suppressor. 

In 2017, ATF’s own Associate Deputy Director concluded that suppressors should not be viewed as a threat to public safety. 

So let us set the myths around suppressors aside and address the law. 

In passing the National Firearms Act of 1934, or NFA, Congress did not believe it could ban certain firearms outright, so it taxed them instead.

The NFA has charged 200 dollars per suppressor—a sum worth over 4,800 in today’s dollars— as a tax, in order to implement a mandatory registration requirement for any firearms covered under the Act. 

In 1937, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the NFA’s firearms registration regime, but only as a means of collecting the tax revenue attached to it. 

On July 4, 2025, President Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act into law, which set that tax at zero dollars. 

However, the registration requirement survived. So did the felony penalties behind it. So, while the tax foundation of the NFA was eliminated, the structure built upon it remains.

Which leads us to the unfortunate case of Mr. George Peterson.

In 2022, federal agents hit his house. George Peterson was a was a licensed firearm dealer. But it was a small deal for him. He had a business, yes, but his business was out of his garage, you know, connected to his house. And he followed the law. 

He was licensed, but he was no big gun dealer. The ATF, under that in that oppressive era, [they] created a case against him and [was] sufficient to get a warrant signed. They hit his house, they hit his house and terrified him and his family.

 And out of all the probable cause listed for the warrant that allowed them to hit his house, all of it evaporated, and they were left with one charge. George Peterson had one old, manufactured suppressor in his safe that he had used for, for varmints and snakes around his property on a .22 rifle. And he’d have a snake in the yard. [He would], in order to not frighten his other animals and etcetera, use that to kill a snake. 

And it never rose to the level of significance, [for] Mr. Peterson, to register that thing. It wasn’t high on his priority list. It was just a tool that he used. But at worst, you could say, ‘well, you failed to register this suppressor.’ And indeed, that was a regulatory offense that he was charged with. But they prosecuted the hell out of this man. 

Despite this, because the suppressor was not registered under the NFA, Mr. Peterson is now serving twenty-four months in federal prison.

That began under the Biden Administration, but it continued under this one, under this DOJ. 

Mr. Peterson was sentenced to two years in federal prison, where he sits right now. And I’m doing everything I can to help him and his family– his family been crushed. This man’s life ended because he had a suppressor in his safe in his bedroom, and he didn’t register it with the federal government. 

And for that, he was sentenced to two years in prison. This is abhorrent. And every American tuning into this should pay attention because that type of suppressor that George Peterson had, it sold untold numbers of these things as fuel filters across the country, right through the mail. You can order them for 40, 50, 60 bucks.

And they were sold as fuel filters. What can I tell you? There’s a loophole in the law. They sold hundreds of thousands of these things.

 So, some of you Americans watching this, guess what you have in your house maybe sitting there. Of course, you didn’t register it with the ATF. It’s sort of an absurd thing. You know, it’s sort of a novelty deal you ordered without really thinking about the repercussions.

Maybe you never even used it, but if you didn’t register it with the ATF and for some reason the federal government is going to cross your house and find that unregistered suppressor, you could be sentenced to two years in federal prison. 

Ultimately, the Department of Justice conceded the constitutional question and thankfully now accepts that the Second Amendment protects suppressor ownership. 

However, DOJ defended Mr. Peterson’s conviction on appeal anyway, arguing that a minor, non-violent failure to register a suppressor and pay a small 200-dollar fee is worth the government spending its time and resources to tear a family apart and put a man in prison for two years.  

Presumably, that same litigating position binds every suppressor prosecution DOJ has pending, even after the One Big Beautiful Bill Act eliminated NFA’s registration tax. 

Thankfully, it seems sanity is finally starting to prevail, but I take the position that all of these prosecutions should end and previous prosecutions should be reversed.

Last month, a federal district court in Texas held that the NFA’s registration requirement is unconstitutional now that it is not tied to a revenue-generating tax. No tax, no registration requirement, no prosecutions. Previous prosecutions that resulted in incarceration of an American citizen should be reversed.

So, my question for DOJ is simple: why is the federal government still spending taxpayer dollars in court defending a process that you have been told, by a federal judge AND by Members of Congress, that you cannot lawfully enforce? 

DOJ’s present posture toward suppressors belonged to the anti-gun-owner era of Biden Administration ATF enforcement. It does not belong in an ostensibly pro-Second Amendment Justice Department serving a pro-Second Amendment President. 

We have assembled a distinguished panel today to help us understand this important Second Amendment issue.  

I look forward to today’s discussion.  

Source: Committee on Oversight and Government Reform