Opinion: The Secret Smoking Gun in Trump's ‘Big Beautiful' Budget
Among the multitude of horrors tucked into Trump's 'big beautiful bill' is a measure that lifts a $200 tax on gun silencers, while ending background checks and registration requirements for their purchase.
If enacted, the impact of the SHUSH (Silencers Help Us Save Hearing) Act is more sociological than financial—the government might as well hand them out like candy. After all, RFK Jr.'s HHS has an eye on banning real candy soon enough.
This follows on the heels of Trump's DOJ reaching a settlement with Rare Breed Triggers, a Texas-based company, to overturn a Biden-era ban on 'forced reset triggers' (FRTs) that turn semiautomatic weapons into rapid-fire machine guns.
Unlike President Reagan, whose views on guns evolved after he was the victim of an assassin's bullet—he later supported the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act—Donald Trump's brush with death has seemingly spurred him to make it easier and cheaper for the bad guys to operate.
'Anything that makes guns more lethal or easier to conceal, either visually or audibly, helps criminals,' said Jim Kessler, Executive Vice President for Policy at Third Way, a progressive group founded in 2000 as Americans for Gun Safety to reframe the gun issue around reform.
The $200 tax stamp on gun suppressors has been in place since the National Firearms Act of 1934. Ninety years ago, that was a decent chunk of change, and one that served to keep potentially lethal devices in check. Now these accessories are commonplace and gun rights groups jockeying for influence in the marketplace have made easier and cheaper access a cause.
Republicans in the House and Senate this year introduced the Hearing Protection Act, arguing it would reduce 'overly burdensome' barriers for law-abiding citizens simply trying to obtain auditory protection they need when firing away at the gun range, on the deer hunt or during the getaway chase after a bank robbery. Wait, not the last one.
If it were that innocent, if it were solely for people shooting target practice for recreation, the SHUSH Act would likely get some Democratic votes. But nobody believes that's what this is about. As a stand-alone bill, it could not get 60 votes in the Senate to avoid a filibuster—critics argue the legislation makes it too easy for people with malign intent to carry out gun crimes and even mass shootings without alerting others to the danger.
And that's why now it's tucked into a massive piece of legislation that requires only a simple majority, where it can get a free ride.
'I don't think I've ever seen a weaker argument in my life—so that people with hearing issues could still fire weapons,' Gil Kerlikowske, a former commissioner of border control and protection under President Obama, told the Daily Beast. 'That's just not believable.'
Kerlikowske is today on the board of the Giffords Center, the gun safety group founded by former Rep. Gabby Giffords after she was shot in the head at an outdoor rally in 2013. Of the measure, he added, 'The thing that troubles me the most is that it puts law enforcement in the crosshairs.'
A more apt description than Hearing Protection Act would be Criminal Protection Act because silencers give them cover to evade detection. Law enforcement officers will be much more easily outmatched. 'And this is a president and group of Republicans who say they support law enforcement,' Kerlikowske said.
(Police unions are so intertwined with the Trump administration and with the gun lobby, however, that they are largely silent in their acquiescence to such dangerous legislation.)
Gun murders declined historically across the U.S. in 2023 and 2024. 2025 could have the lowest murder rate ever recorded. The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act of 2022 was the most significant piece of gun violence legislation in 30 years. It closed loopholes in federal law to increase the number of background checks, enhanced checks for buyers under 21, and allocated billions of dollars for mental-health support in schools.
Now these gains are at risk. 'Trump has cut those grants… we're expecting schools to lay off social workers and school counselors by the end of the year,' said Nick Wilson, senior director of Gun Violence Prevention at liberal think-tank The Center for American Progress (CAP).
Rare Breed Triggers sold at least 103,000 forced reset triggers—a product favored by mass shooters—in two years before Biden's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms ruled them illegal in 2022. The company challenged the ban in court; following the settlement reached with Trump's DOJ, it's now back to business as usual. The Trump administration has even established a process for owners to retrieve any seized devices, which cost a few hundred bucks each.
'Second Amendment absolutists have been gaining ground for the last 10 years,' Kessler added. 'It's happening particularly (at) the state level, with a proliferation of laws to make it easier to discharge a firearm if someone feels threatened.'
Open carry, concealed carry and stand your ground laws are in place in 25 to 30 mostly red states, where people believe that more guns mean less crime and a safer society. Statistics don't back such claims up, but for gun safety advocates, it's even harder to change perceptions than to change reality.
In this broader context, the gun silencer giveaway is just another dangerous piece in an already deadly puzzle. There are other things in the budget reconciliation bill that will have a greater, systemic influence on gun violence, explained CAP's Nick Wilson: People losing employment, losing their insurance, losing their food assistance and feeling angry and disaffected more broadly. 'When people lose their jobs and they're hungry, we know what happens,' he cautioned, leaving the rest to imagine.
But you don't want to 'just' imagine—a better approach would be to prepare for the likely negative impacts ahead.
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