Plenty of ink has been spilled on the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the sweeping piece of budget reconciliation legislation that cuts taxes, creates “Trump accounts” for newborns, and grants an unprecedented new surge of funding in support of mass deportation and border security efforts.

But one of the law’s biggest impacts may be its unfurling of a longstanding gun law that firearms enthusiasts and Second Amendment advocates have long had in their sights.

The government has imposed a tax on suppressors, tools that are used to dampen the sound of a gunshot, ever since 1934, when the National Firearms Act was passed. Thanks to the Big Beautiful Bill, that tax will be dropped in January, and its elimination could tee up massive victories for Second Amendment supporters.

The Daily Wire team had the chance to learn from firearms experts and gun rights advocates during a day at the range, firing both suppressed and unsuppressed AR-15s. Their utility became clear as the day went on, and as thousands of rounds were fired.

“Millions of Americans use them to protect their hearing,” Knox Williams, Executive Director of the American Suppressor Association, said of suppressors. “Gunshots are loud to the point that when you don’t have hearing protection, any exposure to an unsuppressed gunshot can and will lead to permanent and irreversible hearing damage … if you lose it, there is no coming back.”

Suppressors, often referred to colloquially as silencers, work in the same way as a muffler on a car — with a tube that traps, cools, and dissipates the hot gas that comes out of a barrel after a round is fired. In fact, the suppressor and the muffler were developed by the same American inventor in the early 1900s. Both inventions prevent the rapid contact of the hot gas with the cooler surrounding atmosphere, which is one of the main causes of the noise that is generated when a gun is fired.

Suppressors reduce the noise of a gunshot by anywhere from 20 to 35 decibels, making their effect roughly equivalent to earplugs and earmuffs in their ability to protect one’s hearing.

Americans’ impression of suppressors comes primarily from James Bond films and video games, where the devices are used to sneakily assassinate a target in a crowded setting, allowing the shooter to escape undetected.

The reality, as was apparent after a day at the range, is that even a suppressed firearm is still loud enough to cause hearing damage if used without hearing protection, and far too noisy to allow one to pull off a Bond-style operation, especially when used indoors. Instead, a silencer is a valuable tool to protect your hearing, and it works best when used in conjunction with earplugs or earmuffs.

The removal of the tax on suppressors, Williams says, is a victory that could build momentum in the service of a broader goal.

“The primary thing that we want is to remove these things from the National Firearms Act entirely. In the House version of the Big Beautiful Bill, that actually passed. It was full removal of suppressors from the National Firearms Act, which meant no tax and no registration requirement,” the American Suppressor Association Executive Director explained.

That version of the bill did not pass in the Senate, but the removal of the tax is an initial victory for Second Amendment advocates, and one that could beget bigger wins.

Williams explained that the tax wasn’t just an added financial burden to those looking to buy suppressors, but also created a registry of Americans who paid the tax, in effect resulting in a federal registry of Americans owning suppressors.

The removal of the tax, Williams says, has “set us up for being able to challenge the constitutionality of these items in the National Firearms Act in court.”

A new lawsuit from the American Suppressor Association, the National Rifle Association, and other pro-Second Amendment organizations aims to do just that. The suit contends that the registry is no longer Constitutional, given that the tax that justified its existence is being eliminated.

“The National Firearms Act has been a weight around the neck of law-abiding gun owners for nearly a century,” Williams charged. “Our lawsuit challenges the NFA as an unconstitutional registry of now untaxed firearms. Common sense and the law are on our side, and we look forward to fighting on behalf of all Americans in Federal Court.”