The Senate version of the Hearing Protection Act of 2015, S.2236, has a new cosponsor. On January 20th, Senator Mike Lee of Utah became a cosponsor of Senator Mike Crapo's Hearing Protection Act. Senator Lee is currently the only cosponsor of the Senate version of the act. The act is currently in the Senate Committee on Finance where it has been since early November 2015.

The House version currently has 45 cosponsors, and among those 45, only one is a Democrat.

H.R.3799, also known as the Hearing Protection Act of 2015, was introduced last October in the House of Representatives with an identical bill, S.2236, introduced in the Senate in November.

Generally, the Hearing Protection Act would remove suppressors from the National Firearms Act (NFA), eliminating the $200 federal tax payment that is currently required under the NFA when purchasing a suppressor or "silencer", and prevent states or local authorities from imposing their own local tax as a replacement. Under the Act, suppressors would still be treated as firearms, but removed from the purview of the NFA. The effect would be to apply the same requirements for the purchase of rifles and shotguns to the purchase of suppressors. Purchasers would still be required to pass the NICS background check, but the expense and burdens imposed by the NFA would no longer apply.

We will post updates related to the Hearing Protection Act of 2015.

Click here for the text of H.R.3799.