Constitutional Hearing Protection Act

This bill, titled the Constitutional Hearing Protection Act, seeks to reshape federal and state treatment of firearm silencers. Key changes include removing silencers from the definition of firearms for certain federal tax purposes, while preserving NFA-related regulation and licensing at the federal level. It introduces a new concept—the “keystone part” of a silencer—and would require serial numbering of silencers imported or manufactured, with a process for marking variances if a silencer lacks a single keystone part. The bill also preempts most state taxes and registration/marking requirements tied to silencers, requires destruction of certain silencer records held by the federal government within a year, and tightens how silencers are treated in federal firearms law. A 90-day-plus-period after enactment sets the effective date for many changes. In short, the bill intends to keep silencers under federal regulatory control (via the National Firearms Act and related provisions) but remove silencer status from the firearms category for some federal tax purposes, while curbing state-level restrictions and imposing new federal marking requirements.