Introduced by Congressman Jeff Duncan (R, SC) on September 1st, H.R.3668 is a bill titled the “Sportsmen’s Heritage And Recreational Enhancement Act.” Or the “SHARE Act,” for short. Similar to how we saw the HPA tacked onto a natural resources bill in June, it has been added to the SHARE Act as well. Though, in this case, it’s a very good fit on a bill geared towards fishing, hunting, target shooting, transportation of arms and ammunition, preservation of public lands for these activities, and more.
In fact, in the “in more” category we would see the elimination of many restrictions on “armor piercing” ammunition and a significant loosening of the “sporting purposes” requirement for importation of certain firearms, plus reduction or elimination of other importation, transportation, and temporary transfer (private party loans) restrictions.
On the HPA side, the TL:DR version appears to be: treatment of silencers as standard, non-NFA firearms and the mandatory destruction of all existing registration records. Whether you purchased a silencer from a dealer and registered via a Form 4 or made one yourself and registered on a Form 1, the .gov must destroy all silencer registration should this bill pass. Additionally, it provides some Federal preemption to State laws:
…a law of a State or a political subdivision of a State that imposes a tax, other than a generally applicable sales or use tax, on making, transferring, using, possessing, or transporting a firearm silencer in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce, or imposes a marking, recordkeeping or registration requirement with respect to such a firearm silencer, shall have no force or effect.
So a State cannot charge a unique tax on silencers or require registration of them, but it doesn’t seem like this would override a State’s ability to outlaw silencer ownership entirely. At least initially, as we have The Second Amendment for that and, should this bill go into law, I’m sure court cases would be filed immediately. An outright ban on silencers, once they’re legally standard firearms, would be highly unlikely to pass the 2A sniff test. Well, maybe in the “9th Circus Court of Schlemiels.”
Each time “The Hearing Protection Act” or “HPA” is introduced it seems to change in various ways, getting simpler or more complicated or removing some aspects (e.g. refund of the $200 tax for people who paid it in the last year or so) and adding others (e.g. destruction of existing registration data). So, to understand all of what H.R.3668 would mean if it went into law, the entire text of the bill is HERE.