In 2019, a gunman shot and killed 12 people in a Virginia Beach municipal building. His semiautomatic weapon was fitted with a silencer, making the gunshots sound, to one survivor, “like a nail gun.”

If the shots had been louder — if the people inside had been given even 30 more seconds of warning — lives could have perhaps been saved. But muffled sounds from the silencer created confusion and, ultimately, death.

Silencers are dangerous. Now, they’re more accessible than ever.

Within President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act was a little-noticed but dangerous provision eliminating the $200 federal tax requirement on firearm silencers. Sold as a win for freedom and self-defense, this repeal does nothing to make ordinary Americans safer. Instead, it makes it easier to acquire deadly tools that muffle the sound of gunfire, and can make shootings harder to detect and survive.

On July 4, Trump signed the so-called

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