Volume I, No. VII
The suppressor transfer finishes the 2020 firearms reform, and the State Department reverses its own 2020 reasoning
Paired rules published July 23 move suppressors for non-automatic and semi-automatic firearms from the Munitions List to the Commerce Control List on November 20. State now reads the facts it weighed in 2020 the other way, and the oversight that followed firearms to Commerce has since been pared back.
In 2020 the State Department kept firearm suppressors on the U.S. Munitions List for one stated reason: their “ability to obscure the location of weapons fire, limiting an adversary’s ability to counter-attack”2. That is the department’s own summary, printed in the interim final rule it published on July 23, 2026, which removes most of those same suppressors from the list2. A companion rule from the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security places them on the Commerce Control List, effective November 201. The products are small and the trade is unmeasured. The policy interest lies in the reasoning. The rule shows how the Munitions List now draws its line between a weapon of war and a commercial good, and how much of the oversight attached to the first firearms transfer six years ago has since been taken away.
Two control regimes and the line between them
The United States runs two export control systems with different statutes, different agencies and different defaults. The International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), administered by State’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls, rest on section 38 of the Arms Export Control Act, 22 U.S.C. 2778, and govern the defense articles on the Munitions List2. Everything else subject to U.S. jurisdiction falls under the Export Administration Regulations (EAR), administered by BIS under the Export Control Reform Act of 2018, which became law on August 13, 20181. Section 38 requires periodic review of what belongs on the Munitions List, and State’s test is whether an item provides “a critical military or intelligence advantage” or, for weapons, has “an inherently military function”2.
The administration supplied the direction for this review. Executive Order 14268, signed April 9, 2025, told the Secretaries of State and Defense to review and update the Munitions List “to focus protections solely on our most sensitive and sophisticated technologies”3. State cites that order as the basis for the suppressor rule2.
Both rules arrived without prior notice and comment. State invoked the foreign affairs exemption in the Administrative Procedure Act, and BIS relied on section 1762 of the 2018 act, which lets it issue such changes as interim final rules1,2. State also observes that 22 U.S.C. 2778(h) bars judicial review of Munitions List designations, “which necessarily includes de-designations or removals”2. The comment periods, open until August 24, are therefore the main formal channel for objection1,2.
What changes on November 20, and what changed on July 23
State’s amendment narrows Category I(e) to “silencers, mufflers, and sound suppressors, specially designed for defense articles described in paragraph (b) or (d)” of the category, which keeps suppressors built for fully automatic firearms on the Munitions List2. State explains that those designs, with features such as greater heat dissipation for sustained fire, have “limited non-military use cases”2. All other firearm suppressors move to two new Commerce entries. ECCN 0A501.f covers suppressors usable with rifles and pistols, or interchangeably across rifles, pistols and shotguns; ECCN 0A502.f covers suppressors used only with shotguns1.
The controls follow the host weapon. Items under 0A501.f carry national security, regional stability, firearms convention, United Nations embargo and anti-terrorism controls, and BIS will generally review applications case by case for every destination1. Shotgun-only suppressors under 0A502.f get a new regional stability control under section 742.6(a)(14), which requires no license for exports to NATO members, Australia, Austria, India, Ireland, Japan, Liechtenstein, New Zealand, South Korea or Switzerland1. License Exception LVS applies to suppressor shipments to Canada worth up to $500, and suppressors count as accessories eligible for License Exception BAG when travelers take their own firearms abroad1. For exports to member countries of the Organization of American States, the import certificate requirements that cover other firearms items will apply1. BIS adds that nothing in its rule limits anyone in the United States from acquiring a suppressor, and that it does not regulate domestic sales1. State’s rule likewise leaves the Attorney General’s import list, the U.S. Munitions Import List at 27 CFR 447.21, unchanged2.
Two other changes took effect on publication. The first lets companies send firearms abroad under License Exception TMP as tools of trade. BIS says it already licenses such exports routinely, for embassy security contractors, anti-piracy guards on merchant vessels and armored-car crews who cross the border daily1. Before July 23, an employee carrying a personally owned firearm for work could use License Exception BAG, while a colleague carrying a company-owned firearm for the same job needed a license1. The new provision allows up to three firearms and 1,000 rounds of ammunition, plus related parts, for “legitimate business purposes,” including the protection of people or property, to any destination outside Country Group E:11. The items must stay under the owner’s or an employee’s effective control, may not be resold, must return, and must be declared to a CBP officer before departure1.
The second clarifies temporary imports. Section 758.10 now applies to all 0x5zz items and certain 600 series items that also appear on the Munitions Import List, putting in the regulation guidance BIS says it had given informally in consultation with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives1. Temporary importers of those items can follow BIS entry clearance procedures without a separate ATF permit1. A savings clause lets shipments that lose license-exception eligibility, if already en route on July 23, proceed when the export is completed by August 241.
Who gains, and what is left unmeasured
BIS expects the suppressor transfer to add about 200 license applications a year, and the tools-of-trade exception to remove about 401. Its paperwork estimate is smaller: a net increase of roughly 160 licenses and 80 burden hours, at an estimated $3,0401. Those are the only numbers either department published. State says quantitative analysis of costs and benefits “cannot be usefully estimated,” in part because the global prevalence of the items is not known, and concludes only that reduced regulatory obligations will outweigh the costs2.
The intended beneficiaries are U.S. manufacturers. State argues that “U.S. industry will benefit by having more access to foreign markets alongside foreign competitors,” and finds “negligible serious reliance interests” among regulated companies that might be harmed by the change2. The National Shooting Sports Foundation, which says it pressed for the broader firearms transfer for more than a decade, put the commercial case more bluntly5. Its general counsel, Lawrence G. Keane, said Munitions List requirements had made “commercial export of suppressors economically impractical,” and that “in most of the world, recreational marksmen and women and hunters typically use suppressors that they can buy at a local hardware store or sporting goods retailer”5. Neither the association nor the departments put a figure on the foreign market at stake.
The comparison with 2020 is the most revealing part of the State rule. At that time commenters argued that suppressors were widely available, including from foreign sources, and State agreed that they were but kept them listed for their battlefield use2. The 2026 rule reassesses the same factors and adds others: growing civilian adoption abroad, competitive shooting disciplines that use suppressed rifles, an endorsement by a medical non-profit, and a 2011 study by the Centers for Disease Control that called suppressors “[t]he only potentially effective noise control method to reduce noise exposure from gunfire”2. State also finds that the instructions, materials and skills needed to make an effective suppressor have become “appreciably lower” barriers2. The capacity to mask a muzzle report has not changed. What has changed is State’s judgment that the capability is too common to confer an advantage worth controlling under the ITAR.
The longer view: one transfer and three turns in oversight
The suppressor rule completes a transfer that began on January 23, 2020, when BIS and State published paired rules moving most non-automatic and semi-automatic firearms and related items from Categories I, II and III of the Munitions List to the Commerce Control List, effective March 9, 20201. Suppressors stayed behind under State1,2. The foundation describes the new rules as “finishing” that transition, which it traces to the Obama administration’s broader export control reform5.
The oversight that followed firearms to Commerce has since moved in both directions. In a final rule of June 1, 2022, BIS required notification to Congress before licensing certain semi-automatic firearms exports, a requirement it says was informed by, though different in scope from, the one that applied under the ITAR4. On April 30, 2024, BIS issued an interim final rule tightening license requirements for firearms and ammunition4. On September 30, 2025, it rescinded that rule in its entirety apart from its new classification numbers, citing industry estimates of “hundreds of millions of dollars per year in lost sales,” and removed the congressional notification step4. To commenters who asked for its return, BIS answered that “such notifications are not statutorily required” under the 2018 act, and pointed to committees’ ability to request license information under 50 U.S.C. 4820(h)(2)(B)(i)4.
That history shapes what the November transfer means in practice. A suppressor that leaves the Munitions List leaves the ITAR’s procedures and enters an EAR firearms regime that now has no prior notice to Congress and whose licensing standards have been rewritten twice in two years1,4. State has left one test in place, and its own rule shows how far that test now reaches: the department kept the suppressors whose design serves automatic fire, and released the rest on the ground that the world already makes them2.
Comments on both rules are due August 241,2. Unless either department changes course in response, the transfer takes effect on November 201,2.