Since 1934, gun silencers have been regulated under the National Firearms Act — the law Congress passed during the gangster era to keep the most dangerous categories of weapon and accessory tracked. Buying one means registration, a federal tax stamp, fingerprints, and a wait.

Michael Cloud wants that gone.

On January 31, 2025, Cloud introduced H.R. 850, which he named the Silencers Help Us Save Hearing Act — the SHUSH Act. Its stated purpose, in the first line of the bill: "To provide that silencers be treated the same as firearms accessories."

Not "streamline." Not "reduce the wait." The same as a scope or a sling.

What the bill actually does

Four things, and they build on each other.

One: it strikes silencers out of the National Firearms Act. The bill amends Section 5845(a) of the tax code by removing the clause listing "any silencer." Once that word is out of the definition, the entire NFA framework — the registry, the transfer tax, the federal paperwork — stops applying.

Two: it wipes the slate for people who already have one. Anyone acquiring or possessing a silencer under ordinary gun law "shall be treated as meeting any registration and licensing requirements of the National Firearms Act."

Three — and this is the part that ought to get attention — it reaches into state law. The bill's fourth section is headed "Preemption of certain State laws in relation to firearm silencers." It amends Section 927 of the federal criminal code — the provision that says federal gun law is not meant to displace state gun law — so that any state or local rule which, as a condition of lawfully making, transferring, using, possessing or transporting a silencer, "imposes a tax on any such conduct, or a marking, recordkeeping or registration requirement with respect to the firearm silencer, shall have no force or effect."

That has a real target. Giffords counts eight states and the District of Columbia that ban silencers outright, and says that list "does not include the large number of other states that have laws on the books that only ban those silencers not registered in accordance with the federal laws." Those are state registration rules, and Cloud's bill is written to strip them out from Washington.

Four: it takes silencers out of the Gun Control Act as well. Section 5 is headed "Silencers and mufflers not to be Federally regulated." It strikes silencers from the definition of "firearm" in Section 921(a) of the federal criminal code, deletes the definition of "firearm silencer" altogether, and removes the sentencing enhancements in Section 924 that currently impose a 30-year mandatory minimum — and life on a second conviction — when a gun used in a violent crime or a drug crime is equipped with one.

That is worth sitting with, because Cloud is the congressman who talks constantly about federal overreach and states' rights. He is a Freedom Caucus member. He put his name on a bill to abolish federal agencies on a timer because Washington has too much power over everyone else.

Unless a state has a gun law he doesn't like. Then Washington's power is exactly the right size.

The company it keeps

The SHUSH Act's original cosponsors are Andy Ogles, Clay Higgins, Paul Gosar, Andy Harris, Lauren Boebert and Mary Miller.

That is not a coincidental group. It is a working caucus, and Cloud shows up on the other side of the transaction too. When Boebert introduced her bill to repeal the 1927 law that keeps handguns out of the U.S. mail, Cloud was one of three original cosponsors.

So in the same Congress, the same member is:

• Leading the bill to take silencers out of the federal firearms registry and void the state rules that track them, and
• Cosponsoring the bill to let handguns be shipped through the Postal Service again.

Neither of those is about hunting or home defense. They are about dismantling specific, long-standing federal restrictions — one from 1934, one from 1927 — that have been in place longer than almost anyone alive.

What this costs Texas

4,390 Texans died from gun-related injuries in 2024.

That's about twelve people a day, every day, in Cloud's state.

The response from the man who represents the Coastal Bend is a bill to make one class of firearm equipment harder to trace, and a cosponsorship on another to make guns easier to move anonymously through the mail.

The hearing-protection argument in the bill's name is real as far as it goes — gunfire is loud, and ear damage is a genuine thing. But hearing protection already exists and costs $30 at any sporting goods store. It does not require deleting a 92-year-old federal registry, it does not require voiding the state laws that lean on that registry, and it does not require deleting a 30-year mandatory minimum for using a silenced gun in a violent crime.

What he isn't doing

Here's the part to hold onto. Cloud sits on the Appropriations Committee, which decides where federal money actually goes, and he has been in Congress since 2018. In that time he has had the ability to move real money and real policy toward the thing killing 4,390 Texans a year.

Instead, the gun bills he has introduced himself run the other direction: H.R. 2039, the Protecting the Right to Keep and Bear Arms Act; H.R. 563, the No Retaining Every Gun In a System That Restricts Your Rights Act; and the SHUSH Act.

Three bills of his own to loosen. None to help.

Sources

Bill text of H.R. 850, the SHUSH Act, introduced January 31, 2025, via the Government Publishing Office. Existing federal law at 18 U.S.C. 927 and 18 U.S.C. 924, via the Office of the Law Revision Counsel. State silencer laws from the Giffords Law Center. Texas gun death data from USAFacts. Photo: Official congressional portrait.