The government has today (17 June 2025) announced that it supports proposals to remove sound moderators (also called silencers or suppressors) from the list of defined “firearms” in the Firearms Act 1968. This announcement came as they finally responded to the 2024 consultation into the matter which closed well over a year ago. This move is a sign that sense can prevail in Westminster in spite of the presence of other proposals to restrict shotgun ownership in current circulation. 

In effect, this proposed change to legislation means that sound moderators for Section 1 firearms will no longer need to be separately listed as firearms in their own right. This means that transactions of sound moderators will not be subject to the variation procedure nor will the vendor and buyer have to inform the police about any transaction. The response lays out that sound moderators pose no danger in themselves to public safety and crucially that this proposal would not increase risk to public safety.  

The main impacts of this action are entirely positive: police firearms licensing departments will have less of an administrative burden which will allow more time to be spent on more serious licensing matters and hopefully cutting the unacceptably long waiting times that many gun owners have to endure for licence applications and renewals. The other key advantage is that the trade of sound moderators will be less constrained by unnecessary red tape which will provide a boost to the rural economy. 

There is one unexpected proviso to the removal of sound moderators from the definition of firearms, which is that the government instead proposes that the Firearms Act 1968 should also be amended to “make it an offence for a person to possess a sound moderator unless that person is in possession of a firearms certificate allowing for lawful possession of a firearm.” This means that sound moderators will not be completely deregulated, but will in effect be treated like shotgun ammunition by our current understanding of this line. The necessity of this additional proposal is questionable and the Countryside Alliance will be involved in discussions around its inclusion in future legislative changes. 

The next steps for this are not clearly set out and plenty of work will need to be done to get this from proposal to enacted legislation. The government suggests that to make the proposed statutory changes must be enacted through primary legislation – without a timescale. This is a concern as police forces are struggling with licensing admin burdens right now and the government’s loosely-defined timescale could take years. The Countryside Alliance is working to make sure that this legislation can be made in the shortest possible timeframe and without unnecessary and counteractive additions. 

It should be noted that sound moderators for air guns (except in Scotland) and shotguns are exempted from regulation. 

The full government response can be read online here.