Suppressor Form 4 applications through the first four months of 2026 have already reached roughly 90 percent of the entire 2025 total, according to a commercial market analysis published in May by the American Suppressor Association and covered by AmmoLand News this month. The surge in demand follows the January 1, 2026 elimination of the $200 NFA transfer tax on suppressors and short-barreled rifles under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law July 4, 2025.

Gun owners submitted 660,744 suppressor Form 4 applications from January through April 2026, according to the ASA data. January 2026 alone produced 240,270 Form 4 receipts — the largest single month in ASA's recorded dataset by a significant margin. For context, the entire previous year generated approximately 730,000 applications under the old $200 tax regime. Even with the application volume compressing across just four months, the processing system is keeping pace: as of June 9, the median eForm 4 approval time was running approximately six days for individual filers and about 23 days for trust filers, a fraction of the months-long waits that had become routine under the prior administration.

The association's analysis projects 2026 suppressor Form 4 applications at somewhere between 1.1 million on the conservative end — roughly a 50 percent increase over 2025 — and 1.5 million in the likely scenario, which would represent more than double the 2025 total. The corresponding wholesale market estimates run from approximately $699 million in the conservative case to about $953 million in the likely scenario. Both projections assume demand cools modestly from the January spike as the initial rush from early adopters works through the system.

State-level data obtained by the ASA through Freedom of Information Act requests shows Texas leading the nation with 944,959 suppressors in the state's registry, followed by Florida with 401,064. Both states have large numbers of suppressor-eligible hunters and sport shooters and permissive regulatory frameworks.

The demand data arrives as the suppressor industry faces a simultaneous legislative threat in Congress. Representative Bonnie Watson Coleman of New Jersey reintroduced the HEAR Act on June 8, a bill that would ban the importation, sale, manufacture, transfer, and possession of suppressors — with no grandfather clause for the millions of devices already lawfully registered. The bill has no prospects in a Republican-controlled Congress but signals that the suppressor boom has not gone unnoticed by gun-control advocates.

With roughly eight months of 2026 remaining, suppressor manufacturers and dealers are in the strongest market environment they have experienced since the NFA was enacted. The next benchmark to watch is whether the application pace sustains through summer or moderates as the pent-up demand from the January rush levels off.