
With the passage of The Big Beautiful Bill, half the gun world is ecstatic because the $200 tax on suppressors and short barreled rifles is gone. The other half is pissed because they think both should have also been removed from the NFA, and that we should not have settled. Regardless which side of the fence you’re on, there’s no denying the elimination of the tax is a good thing. This is especially true if you had your eye on a new suppressor or an SBR. If you were looking to buy both it’s a $400 savings now, which is exactly the amount I had to pay the government when I picked up my Q Fix in 8.6 Blackout and my Porq Chop suppressor a few months back. However, this rifle and suppressor combination is a perfect illustration of what I think most folks are overlooking regarding this tax elimination.
To best explain what The Big Beautiful Bill has done, we must start with the new 7mm Backcountry cartridge. Federal designed it to provide magnum performance from a bolt action rifle with a 20-inch barrel, so that it would be more suppressor friendly. There were two primary factors driving the development. The first was the current fascination hunters have with shooting critters at long range. This was why they wanted magnum-level 7mm performance. The other was the recent acceptance of suppressors for hunting. With the 7mm Backcountry Federal created a cartridge using new steel alloy case technology that gave hunters both, in a rifle that was not excessively long.

Short barrel rifles (SBRs) have not traditionally appealed to hunters for three reasons. The first was the $200 tax. The second was that when a rifle barrel shrinks below 16 inches the rifle does not balance well. And the third reason is that we just don’t have any rifle cartridges optimized to deliver the performance hunters demand when fired from an ultra-short barrel. This is where the 8.6 Blackout fits into the picture.
Q designed this cartridge to perform from a short barreled suppressed rifle. Granted, the cartridge does not have the extreme reach modern hunters are so twitterpated about, but it is a viable super and subsonic hunting cartridge. The cartridge is really nothing spectacular, but what Q did that was really, really, smart was to stipulate an incredibly fast rifling twist rate of 1 in 3. This is why the 8.6 Blackout delivers such fantastic terminal performance at the modest velocities it generates.
With a suppressed SBR now costing $400 less than it used to, firearm and ammunition engineers have an opportunity to do something groundbreaking, and that could also forever change the rifles we hunt with. Clearly, the appeal of integrally suppressed 16-inch barreled rifle should be obvious. It allows for a more compact and lighter weight rifle that will perform well with the 308 Winchester and AR15 cartridge families. And now it is $200 less expensive than it used to be. If firearm designers are not actively working on how to integrate that into a bolt action hunting rifle right now, their employer should fire them. But the other potential evolutionary advancement is what might be possible with new high performance rifle cartridges that can efficiently deliver 308 Winchester like performance from barrels as short as 12, 10, or even 8 inches.
Right now, a 150-grain bullet from a 308 Winchester that’s fired from a 10-inch barrel will have a velocity of about 2275 fps. That’s not even 30-30 Winchester performance. What if by using modern or even more advanced steel alloy case technology and incredibly fast twist rates, we could up that velocity to 2600 or even 2800 fps? You could then have a bolt action rifle that will deliver 308 Winchester performance – with the suppressor of your choice – and the barrel and suppressor together would only be 16 inches. This and other cartridges that might need even slightly longer barrels would revolutionize the bolt action hunting rifle. Not only could rifles be shorter but they could be lighter and quieter too.

Along these same lines, this $200 tax free price reduction should have a tremendous impact on braced pistols. Sure, now you can have an SBR that’s chambered for a pistol cartridge and you would not have to worry when the ATF was going to go bipolar and make it illegal — again! The potential for integrally suppressed SBRs chambered for pistol cartridges is obvious, but what if we could also supply some of the same potential advancements discussed above to a pistol-sized cartridge we could run in one of these now $200 less expensive SBRs?

The thing to remember about firearms and ammunition development is that it’s driven by the need to conform to current law, consumer demand, and retail cost. A perfect example of this is the current straightwall cartridge craze. Ballistically, new straightwall cartridges like the 350 and 400 Legend are nothing spectacular and there’s nothing revolutionary about them. Neither can hang with the 30-30 Winchester (1894) or the 35 Remington (1906), they’re just shaped differently to conform to current regulations and they don’t cost any more. But, it’s what hunters wanted so the manufacturers delivered.
What I want is a bolt action rifle with a 12-inch barrel chambered for a cartridge that will push a 130- to 150-grain, 0.25- to 0.30-caliber bullet, to around 2800 fps. I also want a four- to five-inch hearing safe suppressor to go with it. And when you put them both together I want the combination to weigh a bout five pounds. I think a lot of other hunters would get on board with that too.

I think The Big Beautiful Bill has given us an opportunity for some really cool shooting tools, and if the current NFA lawsuit that will remove suppressors and SBRs from the NFA is successful, look out — we’ll be living in a new world. Either way, it’s worth repeating: a suppressed SBR just got $400 less expensive, and $400 is enough to get people’s attention. There’s never been a better time to get a suppressor, an SBR, or both, but I would not go hog wild. Why? Because I predict that during the next four years, we’re going to see some very interesting new rifles, cartridges, suppressors, and maybe even combinations of all three.
Only four days left to get the 20% subscription discount or to comment on the below article for a chance to win a copy of Rifle Bullets for the Hunter.