Sound moderators: Home Office is consulting the public on their deregulation

The Home Office has started a public consultation into sound moderator deregulation in England, Scotland and Wales, following a Written Ministerial Statement by the Minister for Policing, the Rt Hon Chris Philp MP, and Lord Sharpe, Home Office Parliamentary Under-secretary of State. The consultation takes the form of a straightforward and very short questionnaire that can be accessed here and which closes at 10am on 2 April 2024. We would encourage all those able to respond to the questionnaire to do so. It is important to note that sound moderators for airguns with a power limit 12 ft lbs or less are not subject to licensing and are not part of this consultation. 

Sound moderators, being rifle attachments which suppress the sound and muzzle flash from a gunshot, are currently defined in Great Britain as “firearms” under the Firearms Act 1968, and therefore the 200,000 sound moderators for firearms currently held in Great Britain are listed individually on firearms licences. The government’s proposal is to remove reference to sound moderators from the definition of “firearm” in Section 57 of the Firearms Act 1968, which would essentially deregulate sound moderators. The meaning of such deregulation is that moderators would no longer have to be treated as firearms in their own right, with the result that the costly administrative burden to both shooters and firearms licensing units, which many consider to superfluous to necessity, would be consigned to the annals of history. 

The ability to freely trade moderators in the UK would be a boon for firearms dealers whose trade can be hampered by the firearms licence variation process, with its £20 per variation cost and sometimes protracted waiting times. The removal of such a requirement will have no negative impact on public safety; instead it will see better opportunities for trade in the UK, better value for money both for licence holders and taxpayers owing to the removal of variation fees for moderators, and the alleviation of unnecessary administrative burden. 

To stay up to date with the latest news from the Countryside Alliance’s Campaign for Shooting, please sign up to our monthly newsletter.