The United Kingdom has now formally removed sound moderators (known as silencers under Australian law) from its firearms licensing regime, with long-awaited reforms coming into force across England, Wales and Scotland.
The changes, implemented through the Crime and Policing Act 2026, represent a significant shift in how one of Australia’s closest legal and parliamentary counterparts regulates these devices.
For decades, organisations such as the British Association for Shooting and Conservation (BASC) have argued that sound moderators should be recognised for what they are: practical safety devices that reduce noise, protect hearing, and minimise disturbance to neighbouring landholders, livestock, and wildlife; not firearms in their own right. The British Parliament has now accepted that argument.
While possession of a sound moderator will still require a person to hold a valid firearm or shotgun certificate, the devices are no longer legally classified as firearms. Instead, a new offence has been created, making it unlawful for a person who does not hold a firearm or shotgun certificate to possess one. The practical effect is that licensed shooters will no longer need to apply for, pay for and wait for separate permit variations every time they wish to acquire a sound moderator. It is a practical reform that removes unnecessary bureaucracy while maintaining appropriate oversight of licensed firearm owners.
According to BASC, sound moderators currently account for around one-third of all items recorded on Britain’s National Firearms Licensing Management System. Removing those entries is expected to substantially reduce the administrative workload for police firearms licensing departments while saving licensed shooters both time and money.
BASC Director of Firearms Bill Harriman welcomed the reforms.
These inert metal tubes are incapable of causing any harm and their control over the last 58 years has simply added another layer of controls with no commensurate benefit to public safety.
He also noted that sound moderators have “no significant history of use in crime” and that their deregulation would benefit both the shooting community and police licensing authorities.
The significance of these reforms extends well beyond Britain. The United Kingdom is not some distant or fundamentally different jurisdiction. Australia’s parliamentary democracy, legal system and much of its firearms legislation are derived from the Westminster tradition. When governments in Britain modernise firearms regulation, it is entirely reasonable for Australian policymakers to examine the evidence underpinning those decisions.
Indeed, Australia is now becoming an increasingly isolated outlier among comparable Western nations. New Zealand allows licensed firearm owners to purchase silencers without separate licensing. Sweden and Norway regard them as ordinary safety equipment for licensed hunters and sport shooters. Germany has progressively relaxed restrictions for licensed hunters. The United States permits civilian ownership under federal regulation. The United Kingdom has now substantially simplified its own system.
By contrast, Australia remains one of only a handful of Western jurisdictions, alongside countries such as Canada and Spain, that continue to impose highly restrictive controls.
That divergence reflects public perception more than evidence. While the British call them sound moderators and Australian legislation uses the term silencers, they are the same device. Whatever terminology is used, they do not render firearms silent as Hollywood has conditioned the public to believe. Instead, they help to protect hearing and reduce disturbance to neighbouring landholders, livestock and other public land users.
They can also reduce recoil and muzzle blast, making firearms more comfortable to shoot, improving communication between hunters and guides, reducing shooter flinching and contributing to calmer, more accurate and more humane shot placement.
Importantly, there remains no credible body of international evidence demonstrating that lawful civilian ownership of silencers creates a meaningful public safety risk. Jurisdictions that have embraced more practical regulation have not experienced corresponding increases in criminal misuse. As BASC observed, sound moderators have no significant history of use in crime.
In Victoria, the issue has already been recognised as worthy of serious consideration. Last year, Eastern Victoria MP Jeff Bourman referred the question of silencers to the Victorian Firearms Consultative Committee for advice. That work has since been overtaken by the broader national firearms debate following the Bondi Junction tragedy and the accelerated firearms policy agenda that followed. With the Government’s post-Bondi reforms now before the Parliament, there is now room to return to consideration of this important potential reform.
SSAA Victoria has consistently argued that firearms policy should be informed by evidence, proportionality, and practical outcomes rather than by fear campaigns, Hollywood mythology, and political hyperbole. The United Kingdom has now acted on that principle.
That does not mean Australia should simply copy British law. It does, however, demonstrate that the world’s oldest Westminster democracy, whose legal and parliamentary traditions underpin Australia’s own, has concluded that decades of additional regulation delivered little public safety benefit while imposing substantial costs on both licensed firearm owners and police.
At a time when governments increasingly speak about evidence-based policymaking, reducing unnecessary regulation, improving occupational health and safety and minimising conflict between competing land uses, it is entirely reasonable to ask whether Victoria’s current approach to silencers remains proportionate, or whether perception has simply failed to keep pace with the evidence.
