A new bill introduced in Congress proposes to regulate “lethal air guns” as firearms under the Gun Control Act of 1968, as amended (GCA). Yet the risk of fatalities and criminal misuse from air guns cannot compare and does not justify the immense regulatory burden the bill would impose. Considering all the federal gun control laws already on the books, the bill would create crimes out of thin air, with no corresponding public safety benefit.
Gun control advocates like to have it both ways. On the one hand, they will often insist they are only interested in “evidenced-based gun safety measures.” On the other, they will willingly heap any degree of bureaucracy on gun ownership, no matter how disproportional, if it might under any imaginable scenario “save just one life.”
The pending legislation, dubbed “Garrett’s Law,” is of the latter variety. It is named after an individual who, according to the sponsor, was prohibited from possessing firearms but “legally purchased a lethal airgun online and used it to take his own life.”
Tragic as that situation is, there is no way to determine whether the bill’s terms would have applied to the incident in question. The only information publicly available about the individual’s death appears to be the bill sponsor’s press release. That statement does not disclose how the individual died, what sort of air gun was involved, its caliber and muzzle velocity, or what legally prevented the individual from obtaining a firearm. It is also highly speculative to assume that, had the air gun had not been readily available, the suicide would not have occurred by some other means.
Fortunately, deaths from air guns are extremely rare, and self-inflicted fatalities from air guns even more so. The Consumer Product Safety Commission, which currently regulates air guns, counted 39 “non-powder” gun deaths from 1990 through 2000, less than four a year. It is unknown how many of those, if any, were suicides. Moreover, recent trends in air gun related injuries appear to be favorable. One 2025 review showed rates of acute care visits related to non-powder firearms dropping from 7 per 100,000 in 2001 to 3 per 100,000 in 2021. Whatever happened with the individual for whom the bill is named, it does not appear to be a common or increasing occurrence demanding a sweeping legislative response.
Categorizing air guns as firearms would vastly expand the scope of the GCA, as well as the jurisdiction of the two primary agencies responsible for its enforcement: ATF and, through its administration of the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, FBI. While there is no official count of the number of air guns sold per year in the U.S., estimates range as high as 3 million units.
All the rules that currently apply to federally licensed firearms manufacturers, importers, and dealers would apply to merchants of “lethal air gun[s]” under the bill’s terms. This category would include various calibers of air guns with specified muzzle velocities, for example, a .177 caliber air gun with a muzzle velocity of 800 feet per second. This designation alone would capture the most common, popular, and longstanding pump action models on the market. Yet also included would be any air gun “designated as a lethal air gun by the Attorney General, through rulemaking, as capable of causing death.” Death to whom, and under what circumstances, is not specified.
ATF would be responsible for licensing and inspecting all the affected companies and arresting prohibited possessors, while FBI would have to run background checks on all retail and interstate transfers. Transaction records, under current regulations, would have to be maintained indefinitely by both the merchants and, once those merchants discontinue business, by ATF.
Tens of millions of prohibited people under the GCA would suddenly be subject to felony penalties for possessing an air gun, including those who previously had lawfully acquired and owned them. Adults aged 18 to 20, moreover, would be ineligible to purchase at retail any air gun configured as a pistol or revolver. The costs and resources required to enforce this regime would be considerable, with essentially imperceptible benefits to public safety.
Tellingly, the bill received enthusiastic endorsements from national firearm prohibition organizations, including Giffords and March for Our Lives. This demonstrates that not just firearms, but any toy or sporting good that might lead to an interest in firearms, is within their prohibitive agenda.
Whatever can be said about the public safety implications of firearms, there is no similar argument to be made for air guns. In terms of crime, lethality, and, yes, employment in suicide, they are so seldom implicated that no reliable annual statistics exist to track their misuse.
It is true that some states already treat air guns as firearms under at least some laws. But, to date, it does not appear that anyone has tried to claim these laws have resulted in fewer adverse events in those states than in states without such regulation. More likely, the laws simply serve as symbolic stands against gun ownership generally.
And that, at the end of the day, is what this federal legislation would represent as well. Even by the typically overwrought standards of gun control, it is a massive overreaction to a phenomenon that is so rare as to escape routine tracking and measurement.
Air guns are a comparatively safe, low risk, and traditional way for neophytes to learn the fundamentals of marksmanship and safe gun handling. That is why they are so common in programs like Boy Scouts, 4-H, and scholastic rifle teams. True gun safety advocates should be heralding their use, not tying it up in additional red tape.
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