The House Judiciary Committee is marking up two bills that would block state excise taxes on firearms and ammunition and tighten the federal liability shield for the lawful gun industry. On September 16, 2026, the committee takes up H.R. 2442 and H.R. 9298 in the 119th Congress. The dual markup is the day’s highest-stakes federal Second Amendment fight for gun owners and the industry.
H.R. 2442 would preempt state excise taxes on firearms and ammunition. Preemption means federal law would displace state tax schemes aimed at guns and ammunition. States would lose the power to pile extra excise taxes onto the purchase of a firearm or ammunition. The bill puts the right to keep and bear arms above state statutes that use the tax code to burden that right.
A tax on the instruments of a constitutional right is a restriction by another name. The Second Amendment does not depend on a state’s appetite for extra revenue from gun sales. H.R. 2442 treats firearms and ammunition as they are: the means by which the people exercise a right that statutes do not create and that states do not get to meter.
Tightening the PLCAA Shield
H.R. 9298 would tighten the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act’s liability shield. PLCAA is the federal statute that stops civil suits from treating lawful manufacturers, importers, and dealers as if they were responsible for the criminal misuse of firearms sold in accordance with the law. Tightening that shield is the point of the bill now in markup.
A shield that can be pled around is not a shield. H.R. 9298 is the committee’s vehicle for making that protection hold. The industry’s ability to remain in lawful commerce, and gun owners’ ability to buy from that industry, both turn on whether PLCAA still bars lawsuits that seek to regulate firearms through the courthouse instead of through Congress.
Both bills now sit in markup before House Judiciary. Committee action is the next step. If reported, the measures would still have to clear the House floor and the Senate. Until then, the text of H.R. 2442 and H.R. 9298 is the fight: whether states may tax a right and whether lawful sellers may be sued as if they were the criminal.
Members of the committee swore an oath to the Constitution, not to state tax codes and not to theories of liability that convert every crime into a product lawsuit. The right to keep and bear arms does not yield to an excise stamp or a complaint filed in a friendly venue. What happens next is whether the committee reports bills that put that order of authority into statute.