Does Vermont Have an Assault Weapons Ban?

Vermont Statutes title 24, section 2295 bars towns, cities, and incorporated villages, except as otherwise provided by law, from directly regulating hunting, fishing, trapping, or the possession, ownership, transportation, transfer, sale, purchase, carrying, licensing, or registration of firearms, ammunition, and components. State magazine provisions remain a separate equipment inquiry from a visible-feature analysis.

There has been no federal assault weapons ban since the 1994 ban expired in 2004; no feature restrictions apply federally to semi-automatic rifles or pistols. The 2023 ATF pistol-brace rule was vacated by the courts and is not enforced, but federal SBR classification for a brace-equipped firearm still turns on whether the specific weapon is designed and intended to be fired from the shoulder. Garland v. Cargill (2024) held that a bump stock is not a machine gun under federal law. Feature bans are entirely a matter of state law.

Federal baseline verified 2026-10-20. Scope: State laws restricting semi-automatic rifles, pistols, and shotguns by configuration features: threaded barrels, pistol grips, folding or telescoping stocks, flash suppressors, forward grips, and similar. Magazine capacity limits are tracked as a separate class.