H.R. 4252 — Extreme Risk Protection Order Expansion Act of 2025

This section establishes a grant program under which the Attorney General may award grants to eligible entities—including states or Indian tribes that enact compliant extreme risk protection order legislation (as determined by the Attorney General) and units of local government or other entities located therein—to enhance implementation of such legislation. (Extreme risk protection orders are court-issued orders primarily aimed at reducing firearm-related death or injury by prohibiting a named individual from possessing firearms or requiring their surrender; "firearm" has the meaning given in 18 U.S.C. §921.) Grants may be used to (1) provide personnel, training, technical assistance, and data collection to law enforcement agencies and courts; (2) train judges, court personnel, health care and legal professionals, and law enforcement officers to identify individuals posing a firearm-related danger; (3) develop protocols, forms, and orders for safe firearm removal and storage; and (4) raise public awareness, including via subgrants to community-based organizations. Grant recipients must allocate 25% to 70% of funds for law enforcement training on the safe, impartial, effective, and equitable use of extreme risk protection orders, including addressing bias based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, language proficiency, mental health condition, disability, and classism, as well as appropriate use in cases of domestic violence.

This section expands the categories of persons prohibited from receiving firearms or ammunition under 18 U.S.C. 922(d)(10) and from possessing firearms under 922(g)(10) by adding persons subject to a court order—issued after a hearing with actual notice and an opportunity to participate—that restrains them from possessing or receiving firearms and includes a finding that such person poses a danger of harm to self or others. (Thus, the new prohibitions mirror existing ones for certain domestic violence protective orders but apply more broadly to qualifying court orders.)

This section amends 28 U.S.C. 534, which authorizes the Attorney General to acquire, collect, classify, and preserve criminal identification records (including through FBI-operated national crime information databases such as the National Crime Information Center), by (1) requiring the Attorney General to acquire, collect, classify, and preserve records from federal, tribal, and state courts and other agencies identifying individuals subject to extreme risk protection orders, as defined in section 2(a) of the Extreme Risk Protection Order Expansion Act of 2025 (i.e., court orders temporarily prohibiting firearm possession by persons determined to pose an extreme risk of causing harm); (2) making conforming changes to cross-references in subsection (b); and (3) authorizing federal, tribal, and state criminal justice agencies and criminal or civil courts to include such extreme risk protection orders in national crime information databases, as defined in subsection (f)(3), and to access related information from those databases.

This section requires courts and law enforcement personnel of each state and Indian tribe to give full faith and credit to, and enforce as their own, any extreme risk protection order issued by a court of another state or Indian tribe under a law enacted in accordance with this Act, provided the issuing court had jurisdiction over the parties and subject matter and the respondent received reasonable notice and an opportunity to be heard (including, for ex parte orders, within the time required by state or tribal law and in any event within a reasonable time after issuance). This section further establishes that courts of Indian tribes have full civil jurisdiction to issue and enforce extreme risk protection orders involving any person in matters arising anywhere in the tribe's Indian country or otherwise within the tribe's authority, including through civil contempt proceedings, exclusion of violators from Indian land, and other appropriate mechanisms.

This section provides a severability clause stating that if any provision of the Act or its amendments, or its application to any person or circumstance, is held invalid, the remainder of the Act and its amendments remain in effect.