The Senate approved its version of the One Big Beautiful Bill by the narrowest of margins today, with Vice President J.D. Vance casting the tie-breaking vote in favor of the legislation. Now the drama shifts to the House, where Speaker Mike Johnson is still hoping to get final approval of the measure in time to get the bill to Donald Trump by Independence Day.
In order for that to happen, a majority of House members would have to concur with all of the Senate’s changes without making any more of their own. If the House does modify the Senate bill it will have to go back to the upper chamber for another vote, which would likely happen next week at the earliest. With Donald Trump repeating his call to get the bill to his desk by Friday, the pressure is on Republicans in the House to adopt the current text instead of pushing for major changes.
As things stand now, taxes on supressors, short-barreled firearms, and “any other weapons” restricted by the National Firearms Act have been zeroed out, but the registration requirements for those firearms remain.
Anti-gun groups like Giffords are already attacking the bill and encouraging the House to reject the Senate version. Second Amendment groups like Gun Owners of America and Firearms Policy Coalition have also been critical of the bill in its current form, albeit for very different reasons.
🚨BREAKING🚨
The Senate just passed H.R. 1 with the $0 NFA tax stamp 51-50, with @JDVance breaking the tie.@HouseGOP should insert a full repeal of the NFA excise tax on suppressors & short-barreled firearms & send it back to the Senate to fire/overrule the Parliamentarian. pic.twitter.com/z8ZvWer8uM
— Gun Owners of America (@GunOwners) July 1, 2025
All Members of Congress take an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States…” FPC calls on Congress to fulfill that oath, starting with these critical actions: https://t.co/yliAR0waPe
— Firearms Policy Coalition (@gunpolicy) July 1, 2025
I’d love to see both the taxation and registration elements of the NFA repealed ASAP. I’m just not optimistic about the House or Senate following the advice from GOA and FPC… for several reasons. Here’s why I’m not getting my hopes up.
First and most fundamentally, the top priority for both Thune and Johnson is to get the OBBB to Trump’s desk in some form, and that means cobbling together a coalition of at least 50 senators, the vice president, and 217 House members. Thune was able to get the bare minimum, but Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski has said her vote was “agonizing”, and she and others could easily change their votes if the House made changes they consider unacceptable. And at the moment, it’s not certain that Johnson has 217 members who are willing to vote for what the Senate just passed, or accept any additional changes offered in the House. Remember, the House version of the budget bill passed with just a one-vote margin, and the Senate has made substantial changes.
It’s also important to remember that the version that passed the House only repealed the tax and registration on suppressors, while leaving the taxes and registration on short-barreled firearms and any other weapons in place. According to Rep. Andrew Clyde, who fought to get the broadest language possible in the House bill, there was not enough support in the House to win approval for removing tax and registration requirements for SBRs, SBSs, and AOWs. It would only take three 2A-squishy representatives to scuttle an amendment restoring the Senate language and reinserting it in the House bill. There are four current House members who voted in favor of the Bipartisan Communities Safety Act, and at least one more who, while voting against BCRA, has advocated extensively banning so-called assault weapons.
Even if the House were to follow GOA’s advice and restore the language adopted by the Senate Finance Committee, Thune would then have to fire the parliamentarian and install a more amenable official or decide to ignore her rulings altogether. There’s a strong argument to be made that Thune should have replaced Elizabeth MacDonough when this session of Congress was sworn in, but doing it now would be a gift to Democrats in the midterms, in my opinion.
At best, the OBBB is going to pass by the slimmest of majorities, and Republicans are going to have to play a lot of defense on the bill between now and November… especially if Elon Musk does decide to start a third party or challenge GOP incumbents for supporting the measure. Firing MacDonough would give Democrats another talking point about Republicans running roughshod over institutional norms in order to enact tax cuts for billionaires and screw over the working class, and frankly, I don’t think either Thune, Johnson, and rank-and-file members who face competitive re-elections want that headache.
Which gets us back to the main reason why I don’t expect the Senate to ignore or dismiss the parliamentarian, regardless of what the House does. Just like with the House not voting to include repeal of taxes and registration on short-barreled firearms and AOWs along with suppressors the first time around, if there was majority support to take that latter step among Republicans in the Senate, I suspect it would already have happened. But Thune has found a coalition willing to approve the OBBB, at least in its current form, and I don’t see him doing anything to risk that coalition falling apart.
So what happens if the OBBB is signed into law with taxes removed on those items but the registration remains in place? As Rep. Clyde has suggested on X.com, one or more lawsuits will probably be filed arguing that the registration requirement is both unnecessary and unconstitutional.
Meanwhile, gun owners and 2A groups need to start thinking about the midterms. What incumbents need to be challenged with a primary? Which ones are worth supporting? What open seats are winnable? What seats are flippable? What can I do to ensure that a majority of Congress understands the fundamental importance of the right to keep and bear arms?
If we don’t come up with good answers to those questions (and I’d answer the first question with “every Republican who voted for BCRA and/or a gun ban”), anti-gunners could soon be the ones making the budget. Any further NFA reform would be off the table, and the wins within the OBBB could be undone with a Democrat-penned reconciliation bill.
I don’t want to discourage anyone from calling on Speaker Johnson’s office and demanding the House bill be amended, or sending an email to Senator Thune and telling him to either fire the parliamentarian or ignore what she has to say. We the people should let our elected officials know where we stand. I just can’t ignore the fact that there are politically pragmatic reasons why they’d both prefer to push off the fight for full NFA repeal and the role of the parliamentarian until after the One Big Beautiful Bill is out of Congress and on its way to President Trump.
***UPDATE***
Andrew Clyde makes it official that the amendment will be offered.
🚨 BREAKING: I just introduced an amendment to the Senate-passed budget reconciliation bill to remove the NFA registration requirement for suppressors, SBRs, SBSs, and AOWs.
I’m fighting til the very end to get as many 2A wins in the OBBB as possible. pic.twitter.com/1fqePj7D8t
— Rep. Andrew Clyde (@Rep_Clyde) July 1, 2025
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