The National Firearms Act is not a particularly good law, and in this day and age, it’s been proven to also be a very ineffective one. Machine gun conversions are plentiful, and criminals are laying down a lot more fire than your average citizen can hope to match.
And then we have short-barreled firearms and suppressors, which no longer have a tax on them, but still have to go through the whole rigamarole with the ATF and be registered, even though the registration is supposed to just be a list of who all has paid the tax.
Well, the National Rifle Association and the Second Amendment Foundation also think this is stupid. They’ve joined forces on a new challenge to the National Firearms Act.
The NRA, in a press release, had this to say:
Today, the National Rifle Association—along with the American Suppressor Association, Firearms Policy Coalition, and Second Amendment Foundation—announced the filing of another lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the National Firearms Act of 1934 (NFA). The case, Jensen v. ATF, was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas.
Originally, the NFA imposed a $200 tax and established a tax-enforcement registration regime for certain classes of firearms. However, President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBB) eliminated this tax for suppressors, short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns, and NFA-defined “any other weapons,” leaving only the registration requirement in place. The complaint in Jensen argues that since the tax has been eliminated, the NFA’s registration regime can no longer be justified under Congress’s taxing power—nor any other authority granted under Article I of the Constitution.
The complaint also asserts that the NFA’s registration regime for suppressors and short-barreled rifles violates the Second Amendment. The Supreme Court has established that any regulation on arms-bearing conduct must be consistent with our nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. And, the complaint argues, there is no tradition that supports the NFA’s registration regime for protected arms such as suppressors and short-barreled rifles.
“Thanks to President Trump and his historic One Big Beautiful Bill, the NRA and gun-rights advocates successfully repealed the unnecessary and burdensome $200 tax imposed on law-abiding citizens through the National Firearms Act,” said John Commerford, Executive Director of NRA-ILA. “While the elimination of the NFA tax marked a significant victory, our work is far from over. The NRA will not rest until the National Firearms Act is eliminated in its entirety, and today’s filing in Texas marks another critical step in that process.”
The plaintiffs in the case include the Texas State Rifle Association, FPC Action Foundation, Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, Hot Shots Custom LLC, and three individuals. The case represents the second lawsuit brought by the NRA, ASA, FPC, and SAF challenging the NFA since the OBBB eliminated the tax for NFA items, and builds upon Brown v. ATF, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri on August 1st.
The Second Amendment Foundation had its own press release, and while I won’t re-share the background, here’s what that organization had to say about the challenge:
“With the tax now set to $0, the remaining registration requirements for these arms under the NFA have no constitutional basis,” said SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut. “Completely removing them from the NFA is now a must, and this suit aims to eradicate the barriers to the exercise of the Second Amendment. SAF is already a plaintiff in its own lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of these elements of the NFA, and now our sister organization the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms is joining the fight as a plaintiff with our financial backing in this companion case.”
…
“This is the best opportunity in a generation to eliminate major portions of the NFA since its inception nearly a century ago,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “The government is going to be hard-pressed to justify the law as a tax without a tax, and the type of regulation of Second Amendment-protected arms seen in the NFA is without any historical support. We’re hopeful its days are numbered.”
I think Gottlieb is absolutely correct about the historical support for the NFA. I mean, at the time of the nation’s founding, the Founding Fathers were able to own artillery as private individuals. The idea that there are types of guns they clearly didn’t want us to have seems kind of ridiculous.
Yes, I know that the whole “dangerous and unusual” thing came from the Court, but there are a lot of SBRs and suppressors already out there, so it seems like it’s going to be hard to call them unusual, and they’re no more dangerous than any other gun or accessory, so that standard doesn’t apply, either.
In short, they’re already “in common use,” and while that shouldn’t matter, if we’re going to have to meet that threshold, these weapons clearly do. Even machine guns are plentiful enough to meet that threshold.
I sincerely hope we can come to see the entire NFA come crashing down. Not just would it be good for gun rights, but it would make all the right heads explode in rage, which would be ample reason to support such a thing all on its own.
What is best in life? To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their polycule partners.
However, it’s going to be a tough fight. While we got the Bruen decision out of this Supreme Court–where this case is going to eventually have to go if we have a hope of ending the NFA–they’ve been less than stellar on Second Amendment issues. They’re not terrible, but they’re not great, either, and we need greatness right about now.
This lawsuit, which is just the latest effort to take down the NFA, is the chance for the courts to step up and get it right.
It’s my most sincere hope that we get what we need on this. The NFA needs to go down and go down hard. Our right to keep and bear arms was never intended to be subject to such a taxation scheme or any other kind of gun control. This needs to be fixed.
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