Third Lawsuit Challenging NFA Filed

When the One Big, Beautiful Bill passed, it eliminated the NFA tax for suppressors and short-barreled long guns. Now, the reason this is important for today is that the NFA was always billed as a tax, not gun control. In 1934, gun control was untenable. Taxes, less so, and this was a tax to anyone who asked.

Now, though, the actual tax is gone, but every other aspect of the law--which were supposed to be about making sure people paid the tax--remains, and there are a couple of lawsuits out there challenging that fact.

And then there were three.

Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership (JPFO) leads the charge alongside the Buckeye Firearms Association, the American Suppressor Association Foundation, Meridian Ordnance, and two individuals, T.J. Roberts and Zachary Cockrell. They are taking on heavy hitters in the federal government, naming the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and its Acting Director Daniel P. Driscoll, as well as the Department of Justice and Attorney Pamela J. Bondi, as defendants.

The core of the argument is that the National Firearms Act (NFA) was originally built as a tax law. “When registration was required on suppressors and firearms,” JPFO stated, “it was justified only because of the $200 tax provision in the National Firearms Act. Now that the taxes have been eliminated, there really cannot be any further registration requirement.”

The legal team from the Washington, D.C. firm Cooper & Kirk argues that the federal government is overstepping its constitutional authority.

In a statement emailed to Bearing Arms, JPFO elaborated on the inherent taxing component of the NFA.

“it was justified only because of the $200 tax provision in the National Firearms Act. Now that the taxes have been eliminated, there really cannot be any further registration requirement. The language in our lawsuit makes that clear: ‘While the NFA’s regulations may have been permissible in support of the statute’s taxes on making and transferring firearms, that justification no longer remains for items whose making and transfer are no longer taxed. To the extent that the NFA imposes requirements on making, transferring, receiving, possessing, or otherwise using untaxed firearms, it cannot be justified as an exercise of any other Article I power. Accordingly, the NFA is unconstitutional as to the untaxed firearms.'”

The simple fact is that if we look at lawmakers' stated intentions at the time the law was passed, the NFA wasn't about controlling guns. It was a tax and nothing else.

Since the ATF routinely claims that it just rubber stamps applications for NFA registration--something that's not quite true, but roll with me here--then there's no reason at all for the registration to continue for these items. 

“The government’s historically claimed constitutional authority for the NFA was its ability to levy taxes,” said SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut in a separate statement offering SAF's support for this lawsuit. “Once President Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill and taxes on silencers and short-barreled rifles were zeroed out, that authority no longer applied. Without it, the remaining registration requirements must be struck down as well. That’s exactly why we are now supporting a third challenge to this law in federal court.”

And that's it in a nutshell.

With enough lawsuits, maybe one will get an answer that the ATF will be forced to listen to.

Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

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