The National Firearms Act of 1934 (NFA) is a legal corpse that has not fallen over yet, and gun rights groups want to give it that final shove into the dustbin of history.
The National Rifle Association (NRA), the American Suppressor Association (ASA), Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC), and Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) filed suit last week in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas.
Eliminating the NFA tax should result in ending the registration requirement
For decades, the NFA instituted a hated $200 tax on short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns, suppressors, and the ambiguous “any other weapons.”
That period is over after the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBB) erased the punitive tax earlier this year, and now plaintiffs in Jensen v. ATF want the registration requirement eradicated as well. They declared that since the tax is no more, the registration requirement is no longer justified under Congress’s constitutional authority.
Furthermore, there is clearly a void in the nation’s historical tradition of firearms regulation to support registration requirements for arms covered by the Second Amendment.
There is now a golden opportunity to right a wrong and enhance personal freedom
The NFA registration requirement is a relic that needs to be repealed, and the process is well underway.
Last week’s filing is already the second by the coalition of gun rights groups since the OBBB passed and eliminated the $200 tax. It builds on Brown v. ATF in seeking to roll back arbitrary gun control that does nothing to enhance public safety, as FPC President Brandon Combs explained.
“This critical case is another step toward ending the immoral and unconstitutional National Firearms Act,” Combs declared. “FPC is proud to stand with our allies and drive our nationwide strategy to dismantle this federal ban scheme. We will continue to fight forward until all peaceable people can exercise their rights when, where, and how they choose.”
SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut said there is no reason for the registration requirement to remain now that the tax has been eliminated.
“With the tax now set to $0, the remaining registration requirements for these arms under the NFA have no constitutional basis,” Kraut noted. “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 without financial backing in this companion case.”
Momentum is clearly on the side of easing unnecessary restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms. SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb said that the time to strike is now.
“This is the best opportunity in a generation to eliminate major portions of the NFA since its inception nearly a century ago,” Gottlieb asserted. “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.”
The NFA was a legal child of the turbulent 1930s. The Great Depression teamed up with Prohibition and organized crime to create a unique set of challenges that lawmakers had not yet faced.
Unfortunately, their solution was to pass the bloated NFA to try to clamp down on gangland violence. But then—just as now—preventing the good people from fully exercising their constitutional rights does nothing to enhance public safety.
Instead, it became just another part of the current gun control scheme that is slowly being dismantled. Kudos to the impressive lineup of organizations banding together to challenge this law.
This is just another in a long line of examples of why it is critical to support groups that support our freedoms. Without them on the front lines, anti-gunners could run roughshod over liberties we should never have taken for granted.
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