Along with raucous New Year’s celebrations and an endless deluge of football, the changing of the calendar brought a welcome update for law-abiding American gun owners.
As of January 1, 2026, the hated $200 National Firearms Act (NFA) tax stamp required for a host of Second Amendment-related items is no more. Gone are financial impediments to owning suppressors, short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns, and the fuzzy “any other weapons.”
NFA tax stamp was a relic of a bygone era
The NFA passed at the height of Depression Era gangland violence, and its objective was to clamp down on organized crime. That era is long gone, but the memory lingered through the tax stamp requirement for nearly another century.
However, last July’s passage of the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” scheduled the NFA’s demise for the first of the year.
The financial impediment to owning NFA items is no more
To be clear, ATF requirements, including mandatory paperwork filing, background checks, submission of fingerprints, and photos, remain for gun owners to navigate. The stamp is still required, but not the $200 fee that has been levied for over 90 years.
The vetting process for NFA items can still take months, and the fee applies only to machine guns and destructive devices.
Interestingly, even as the tax circled the drain, the Department of Justice argued for continuing the registration mandate for all NFA items.
The Second Amendment community is pleased with the elimination of the federal fee, but the satisfaction is incomplete. Gun rights organizations, including the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF), sued over the retention of the NFA registration mandate.
They believe that, with the tax’s elimination, the constitutional foundation to support the registration requirement for NFA items is also gone. What is left is only a burden, the SAF contends, on law-abiding gun owners and not a deterrent for violent crime.
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