Gun Rights Groups Take a Bite Out of National Firearms Act

In a victory for gun rights advocates, a federal court has ruled that part of the National Firearms Act (NFA) is unconstitutional. On August 5, Judge James Wesley Hendrix of the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas agreed with a challenge to registration requirements contained in the NFA because the justification for those requirements was now moot.

The NFA has always been an abomination because, after all, is there any other constitutionally protected right that requires extra regulations to govern how and where and by whom they should be allowed? There is no reason why the Second Amendment shouldn’t be considered as inviolate as every other amendment to the Constitution. That’s not opinion; it’s fact. There is no way to rationalize why any constitutionally protected right should be subject to conditions – which is precisely why the NFA was portrayed as a tax law to begin with.

Judge Hendrix ruled that, because the Trump administration zeroed out the taxes on certain weapons and components previously subject to additional levies, the registration of those items is unconstitutional.

Gun Rights Take a Bite Out of the NFA

The entire original reason for requiring the registration of certain firearms under the NFA was so that taxes could be levied. Or perhaps the taxes were imposed to justify the registration requirement. Either way, the very reason for registration has now been eliminated.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act erased the tax on these firearms. In his opinion, Judge Hendrix wrote:

“By zeroing out the transfer and making taxes for most NFA firearms, Congress eliminated the constitutional basis for the regulations that formerly supported the taxes for those firearms. No longer can the challenged NFA provisions be justified—as they have been for nearly 90 years—under Congress’s taxing power.”

The Department of Justice was given seven days to appeal the decision. Obviously, gun rights advocates are hoping it chooses not to. Though the upside of such an appeal, for gun rights activists, would be an escalation to the Supreme Court, possibly setting the stage for the elimination of the NFA entirely – which has for decades been the goal of gun rights groups.

Anti-Gunners Losing Ground

Bearing Arms reported that the plaintiffs in this legal challenge were Gun Owners of America, Gun Owners Foundation, Texas State Rifle Association, Firearms Policy Coalition Action Foundation, and Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. It should be noted that this ruling has no universal – that is, nationwide – application.

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Hendrix acknowledges that only Congress or the Supreme Court could permanently eliminate the NFA. He also did not pass judgment on the NFA as a whole, stating: “The challenged NFA provisions are unconstitutional.”

The NFA requires a tax on so-called short-barreled rifles and suppressors – what many people refer to as silencers. These items came with a $200 “tax,” payable to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). The registration requirement for these items was justified by the law that made them subject to additional taxation. Now that those taxes have been eliminated, registration has no purpose.

As the Second Amendment Foundation put it: “The basis for each lawsuit challenging the NFA registration scheme is the same – without the tax, the remaining requirements for the affected arms under the NFA have no constitutional basis.”

The decades-old assault on gun rights in America has taken some major whoopings in the courts – particularly in the Supreme Court – over the past few years. Perhaps that’s because the Second Amendment is stunningly simple and not really open to interpretation. Upon proper examination, none of the backdoor schemes the anti-gun lobby has ever come up with seems to pass constitutional muster. It remains to be seen how gun rights groups will finally bring down the National Firearms Act – enacted more than eight decades ago – but they may chip away at sections of it, as they did in this case, until it becomes practically irrelevant.