It’s finally happening. Over the past month, I’ve been highlighting the joint and unified effort of various gun rights organizations and their fight against tyrannical and blatant suppression of Second Amendment rights. For the first time, many of us are confident in these organizations as they are united and pooling their resources. Previously, the Gun Owners of America, Gun Owners Foundation, Palmetto State Armory, the Firearms Regulatory and Accountability Coalition, Silencer Shop, and B&T USA filed the “One Big Beautiful Lawsuit” to strike down the NFA.
This lawsuit argued that the reduction of a tax stamp fee removes the precedent that the NFA is a tax, as decided in Sonzinsky v. United States (1937). GOA and its partners maintain that with the tax now at $0, the “constitutional justification for the law collapses.” This supports the view that the NFA is a registration scheme disguised as a tax.
The New Suit
In Brown v. ATF, the Second Amendment Foundation, American Suppressor Association, National Rifle Association, Firearms Policy Coalition, Prome Protection STL Tactical Boutique, and two members of the organization filed a suit challenging the constitutionality of the NFA. According to SAF, “With the elimination of this excise tax in the OBBB, the joint complaint alleges that the NFA registration regime is no longer justifiable as an exercise of Congress’s taxing power, nor any other Article I power.”
The lawsuit also claims that the NFA registration requirement for suppressors, short-barreled rifles and shotguns, and AOWs 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. The complaint argues that there is no tradition that supports the NFA’s registration regime for protected arms such as suppressors and short-barreled rifles.”
From Adam Kraut, SAF’s Executive Director:
“The National Firearms Act’s registration scheme only exists to ensure that the tax on NFA firearms was paid. With Congress removing the tax on silencers, short-barreled firearms, and ‘any other weapons,’ the continued inclusion of these items in the NFA serves no purpose, except continuing to retain an impermissible hurdle to the exercise of one’s constitutional right to keep and bear arms. We look forward to relegating this unconstitutional law to the history books.”
Zooming Out
The filing of Brown v. ATF in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri brings two nationwide lawsuits against the ATF, both challenging the constitutionality of the National Firearms Act. Each lawsuit argues that reducing the tax stamp fee to $0 removes any constitutional standing of the NFA. Advances in firearm and suppressor technology, along with cultural acceptance of items like suppressors and SBRs, have made the NFA outdated and unconstitutional. It’s time for it to be repealed.
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