Two top gun-rights organizations are pushing a Missouri court to declare the National Firearms Act (NFA) null and void since the $200 tax on suppressors, short-barreled rifles (SBRs), short-barreled shotguns (SBSs) and NFA-designated “any other weapons” (AOWs) was rescinded in President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill.
On November 14, the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) and Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) filed a motion for summary judgment in the case Brown v. ATF in which plaintiffs are asking the court to strike down the remainder of the NFA and enjoin the government’s continued enforcement of the act’s unconstitutional requirements.
The motion—filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri—argues that because Congress eliminated the making and transfer taxes on most NFA-regulated firearms earlier this year, the NFA’s remaining registration and recordkeeping mandates are now unconstitutional. The NFA was upheld in 1937 only as a taxing measure, but with no tax left to collect, its regulatory web no longer rests on any constitutional foundation.
The filing further argues that the NFA’s restrictions on suppressors and short-barreled rifles (SBRs) are—and always have been—unconstitutional under the Second Amendment.
As the motion explained: “The NFA’s regulation of suppressors and short-barreled rifles implicates the Second Amendment’s plain text. Short-barreled rifles plainly are arms under the plain text of the Second Amendment. So are suppressors: by regulating suppressors, the NFA effectively regulates suppressed firearms, and suppressed firearms are ‘arms.’ Alternatively, suppressors facilitate armed self-defense by enhancing the effectiveness of firearms for self-defense and mitigating the hearing risks associated with using firearms. Indeed, there is no dispute among the parties on this point: the government agrees that suppressors are protected by the text of the Second Amendment.”
Alan M. Gottlieb, SAF founder and executive vice president, said it’s time for the NFA to be gone once and for all.
“The NFA has always been a bad law built on a shaky constitutional foundation,” Gottlieb said in a news release announcing the motion. “With the passage of the Big Beautiful Bill, that foundation went from shaky to nonexistent. SAF is thrilled to have the opportunity to sweep the pieces of this broken law into the dustbin of history.”
Speaking for his organization, FPC President Brandon Combs said the excused to keep the “unconstitutional and immoral” NRA alive died with the One Big Beautiful Bill.
“For generations, the federal government has forced peaceable Americans to be tracked in federal databases simply for owning tools protected by the Second Amendment. That era is over,” Combs said in an FPC news release. “Congress built this law on its taxing power, and when that foundation collapsed, so did any claim of constitutional authority. What remains is nothing but a relic of fear and control—a law that survives only through bureaucratic inertia and intimidation.”
Combs added: “The Constitution is not a permission slip. The right to keep and bear arms is not contingent on paying tribute, registering property or seeking government approval. The NFA’s days are numbered, and we intend to make sure its end marks a new chapter of freedom for every American who values liberty.”
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