Here's something that has me pretty excited this week.
Major gun rights organizations just filed a supplemental brief in **Brown v. ATF** that's aiming to knock out the National Firearms Act's registration requirements entirely. Why? Because Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill zeroed out that $200 tax on suppressors, short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns, and "any other weapons" — and without the tax, Congress loses its constitutional excuse for the whole registration scheme.
Think about that for a second. The NFA has been around since the 1930s, built on the argument that it was a "taxing" measure. Remove the tax, and the whole house of cards might collapse.
The plaintiffs — which include the Second Amendment Foundation, American Suppressor Association, National Rifle Association, Firearms Policy Coalition, and a couple of individual gun owners — are arguing that the registration requirements can't survive now that the financial barrier is gone. They're also making a broader constitutional case that suppressors fall squarely within the Second Amendment's text as "arms" and that the government has no business maintaining a registry of constitutionally protected property.
As SAF's Alan Gottlieb put it, "For almost a century, the NFA has been used to infringe on the Second Amendment rights of citizens." Can't argue with that.
This case is being litigated in the Eastern District of Missouri, and the organizations have been piling up wins lately. They want to be able to possess, acquire, or manufacture NFA-regulated firearms without having to jump through government registration hoops.
From a business standpoint, if this goes the right way, we're talking about a massive shift. No $200 tax means more people buying suppressors and SBRs. No registration means less paperwork for everyone and fewer headaches when dealing with ATF forms.
The bottom line: the NFA was always an unconstitutional infringement dressed up as a tax. Now that the tax is gone, there's no遮羞布 left. Let's hope the courts agree and finally bury this relic of 1930s gun control for good.