Here’s a jaw-dropper for Second Amendment advocates: the very foundation of the National Firearms Act (NFA) may have just been pulled out from under it, thanks to a single stroke of the presidential pen. When President Trump signed the “One Big Beautiful Bill” on Friday, eliminating the NFA’s excise taxes on suppressors and short-barreled firearms, gun rights groups saw more than a tax cut—they saw an opening to launch what’s shaping up to be the most significant legal challenge to federal gun control in nearly a century.
For decades, the NFA has been the regulatory backbone for everything from silencers to short-barreled rifles. But the law’s constitutional legs have always been a bit wobbly, propped up by a 1937 Supreme Court decision in Sonzinsky v. United States. Back then, the Court said Congress could require registration and slap a $200 tax on certain firearms, calling it a valid use of the taxing power—even if it had the side effect of restricting access to “gangster-type weapons.” The catch? The law only stood because it was, at its core, a tax law.
Now, with the tax rate set to zero for nearly all NFA-regulated firearms, gun rights advocates argue the law’s constitutional support has vanished. As Sam Paredes of the Gun Owners Foundation put it, “The Supreme Court has made clear that the NFA survives only as a tax law. Once the President signs this bill and the tax disappears, the registry becomes an unconstitutional relic.” That’s not just legalese—it’s the crux of the “One Big Beautiful Lawsuit” coalition’s strategy, which includes heavyweights like Gun Owners of America, Palmetto State Armory, Silencer Shop, and the Firearms Regulatory Accountability Coalition.
The legal arguments are as sharp as a freshly honed blade. Plaintiffs say the original NFA was only ever constitutional because it generated revenue. With Congress now reducing the tax to zero, the rest of the law—registration mandates, transfer restrictions, and all—has no constitutional foundation left. Erich Pratt, GOA’s senior vice president, called it “a once-in-a-generation opportunity to dismantle one of the most abusive federal gun control laws on the books. With the tax struck down by Congress, the rest of the NFA is standing on air.” The lawsuit is expected to rope in not just gun owners, but also sellers and manufacturers, all arguing that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) registration process now imposes unconstitutional burdens without any revenue justification.
This is no shot in the dark. The NFA’s history is a tapestry of legal battles and regulatory tweaks. Born out of the gangland violence of the 1930s, the law was always about making certain weapons harder to get by taxing them out of reach—a $200 fee in 1934 was a fortune. Over the years, the NFA has survived challenges, including the pivotal United States v. Miller decision in 1939, which focused on whether certain weapons had a “reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia.” But the tax was always the anchor.
Fast-forward to today, and the legal winds have shifted. The Supreme Court’s 2022 Bruen decision set a new standard: modern gun laws must align with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. That’s a tall order for the NFA, whose roots are more about curbing crime than following colonial-era norms. Legal scholars now argue that the NFA, without its tax, is unlikely to survive scrutiny under Bruen’s “history and tradition” test.
Meanwhile, the ATF is also changing course. Under Attorney General Pam Bondi, the Justice Department has told the agency to shift focus away from paperwork violations and instead target transnational gun smuggling and violent crime. The ATF has streamlined its Form 4473 process and deprioritized enforcement of technical registration errors—a move that gun rights groups say is long overdue.
The coalition’s lawsuit, dubbed the “One Big Beautiful Lawsuit,” is expected to be broad, pulling in a range of plaintiffs from across the firearms community. The Firearms Policy Coalition is also jumping into the fray, calling the excise tax repeal a “critical step toward our ultimate goal of dismantling the NFA once and for all.” As Palmetto State Armory CEO Jamin McCallum put it, “Our mission has always been, and will always be, to champion freedom and uphold our constitutional rights.”
The coming legal battle is poised to test the NFA’s very existence in a way not seen since its inception, and it’s all happening as the landscape of federal gun enforcement is being reshaped from the ground up.
