President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act not only scored an important win for law-abiding gun owners, but it also created an opportunity for the National Rifle Association to help lead a strategic legal challenge to the unconstitutional National Firearms Act of 1934.
The final version of Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” removed the burdensome $200 federal tax on short-barreled rifles and shotguns, firearm suppressors, and “any other weapons” defined within the NFA, but the law’s original language would have also ended unnecessary registration and paperwork mandates currently required to lawfully purchase these firearms and items.
With a procedural sleight of hand, a Democratic-appointed Senate parliamentarian struck the NFA removal language from the legislation — a move that denied the Trump administration and a GOP majority in Congress the opportunity to advance gun rights.
We strongly disagreed with the parliamentarian’s ruling.
Some Second Amendment supporters saw the parliamentarian’s stunt as a permanent defeat for gun rights, but the NRA and our allies did not give up. We adjusted and supported a revised version of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s language that eliminated the unconstitutional $200 tax on certain NFA items and set the stage for the next round in our campaign to gut the NFA’s regulatory regime for good.
Here is how we plan to win in the courts.
The NRA and other organizations, including the American Suppressor Association, Second Amendment Foundation, and Firearms Policy Coalition, filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the NFA now that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act has reduced the $200 excise tax in the NFA to zero. The case, Brown v. ATF, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, argues that because the NFA no longer imposes a tax on certain firearms, the basis of its draconian regulatory scheme is invalidated. The NFA registration mandate is no longer justifiable, in the words of a 1937 Supreme Court opinion that upheld the NFA as a taxing scheme, as “obviously supportable as in aid of the revenue purpose.”
Put another way, the NFA cannot exist solely as a vehicle to hassle lawful gun owners by mandating paperwork and registry of short-barreled firearms and suppressors.
The lawsuit also argues that the NFA, in its new form, violates the Second Amendment. The Supreme Court clearly established in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen that any modern regulation of firearms must be consistent with our nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. Our new case argues that no historical framework or tradition supports the NFA’s mandate to register protected arms such as short-barreled rifles or suppressors.
The Constitution grants Congress only limited powers, none of which authorize the registration of privately owned firearms. We expect the courts to support that argument and agree that the Second Amendment forbids these undue regulatory burdens. This infringement of individual rights has gone on far too long.
None of this would have come to fruition but for the long-range vision and strategic investments of the NRA and other gun rights advocacy groups. The underlying basis for this suit was created by our substantial financial support of the landmark Bruen case, which resulted in a Supreme Court opinion establishing that regulations must fit within the historical tradition.
And our contention that the absence of a tax makes regulation under the NFA untenable would not have been possible without bold, tax-cutting legislation. Strategic investments in the 2024 election cycle, which drew gun owners to the polls in strong numbers, helped set the table for a pro-gun majority in both chambers of Congress and the biggest gun rights advocate in the White House in modern political history. Together, they passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act into law.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act may not be perfect. No law ever is. But it represents the biggest setback to the NFA since its creation nearly a century ago. It’s also one of the biggest steps forward for gun rights in decades.
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It wasn’t achieved by chance.
When gun owners come together to support pro-Second Amendment candidates and organizations that fight for their rights, the results can be historic. We expect to see that history written further as this case progresses and as we continue, both through litigation and legislation, to advance gun rights for all Americans.
John Commerford is the executive director of the National Rifle Association Institute for Legislative Action.
