Gun Rights Groups Sue to Challenge National Firearms Act After Taxes Lifted in ‘Big Beautiful Bill’

Gun rights organizations sued the government on July 4 to have the National Firearms Act (NFA) of 1934 declared an unconstitutional gun registry for silencers, short-barreled shotguns, and short-barreled rifles. According to the lawsuit, President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act effectively removed the tax on these items by reducing it from $200 to $0. However, the firearms must still be registered, making the NFA a firearms registry. Machine guns and destructive devices are still subject to the $200 NFA tax. In the 1937 U.S. Supreme Court case, Sonzinsky v. United States, the high court ruled the NFA is a legal exercise of Congress’s taxing authority. The court found that the government could gather information on the owners of certain firearms and their accessories as part of the tax system....