{"id":117853,"date":"2026-07-16T17:07:52","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T22:07:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=117853"},"modified":"2026-07-16T17:07:52","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T22:07:52","slug":"117853","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=117853","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

No Tax, No Excuse: NFA Suppressor and SBR Registry Gun Rights Next Target<\/a><\/p>\n

New\u00a0filings<\/a>\u00a0argue that three Supreme Court decisions have stripped away the government\u2019s excuses for maintaining a zero-tax federal gun registry. The tax is gone. The registry remains.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Second Amendment Foundation<\/a>\u00a0(SAF) and its partners have opened a coordinated,\u00a0three-court attack<\/a>\u00a0on the National Firearms Act registration requirements for suppressors and short-barreled firearms. Supplemental filings in Brown v. ATF, Jensen v ATF<\/em>, and Roberts v. ATF<\/em> argue that three recent Supreme Court decisions leave the federal government with neither a valid taxing-power excuse nor an easy escape from the Second Amendment.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Jensen<\/em>\u00a0filing is part of the consolidated\u00a0Silencer Shop Foundation v. ATF<\/em>\u00a0litigation in Texas, where Silencer Shop Foundation and allied plaintiffs are pursuing a parallel challenge to the NFA registry.<\/p>\n

Congress Zeroed the NFA Tax but Kept the Registry<\/h3>\n

Congress reduced the NFA making and\u00a0transfer tax<\/a> on suppressors, short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns, and \u201cany other weapons\u201d to zero in the One Big Beautiful Bill. Washington, however, kept the paperwork, fingerprints, registration, prior approval, and felony penalties.<\/p>\n

That creates the question now confronting federal courts: If the registry existed to collect a tax, what constitutional authority supports it when Congress no longer collects that tax?<\/p>\n

SAF says the Supreme Court\u2019s decision in Landor v. Louisiana Department of Corrections & Public Safety<\/em> reinforces the answer: none. Congress cannot stretch the Necessary and Proper Clause into an independent police power, then impose a burdensome registration scheme on Americans who owe no tax.<\/p>\n

The Jensen filing puts the point bluntly. Maintaining registration on untaxed citizens, plaintiffs argue, would permit Congress \u201cto regulate in minute detail the activities of untaxed Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n

That should concern every gun owner. A federal agency should not be able to preserve a national weapons database merely because the database once accompanied a tax.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Supreme Court Rulings Strengthen the Second Amendment Challenge<\/h3>\n

The Second Amendment attack may be even more consequential. SAF argues that\u00a0Wolford v. Lopez<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0United States v. Hemani<\/a>\u00a0require courts to apply the Supreme Court\u2019s text-and-history test instead of inventing special exemptions for NFA regulations.<\/p>\n

According to the filing, a suppressed firearm is a form of an arm, while a short-barreled rifle is \u201cindisputably\u201d a form of an arm. Once protected conduct is implicated, the government bears the burden of proving that its restriction is consistent with America\u2019s historical tradition of firearm regulation.<\/p>\n

The filing also takes direct aim at the\u00a0Fifth Circuit\u2019s decision<\/a>\u00a0in United States v. Peterson, which treated NFA registration as comparable to a presumptively lawful shall-issue licensing system. The plaintiffs contend that Wolford \u201cleaves no room for a carveout\u201d from the required Second Amendment analysis and therefore abrogates Peterson on that point.<\/p>\n

That licensing comparison was always strained. Licensing evaluates whether a person is legally disqualified. Registration creates a government record of particular weapons and their owners. As the Jensen filing explains, \u201cRegistration, by contrast, focuses on tracking firearms and who owns them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Three NFA Lawsuits Target the ATF Registry<\/h3>\n

In a press release, SAF Senior Director of Legal Operations Bill Sack said: \u201cWhen the Supreme Court rightly ruled in favor of Landor, Wolford, and Hemani, the precedent set had a direct impact on SAF\u2019s ongoing NFA challenges.<\/p>\n

With those rulings in hand, we are now able to better explain to the courts exactly why the remaining registration scheme left in the NFA lacks constitutional authority and is a direct violation of Americans\u2019 Second Amendment rights. We are hopeful these cases will move expeditiously and rightfully restore the full constitutional rights of gun owners across the nation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no doubt the Supreme Court\u2019s rulings this past term have direct bearing on our current challenges to the NFA\u2019s remaining registration scheme,\u201d said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe relevant district courts should recognize the rulings for what they are \u2013 binding precedent that bolsters SAF\u2019s arguments in these three cases.<\/p>\n

The One Big Beautiful Bill eliminated the tax for suppressors and short-barreled firearms, and it\u2019s now time to remove the registration burden so citizens can exercise their right to keep and bear arms without fear of being placed on some government list.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The burden is now where Bruen put it: on the government. ATF must identify a historical analogue, not wave at modern licensing practices and demand judicial deference. The government now faces a problem it cannot solve with slogans about licensing or administrative convenience.<\/p>\n

No tax means no taxing-power excuse. Protected arms mean the Second Amendment applies. And a government list of firearms and their owners is exactly what it looks like: registration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No Tax, No Excuse: NFA Suppressor and SBR Registry Gun Rights Next Target New\u00a0filings\u00a0argue that three Supreme Court decisions have stripped away the government\u2019s excuses for maintaining a zero-tax federal gun registry. The tax is gone. The registry remains. The\u00a0Second Amendment Foundation\u00a0(SAF) and its partners have opened a coordinated,\u00a0three-court attack\u00a0on the National Firearms Act registration … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,23,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-117853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bureaucraps","category-courts","category-rkba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=117853"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117853\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":117854,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117853\/revisions\/117854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=117853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=117853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=117853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}