The One Big Beautiful Bill Act was signed into law on July 4, 2025, and within hours a landmark federal lawsuit had been filed. That is not a coincidence — it is the opening move in a legal campaign I believe will ultimately demolish the National Firearms Act’s registration regime for suppressors, short-barreled rifles, and short-barreled shotguns. Let me explain exactly why.
The Tax Was the Only Hook
The National Firearms Act has been on the books since 1934, enacted under President Franklin Roosevelt pursuant to Congress’s Article I taxing authority. The Supreme Court confirmed this in Sonzinsky v. United States, 300 U.S. 506 (1937) — the NFA is constitutional as a tax statute, not as a direct exercise of federal police power.
That framing matters enormously. Every registration requirement, every fingerprinting mandate, every $200 transfer tax stamp existed for one reason: to enforce collection of that tax. The registration system is the enforcement mechanism for the tax. Strip away the tax and you strip away the constitutional foundation for the registration scheme that rides on top of it.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act does exactly that. Starting January 1, 2026, the $200 NFA tax on suppressors, SBRs, and SBSs drops to zero. The Senate Parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, blocked the original language that would have removed these items from the NFA entirely — ruling that a full removal violated the Byrd Rule’s budget-neutrality requirements. But the zeroing of the tax survived. And that zero is all we need.
Once the tax is gone, the registration requirements have no constitutional anchor in Article I’s taxing power. They need to go with it.
Suppressors and SBRs Are Arms Under the Second Amendment
The litigation argument does not stop with the tax hook. The second major prong is straightforward textual: suppressors and short-barreled firearms are arms under the Second Amendment, and the government bears the burden under Bruen to justify their registration through historical tradition.
District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), established that “arms” includes anything capable of offensive or defensive use — certainly short-barreled rifles and short-barreled shotguns qualify. As for suppressors, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022), holds that “instruments that facilitate armed self-defense” are covered arms. A suppressor is exactly that instrument. It protects the shooter’s hearing, preserves situational awareness during home defense, and has been acknowledged — even by the Department of Justice in recent briefing — as standard equipment for the United States Marine Corps in combat and training.
If suppressors and SBRs are arms, then the NFA’s registration requirements are restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms, and the government must demonstrate a historical tradition of equivalent registration. It cannot.
Kavanaugh Already Wrote the Roadmap
Here is the part that should give every Second Amendment litigator confidence: Justice Brett Kavanaugh already demolished the historical-tradition argument for gun registration — in writing, on the record, while serving as a judge on the D.C. Circuit.
In Heller v. District of Columbia, 670 F.3d 1244 (D.C. Cir. 2011) — “Heller II” — the two-judge majority upheld D.C.’s ban on semi-automatic rifles and its comprehensive gun registration scheme. Kavanaugh dissented, and his dissent is a treasure trove for the current litigation. He wrote:
“Registration of all guns lawfully possessed by citizens in the relevant jurisdiction has not been traditionally required in the United States and indeed remains highly unusual today.”
And further:
“Registration requirements are often seen as half a loaf measures aimed at deterring gun ownership. … That is a circular and constitutionally unacceptable rationale for requiring registration with respect to a core enumerated constitutional right.”
He also demolished the anti-gunners’ favorite workaround — the argument that early militia muster laws justify modern registration schemes:
“Those early militia laws applied only to militia men, not to all citizens. … Militia members were required to submit for inspection only one or a few firearms, not all of their firearms. … That is a far cry from a registration requirement for all firearms.”
Now that Kavanaugh sits on the Supreme Court, those pages of reasoning do not disappear — they become a preview of how the Court’s most nuanced Second Amendment thinker is likely to evaluate exactly this question.
The Lawsuit Is Filed
On July 4, 2025 — hours after the bill was signed — the Silencer Shop Foundation, Gun Owners of America, Gun Owners Foundation, Firearms Regulatory Accountability Coalition, B&T USA, Palmetto State Armory, SilencerCo, and individual plaintiff Brady Wetz filed Silencer Shop Foundation v. ATF, No. 6:25-cv-00056, in the Northern District of Texas. The complaint argues that the NFA’s registration and transfer requirements are unconstitutional as applied once the tax has been eliminated.
This is Normandy. We captured the beach on July 4th. The road to Berlin — the full dismantling of NFA registration for suppressors and short-barreled firearms — runs through this litigation, and the legal arguments to win it are already in the record.
This article is based on analysis by Professor Mark W. Smith, constitutional attorney and Host of the Four Boxes Diner 2nd Amendment channel. Watch the original video here. This does not constitute legal advice.