For years, one of the holy grails of the gun rights and Second Amendment movements has been to dismantle the National Firearms Act of 1934. For those just tuning in, the National Firearms Act, aka the NFA, imposes strict regulations and taxation on the transfer, personal manufacture, and ownership of specific types of firearms and accessories, namely silencers (suppressors), short-barreled rifles (under 16 inches barrel length), short-barreled shotguns (under 18 inches barrel length), machine guns, "any other weapons" (AOWs) which is a catchall category for disguised guns and the like, as well as destructive devices which are things like missiles, rocket launchers, and bombs. Sidebar: With enough paperwork, a citizen can own a Javelin missile here in the US.
The restrictions are pretty intense. For all items covered by the NFA, you have to fill out either an ATF Form 1 (if you are making an NFA item except for a machine gun), or an ATF Form 4 (if you are purchasing an NFA item), pay a $200 NFA tax ($5 for AOWs), provide biometric data including photographs and fingerprints for yourself and potentially anyone else with ready access to the item - we'll touch on individual vs trust purchases in another article - and then wait for approval to come back from the ATF. For reference, aside from checking the paperwork, the ATF is only doing the same background check that you'd undergo while purchasing any other gun at retail. Keep that fact in mind, it's important. A lot of extra paperwork for guns that don't fit into some arbitrary definition of "normal", basically. Nevermind the most popular NFA item isn't even a firearm, it's a fancy muffler.
Ironically it's because of those fancy mufflers, aka silencers, that the National Firearms Act and all it's absurdities have come to light over the past few years, leading up to court challenges and now, legislation, aimed at dismantling this nearly century-old gun control law disguised as a tax policy. Which is why the attack on the NFA has taken a new and untested vector in the form of reconciliations and changes to the tax code. But, why is a gun control law disguised as a tax law? To know that, we'll have to take a somewhat-brief detour into the history of the National Firearms Act of 1934.
The History Of The National Firearms Act Of 1934
Our nation was founded with nothing even close to resembling something called a gun control law. At the most, there were some bylaws concerning powder storage here and there, but basically, there was nothing resembling what modern era Americans would consider gun control on the books. Though, one could consider the laws forbidding the trade of arms with certain Native tribes to be gun control, but in the context of the time, it was more of a wartime restriction, i.e. not selling guns to the enemy, but not gun control for the sake of gun control.
Anyways, up until 1934, there literally was no federal gun control laws to speak of. Even state and municipal level laws didn't really pop up until the late 1800s, save for the expected bans on slaves owning guns, etc. However, as the 20th century began, the powers that be in government and corporate America grew "concerned" over the fact that pretty much any person with money to spend could easily acquire a firearm, whether it be a pistol, semi-automatic rifle, or even a machine gun. Of course, racism factored in heavily as establishment whites definitely did not look favorably upon armed black folk who, up until about a generation prior to that, were regarded as property. And yes, there were a few shrill voices calling for gun control, which tended to co-exist with the then-growing temperance movement, which led to the Volstead Act and the Eighteenth Amendment, which banned the manufacture and sale of alcohol in the United States. Banning a legal product enjoyed by many didn't make demand diminish much, so organized crime picked up the distribution business, and since when you are in the business of transacting illicit substances, you tend to be in for a penny and in for a pound and you'll likely be violent to enforce the security of your business.
All this time, the federal government, and their corporate partners, had been angling for an excuse to enact federal gun control, and Prohibition handed to them on a plate. After a few high-profile gangland battles, as well as worker unrests such as the West Virginia Coal Wars, the "normies" of the date amplified their demands for the federal government to "do something" (gee, where have we heard that before?) about this so-called rampant scourge in crime. Guess the thought of defending themselves didn't occur to them, but anyways.
With this leverage, the first drafts of the National Firearms Act were drawn up. The federal government, knowing they couldn't outright ban the possession of firearms, or even whole classes of them, without running afoul of the Second Amendment, thought long and hard about how to best implement gun control, and keep the courts and Constitution happy.
So, after much debate, the government figured that since they had the power to tax, they could tax the heck out of firearms via the Interstate Commerce Clause and basically get away with a far-reaching gun control law, disguised as a tax law. More nefariously, the FDR-era Wickard v Filburn decision basically ruled that anything that competes with interstate commerce is also interstate commerce, so intrastate commerce became interstate commerce. Yikes.
At the time, the government was actually very forthright about it, with then-Attorney General Cummings declaring the NFA to be a tax specifically so they could pass the proverbial smell test. Furthermore, the law itself was born in the House Ways & Means Committee, and the Senate Finance Committee, and not any committees about crime or public safety. The law itself even became part of the revenue code, and the IRS was initially responsible for all NFA affairs. Even today, the IRS still technically handles the funds collected from NFA transactions. It's a tax!
With this in mind, the first draft of the National Firearms Act of 1934 was truly staggering. Each and every firearm (including pistols!), save for a few types of rifles and shotguns, was to be taxed to the tune of $200 - $4798 as of today - and required to be registered with the federal government as proof of payment. The taxpayer would receive a stamp as proof of payment of the tax, and be required to have it on hand wherever the firearm in question may be. Concurrently, this is where the definitions of SBRs and SBS came from. The government didn't want people cutting down those exempt rifles and shotguns and making "exempt" pistols to avoid the $200 tax.
The tax was at that insanely high level for a specific reason. The idea was to price your ordinary American out of being able to own most firearms, and they would be reserved for the government, who didn't have to pay their own tax, and corporations, who wouldn't blanch at paying $200, if the law were even enforced on them. Of course, violent criminals had no plans to comply, but who keeps track of little details like that? /s
However, during the debates and revisions of the bill, Congressional advisors cautioned that such a broad-reaching tax could be (correctly) interpreted as a ban, since $200 was a very steep amount at the time. Thus the final revision of the NFA dialed it down to only applying the taxation and registration/ledger requirements to machine guns, short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns, AOWs, and silencers. Ironically the SBR/SBS classification was borne of a desire to keep people from bypassing the tax on pistols, but then pistols were dropped from the NFA, leaving the SBR/SBS classification with no purpose. Silencers were thrown in at the last minute by a few rural Congressmen who had spurious concerns about poaching.
Finally, on June 26th, 1934, the NFA bill was signed into law by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, hardly a proponent of small government and individuality.
Save for the change of the AOW tax to $5 in the 1960s, and the addition of the Destructive Devices category in 1968, the NFA has remained untouched and barely challenged. Until now...
NFA Deregulation And Repeal Efforts Begin
For the rest of the 20th century, and a part of the 21st, the National Firearms Act remained relatively unknown outside of Second Amendment circles. People just assumed NFA items were for the government only, and anyone possessing a machine gun or silencer was probably doing so illegally. Even most gun owners had massive misconceptions about NFA items. In some jurisdictions, they were actually correct. Several states, in violation of the Second and Tenth Amendments, chose to outright ban NFA item ownership. Other states had, and still have, a soft ban, where the affected item is banned in the state, unless you have complied with the NFA. At the most, NFA items were considered something for collectors or well-heeled hobbyists. There was no "NFA industry" to speak of. The NFA killed Maxim Silencer's gun silencer business soon after enactment. With few sales, the company shifted to making mufflers (silencers) for industrial machinery, which they still do today. If between say 1940 and the 1990s, if you wanted a silencer, you had to know someone who made them, or make one yourself, and follow the usual arcane NFA steps to stay legal. There was no such thing as Silencerco, AAC, or Dead Air. Deregulation wasn't even really talked about. The status quo was the NFA, and no one complained. Plus, with the NFA process requiring local law enforcement permission in a lot of cases, who categorically denied the transaction for individuals, it just wasn't worth the hassle for most.
Fast forward to the early 21st, and with the advent of gun trusts by David Goldman which create a legal entity to "own" NFA items (local police didn't have to grant permission to corporations and non-person entities for NFA item ownership), the NFA market really started to pick up steam. Despite the registration and taxation requirements, people started wanting and buying NFA items, especially suppressors/silencers. Companies like Silencerco sprung up, to satisfy the demand. With the freedom of information flow bought about by the internet, it became even easier for people to figure out the NFA process, and get realtime help from legal experts and industry mavens alike.
Of course, with that explosion in demand, people began to ask questions about why NFA items were so strictly regulated. SBRs and SBSes weren't anymore dangerous than their longer-barreled counterparts. Machine guns really just turned money into noise and had a bad rap, and silencers weren't even firearms really, and didn't "silence" gunfire like in the movies.
But, by this time, the gun control propaganda industry had firmly entrenched itself in the average American mind. With federal successes in 1934, 1939, 1968, 1986, and 1994, along with many state and local level wins, "Gun Control Inc" had made itself part and parcel of life in the United States. At any given moment, it could be estimated that a strong minority of the population accepted and endorsed the idea of gun control, despite the Second Amendment explicitly forbidding it. Even people who claimed to support the Second Amendment got cold feet when it came to NFA items.
However, the Second Amendment scene, coupled with their new-found power of the internet, began to fight back. The first "strike" was in the first year of President Donald J Trump's first term. Called the Hearing Protection Act, the law called for the removal of suppressors from the National Firearms Act, and making them treated no differently than an AR-15 at the federal level. Which is to say that you'd still be required to undergo the NICS (or state-level portal version) background check, but provided you pass it, you could take your suppressor home the same day. Suppressors purchased prior to the law being ratified would be removed from the NFA transaction registry and become supposedly anonymous. This was a standalone law, and it's sponsors were confident it could climb the legislative ladder, since at the time the GOP had a solid supermajority, controlling Congress and the White House.
Sadly, the bill never made it out of committee, with Paul Ryan shelving the matter conveniently after the still-unsolved Las Vegas terrorist attack in 2017, where a suppressor was not used, but people decided to still make an issue out of it. His actions were and are typical of the GOP when it comes to the Second Amendment at the federal level. But, let's stay on course.
Between then and now, regardless of whomever is in the Presidential hot seat, a few principled Congresspeople usually managed to draft up some variant of the HPA each session. It usually died in committee, but it was pushed forth nonetheless, mainly to keep the matter top of mind for those that are interested. The opposition does this as well, usually introducing an "Assault Weapons Ban Of (year)" each session as well. Of course, even if it managed to get out of committee, a standalone HPA bill would likely not succeed in the Senate, as the filibuster tradition is in effect. The filibuster is literally a nonsensical delaying tactic Senators will use to block a vote on legislation they don't like. In order to bypass it, "cloture" is invoked, where three-fifths of the Senate (60 people) have to basically agree to tell the Senator who is filibuster-ing to shut up. Then the bill in question still has to pass via a 60 vote supermajority. Fun, huh?
Now, the reason a standalone HPA would die in the Senate is that the Republicans have not had a filibuster-proof majority in a very long time. The most they have had since 1959 when the Senate increased in size to 100 has been 55. Plus, with the Second Amendment being a bitterly contested issue, no Democrat will ever vote for a pro-2A bill at the federal level. Thus whenever it comes up, someone engages the filibuster and the bill dies. There's always a threat to "nuke" the filibuster, but both parties use it, so it's likely to never happen.
So, aside from court actions, what is Congress to do when it comes to advancing pro-2A legislation? Specifically matters related to the National Firearms Act?
Enter budget reconciliation.
Donald J Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill
Congress loves their omnibus bills. These "megabills" or "gigabills" are basically thousands of pages of legislation tucked into one big bill. The matters therein usually have to be nominally related, and since stuff costs money, the best way to do that is to cram it all into a budget reconciliation package. Every administration does it, sometimes multiple times a year, and it's often controversial, because that's actually where the government sneaks in all sorts of unpleasant nonsense. It's why suddenly there's a tax increase (even if the promoters of the package say there's a tax cut!) on some random government matter or another. Or suddenly there's a new surveillance regulation because the government allocated funds to the FBI about some trifling matter or another, and their "rule" was to implement the new thing as a surveillance mission.
Now, all budgetary matters start in the House, and are finessed by the Senate before the conformed bill is presented to the President, if it gets the votes to get to him. The House has no filibuster, so anything there need only pass by a simple majority. For budget matters, the Senate isn't allowed to use the filibuster, so in this case, a simple majority is all they need, and remember, in the case of a tie, the Vice President can cast the tiebreaking vote, and he usually will do so along party lines. Anyways, this limitation is why Congress loves their gigabills. Stuff that would hit the filibuster wall and not pass cloture gets rammed into a budget bill for the most spurious reasons. FYI - that's where the Senate Parliamentarian comes in. He, or she, can advise whether a part of a bill is really budget-related, in a process called the "Byrd Bath" after Senator Robert Byrd, who came up with the idea, in between Klan meetings and his nightly viewings of Birth Of A Nation. Anyways, keep this Parliamentarian character in mind, she's gonna be really important in the next paragraph or two.
Anyways, the One Big Beautiful Bill was the current iteration of a omnibus budget bill. Promoted by President Trump as such, the OBBB promised a lot of tax cuts (albeit temporary in some key aspects...) and increased fund allocations to the President's priorities like immigration enforcement (ICE), and a myriad of other things. You can read the entire monstrosity of bureaucracy if you want. It's kind of a dumpster fire, even if some components are a net benefit.
So, with this opportunity, some crafty Republicans, such as Representative Andrew Clyde of Georgia, and Senator Mike Crapo of Idaho, two 2A strongholds, decided to not only insert the provisions of the Hearing Protection Act in, but (in the Senate versiona) also the oft-debated SHORT act, which would deregulate short-barreled rifles and shotguns. And, for the cherry on top, the whole idea of AOWs would be done away with. Silencers, SBRs, SBSs, and funky umbrella guns would all be treated no differently than a semi-automatic AR-15 at retail. The "public safety" component some people worry about, the NICS check, would remain, but no more taxation and no more tax ledger registry.
Why this route? As noted above, the National Firearms Act is a tax law. The IRS initially enforced it and still collects the funds from the process. NFA item owners are issued a tax stamp. The stamped Form is a tax document and confidential information. The authors of the NFA called it a tax. So did innumerable courts. The National Firearms Act of 1934 is a tax law. Thus it's provisions can be changed or repealed in budget reconciliation processes.
With the GOP having a simple majority in both chambers of Congress, it appeared to be a sure thing. Could a majority of the nearly century-old NFA be knocked out in one fell swoop? Could we be picking up cans and only waiting a few minutes for the NICS inquiry to clear? Could we be buying an 11.5" upper for our ARs and tossing it on a lower with a stock, not having to worry about our dogs? Oh my...
But, not quite. Remember that sneaky Parliamentarian? She struck, during the Byrd Bath. During her analysis, her opinion was that the zeroing out of the NFA tax was a financial matter and thus good-to-go for the OBBB, but that the removal of the registry requirement was a regulatory matter and had to be addressed by different means. Despite the fact that the registry is technically a ledger of who paid a tax. No tax? No ledger needed, right?
Now, the Parliamentarian can be ignored. The Vice President, who is the President of the Senate, can simply instruct the Senate to ignore her. For reasons unknown, VP Vance, ostensibly a 2A supporter, was strangely quiet when bombarded with innumerable requests by the 2A community, big and small, to do this. This could pose difficulties for his 2028 Presidential campaign, by the way. A Senator can also object to the ruling, and demand a vote on the ruling, and convince 50 other Senators to agree with him. This could have happened, but unfortunately President Trump wanted to make a big show of the OBBB and sign it on July 4th. Similarly, the Senate as a whole could simply vote via a supermajority of 60 to ignore the Parliamentarian, but since the OBBB was to have no Democratic support, this was highly unlikely.
Oh, and for reference, the Senate Parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, is an unelected advisor. She was appointed by Democrat Harry Reid when he was alive. She's pretty much carrying out the fiscal policy of a dead man. However, she can be let go by the Senate Majority Leader, John Thune, who decided not to do so, claiming it would break "tradition".
Anyways, after some more re-arranging of the deck chairs and coats of paint being thrown on the walls, the OBBB finally passed the Senate in a 51-50 vote, with VP Vance being the tiebreaker. Unfortunately, the watered down HPA & SHORT Acts were the versions that remained. President Trump signed the bill into law on July 4th, 2025.
As of this writing, the tax on silencers, SBRs, SBSs, and AOWs will be reduced to $0 on January 1st, 2026. Purchasers will still have to file the appropriate Form with the ATF, but no money will change hands, but an entry of 0 will be made on the tax ledger registry.
In essence, the NFA remains intact, but with less money involved. The most onerous provisions, namely the registration, remain.
So, what does the Second Amendment community do now?
Fixing The HPA & SHORT Acts
Regardless of what avenue the Second Amendment community takes, the simple fact is that time is of the essence. As of right now, the (at face value) pro-2A GOP only has a slim majority in Congress, and with the recent fumbles by President Trump & the GOP concerning some key issues like 2A, the Epstein case, Ukraine, and so on, may just place the Democrats back in control of at least one chamber of Congress after the 2026 midterm elections. If that happens, the GOP has to, once again, fight to maintain itself rather than go on the offensive.
So, what are the paths forward for the deregulation of silencers, short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns, and any other weapons?
The Legislative Path
Highly unlikely, but completely removing silencers, short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns, and AOWs from the purview of the National Firearms Act can be done legislatively. The amount of political willpower would simply be enormous though, and to be honest, it's simply not there at the moment when it comes to matters of the Second Amendment. Too many Republicans treat it as campaign theatrics at best, and unfortunately the vast middle of the electorate doesn't prioritize 2A like they should. The matter would likely not even make it out of committee, and even if it did, it wouldn't pass the inevitable filibuster from the Democrats in the Senate. Sadly, a legislative fix is one way to really put the matter to rest with a certainty. Encourage it, but be realistic about it.
The Reconciliation Path
Believe it or not, Congress can pass multiple budget resolutions per year - it's rare, but it happens. Speaker Johnson hinted at subsequent Big Beautiful Bills, and it is entirely possible to insert a delisting clause into the next one, if such a thing were to occur. It could be couched as a paperwork reduction procedure, since if there's no tax being collected, why are zero dollar amounts being recorded in the NFA tax ledger? Seems to be extra work for zero benefit. Again, the "public safety" part of the NFA process is the NICS inquiry that every other retail firearm transfer is subject to. Likely this would require the Parliamentarian to be ignored or sent off, so the Vice President would have to have a Second Amendment redemption arc and do so. It could happen, and is slightly more realistic than a standalone NFA deregulation bill.
The Judicial Path
Minutes after Congress passed the One Big Beautiful Bill and sent it to President Trump to be signed into law, a coalition consisting of the Gun Owners Of America, the National Rifle Association, the Firearms Policy Coalition, the American Suppressor Association, the Firearms Regulatory Accountability Coalition, Silencer Shop, Silencerco, Palmetto State Armory, and B&T USA responded with the One Big Beautiful Lawsuit. To keep it simple, the OBBL will ask the courts to strike down the NFA’s new $0 tax and registration scheme for suppressors and firearms with short barrels. Remember, that in the the 1930s, the Supreme Court only narrowly upheld the NFA solely as a tax statute—not as a firearms regulatory law. In Sonzinsky v. United States (1937), the Court ruled the NFA was permissible under Congress’s taxing power. But once the tax is reduced to $0, the constitutional justification for the law collapses.
A zero dollar tax is no tax at all, and it can be argued that if no tax is being collected, but yet the data on the firearm is being registered, it would change that portion of the National Firearms Registry and Transfer Record into a brand-new firearms registry rather than a tax ledger. For reference, the 1986 Firearms Owners Protection Act prohibits new firearms registries. The suit is in it's early stages, but has strong merits based on the nature of the NFA being a tax law. Keep an eye on this, since it's likely to have the most chance of success. Plus, there is a little more wiggle room time-wise here since it's not entirely dependent on the midterm elections.
Dismantling The National Firearms Act Is A Struggle, But Worth It
Passed on spurious grounds in an abuse of the Interstate Commerce Clause, the National Firearms Act of 1934 represents the first major display of the lengths by which enemies of our Republic will go to in order to promote their agenda of total control. Fully well knowing they could not easily pass a direct "control" bill at that time, the progressives of the time resorted to the power of the purse, and couched their gun control bill into a spurious and outrageous taxation law. A tax on a natural right is tantamount to suppressing it entirely, and though later courts have recognized this concept, the NFA has still stood, largely unaffected, not due to it's strength, but due to the simple fact that until recently, the idea of Second Amendment absolutism was not something openly discussed in society and the halls of power.
By beating back the National Firearms Act, the resolve of the Second Amendment community can be demonstrated, especially when it can be considered that the affected items are consistent with the application of the Amendment, and also on a more mundane level, the health and safety of those who wish to own those items. A silencer protects the hearing of the person shooting their weapon, and the hearing of those who may be around them. Short-barreled firearms are ideal for defense in close quarters, which is where the bulk of our nation's population resides. Even machine guns (not covered by the current efforts of deregulation, but will be soon...) have use cases for citizen defense. None of the actual firearms proscribed by the NFA are uniquely more dangerous or lethal than their semi-automatic and bolt-action counterparts. From the outset, the NFA was a hack legislation, and after nearly a century of abuse, it's time for it to go.
Support the One Big Beautiful Lawsuit, and all other efforts at dismantling the NFA, and gun control as a whole. The right to keep and bear any armaments free of government meddling is the heritage of the United States - let's start acting like it.
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