Source: NRA-ILA – Repost ISRPA 8/7/2026 –
In another major victory for the National Rifle Association and law-abiding gun owners, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas today held that the National Firearms Act’s registration and approval requirements for suppressors, short-barreled rifles, and short-barreled shotguns exceed Congress’s constitutional authority after Congress eliminated the NFA’s transfer and making taxes on those arms.
The court concluded that Congress enacted the NFA as an exercise of its taxing power and that the statute’s extensive regulatory requirements—including registration, applications, ATF approval, fingerprinting, and related criminal penalties—were constitutionally permissible only because they aided the collection of the NFA’s taxes. The court held that once Congress eliminated the transfer and making taxes for suppressors, SBRs, and SBSs last year in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the constitutional foundation for those regulatory provisions disappeared.
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