After President Donald Trump (R) signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act into law on July 4, 2025, thereby eliminating the $200 tax on suppressors, short-barreled rifles, and short-barreled shotguns from the National Firearms Act (NFA) as of last January 1, the NRA quickly went to court to challenge what became a clearly unconstitutional registration scheme of those commonly owned items.
About eight months later, a federal court agreed.
On August 5, U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix of the Northern District of Texas held that key regulatory provisions of the NFA are unconstitutional as applied to certain categories of firearms.
The decision came in the consolidated cases of Silencer Shop Foundation v. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and Jensen v. ATF. The court concluded that, once Congress eliminated the taxes on short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns, suppressors, and “any other weapons,” the accompanying registration and approval requirements lost their constitutional protection under Congress’s taxing power.
The NFA, enacted in 1934, was designed as a taxing measure targeting so-called “gangster weapons.” It imposed a $200 tax (equivalent to roughly $5,000 today) on the making or transfer of suppressors and certain firearms and created a detailed regulatory scheme—including applications, fingerprints, photographs, local law-enforcement notification, and registration in a national database—to theoretically aid tax collection and enforcement.
The Supreme Court upheld the NFA as a valid exercise of the taxing power in Sonzinsky v. United States (1937), saying that the statute did produce revenue.
The NRA’s case, Jensen v. ATF, was soon brought with the American Suppressor Association, Second Amendment Foundation, and Firearms Policy Coalition, with the plaintiffs Texas State Rifle Association, FPC Action Foundation, Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, Hot Shots Custom LLC, and individuals John Jensen, Jeremy Neusch, and David Smith. The Jensen case was ultimately consolidated with Silencer Shop Foundation v. ATF.
Judge Hendrix agreed with the plaintiffs on the enumerated-powers argument. A tax, he explained, must produce at least some revenue. With the relevant taxes set at zero, “there is simply no revenue to be had,” said the judge.
The court granted a permanent injunction prohibiting the ATF, Department of Justice, and related officials from enforcing the challenged provisions against the plaintiffs, their agencies, political subdivisions, members, and current and future customers. Consistent with the Supreme Court’s 2025 decision in Trump v. CASA, Inc., the injunction is not universal or nationwide; it is limited to the parties before the court.
For nearly 90 years, the NFA’s registration regime rested on its status as a tax measure. By removing the tax while leaving the regulatory framework intact, Congress removed the constitutional scaffolding that had supported those requirements. The decision does not apply to the NFA entirely—machineguns and destructive devices remain fully regulated under the original taxing scheme—but it substantially curtails federal registration mandates for the now-untaxed categories as applied to the prevailing plaintiffs.
The Court stayed the effect of the final judgment for seven days to allow the government an opportunity to seek relief from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, if it so desires. Whether the government will appeal remains to be seen. In the meantime, the ruling underscores a core principle of constitutional structure: Congress must operate within its enumerated powers, and certain regulatory schemes that once rested on the taxing power may not survive once the tax itself disappears.
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