New Lawsuit Challenges Constitutionality Of National Firearms Act of 1934

The push to protect Second Amendment rights continues, even as the Trump Administration works to ensure more freedom for gun owners. Several gun advocacy groups, including the National Rifle Association (NRA), have filed a new lawsuit to challenge the constitutionality of the National Firearms Act of 1934.

Thanks to the Big, Beautiful Bill, the act's $200 stamp tax on short-barreled rifles, shotguns, any firearm classified as 'other, or silencers, has been eliminated. But there is still a loose end. Under the act, the firearms are still required to be registered and are therefore still subject to regulations to enforce the tax. Which, again, is now extinct.

Conservative attorney Michele Maples says this makes the act unconstitutional.

"That is what they are spearheading...getting that registration requirement eliminated, now that the tax has been eliminated through Trump's Big, Beautiful Bill," she says.

The lawsuit argues that the regulation of such things violates the Second Amendment. Which checks out on the logic scale. The act no longer holds any power over regulations without that tax.

The case has been filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri. The case makes sense, and should hold up, but never count your chickens before they hatch.

"The only way I can see a judge saying no to this is if they go back to a decision from 2008...which says firearms are one of those things that can have limitations and restrictions to them," says Maples. "Given the nature of Missouri and its political demographic...we might have a judge that says this is unconstitutional."

She adds it is another right step in the direction of freedom for gun owners. The tax on the weapons will be eliminated on January 1st, 2026.