Key Takeaways
- Firearms Policy Coalition filed a brief in Roberts v. ATF challenging the National Firearms Act (NFA).
- The plaintiffs argue the NFA is unconstitutional since Congress zeroed out taxes on certain firearms, claiming the registration scheme lacks a valid tax basis.
- The DOJ defends the NFA by linking it to a different tax but the plaintiffs counter that it’s a misinterpretation.
- The brief emphasizes that suppressors and short-barreled rifles are common arms, arguing the government cannot force registration without historical precedent.
- FPC President Brandon Combs describes the NFA as an outdated and authoritarian law lacking constitutional grounding.
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
COVINGTON, KY — Firearms Policy Coalition is pushing a federal judge to gut the heart of the National Firearms Act, and on June 24 the group filed the brief that could decide the case.
The filing is a reply brief in Roberts v. ATF, an FPC-backed lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky. It answers the Trump Justice Department’s defense of the NFA and asks the court to rule for the plaintiffs on summary judgment, which means a decision on the law without a full trial.
The plaintiffs include T.J. Roberts, Zachary Cockrell, Meridian Ordnance, Buckeye Firearms Association, the Center for Human Liberty, Jews for the Preservation of Firearm Ownership, and the American Suppressor Association Foundation. They are represented by David Thompson, Peter Patterson, and Nicholas Varone of Cooper & Kirk.
The core argument is clean. Congress built the NFA in 1934 on its power to tax. When the One Big Beautiful Bill Act zeroed out the making and transfer taxes on suppressors, short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns, and “any other weapons” on January 1, the tax those registration rules were built to collect stopped existing. With no tax left, FPC’s brief argues the registration scheme is “unmoored from any congressionally imposed tax” and cannot stand.
The DOJ’s main answer is that the registration paperwork actually props up a different tax, the annual special occupational tax that dealers and manufacturers pay. The plaintiffs call that a tortured reading of the statute. The firearm registration rules were written to collect the making and transfer taxes, they argue, while a separate business registration covers the dealer tax. Under the government’s logic, FPC warns, Congress could tax bakeries and then require every person who bakes bread at home to register with the federal government.
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The government also claims the Commerce Clause independently saves the law. The brief pushes back hard, saying Congress wrote the NFA solely as a tax and that the registry does not regulate any interstate market the way federal drug or wheat controls did in the cases the DOJ leans on.
Then there is the Second Amendment. The plaintiffs argue suppressors and short-barreled rifles are plainly “arms” in common use today, pointing to more than 6.4 million registered suppressors and over 1.1 million registered short-barreled rifles on ATF’s own books. They say the government cannot show any historical tradition of forcing Americans to register protected arms, and that the NFA is a registration regime, not the kind of shall-issue licensing the Supreme Court left room for in Bruen.
The brief lands one sharp point against the DOJ. The same government calling suppressors dangerous in Kentucky is suing in Washington, D.C. to strike down that city’s suppressor ban as a Second Amendment violation.
FPC President Brandon Combs called the NFA “a relic of a darker era and an authoritarian scheme without a constitutional foundation.”
The plaintiffs have asked for oral argument. I’ll be tracking the court’s ruling and will report it as soon as it lands.
