Four leading gun rights organizations this week filed a second joint federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the National Firearms Act.

The groups – the American Suppressor Association, Firearms Policy Coalition, National Rifle Association, and Second Amendment Foundation – filed Jensen v. ATF on Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas.

As such, it follows in the wake of Brown v. ATF, which was filed by the same groups in a Missouri federal court in August. 
 

Much like Brown, Jensen challenges the Depression-era NFA on two fronts: that Congress exceeded its mandate in passing it in the first place, and that the Act violates the right to keep and bear arms as protected under the Second Amendment of the Constitution.

The scheme, passed in 1934, imposed up to a $200 tax on the manufacture and transfer of certain types of firearms. The Supreme Court, in 1937, upheld the tax as constitutional under Congress’s taxing authority.

The thing is, with the tax being zeroed out on suppressors and short-barreled firearms under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the plaintiffs argue that the registration requirements and restrictions in the NFA, without Congress’s taxing authority, are now unconstitutional.

"This is the best opportunity in a generation to eliminate major portions of the NFA since its inception nearly a century ago,” SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb told Guns.com. "The government is going to be hard-pressed to justify the law as a tax without a tax, and the type of regulation of Second Amendment-protected arms seen in the NFA is without any historical support. We’re hopeful its days are numbered."

The NFA is also under scrutiny in several other cases, while 15 states, along with numerous members of the firearm and suppressor industry, have signed on in support of NFA reform in Silencer Shop Foundation et al. v. ATF.