While Congress pulled its punch on scrapping the NFA earlier this year, some lawmakers on Capitol Hill are calling on the Attorney General to write off the tax scheme altogether.
U.S. Rep. Andrew Clyde, a Georgia FFL holder and Republican Congressman, has joined with 30 other House GOP members to urge U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to give the National Firearms Act of 1934 short shrift and treat it as if its days are numbered. Fundamentally, Clyde points out that the House majority supported removing suppressors and short-barreled firearms from the NFA, while the Senate only zeroed out the tax on those items.
From the letter:
As Members of Congress who supported the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and participated in the
legislative process surrounding Section 70436 of that Act, we wish to reaffirm that it was our
intent, in enacting Section 70436, to repeal the transfer and registration requirements under the
National Firearms Act by eliminating the associated excise taxes for certain firearms. It remains
our clear intent that these transfer and registration requirements shall no longer apply to firearms
now subject to a $0 tax, for the reasons outlined above.
Accordingly, we urge the Department of Justice to adopt the position of the drafters of this
provision: that the transfer and registration requirements cannot stand without the corresponding
excise tax. We further urge the Department to assert this position in all litigation concerning this
specific section of the OBBBA. President Trump has been the most pro-Second Amendment
President in our nation's history, and the Department of Justice has an opportunity to uphold his
strong record of protecting gun owners from burdensome regulations.
The call from the Clyde group was echoed by pro-Second Amendment organizations such as Gun Owners of America.
Meanwhile, the Firearms Policy Coalition and other groups last week filed a motion for summary judgment in Jensen v. ATF, a federal case aimed at the portions of the NFA affected by the OBBB. The motion asks the court to strike down and permanently enjoin enforcement of the challenged provisions of the NFA.
