A lawsuit filed in a federal court on Wednesday argues that because the federal excise tax on suppressors and short-barreled firearms is gone, the registration regime can no longer be retained. 

The challenge, Roberts v. ATF, was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky this week and is the third such broadside contesting the National Firearms Act of 1934. 

The case was brought by the American Suppressor Association Foundation, the Buckeye Firearms Association, the Center for Human Liberty, Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, Meridian Ordnance-- a local firearms dealer-- and two individuals: T.J. Roberts and Zachary Cockrell. It is supported by the  Firearms Policy Coalition and the Second Amendment Foundation. 
 

The complaint argues that the 1937 Supreme Court case (Sonzinsky v. United States, 300 U.S. 506) held that the NFA was at its core a revenue-generating measure with its registration requirements as simply the means to verify that the tax was paid. Further, as suppressors and short-barreled firearms were included in the NFA as bearable arms, they are protected by the Second Amendment. With the tax on suppressors and short barreled firearms zeroed out, there should be no reason to keep the red tape. 

"The Second Amendment is supposed to be a guarantee – not a privilege subject to bureaucratic approval,” said Knox Williams, President of the ASA Foundation. "However, for decades, the National Firearms Act has imposed burdensome and unconstitutional federal restrictions on law-abiding Americans. Now that the $200 NFA excise tax has been eliminated, the archaic NFA registration regime can no longer be justified. The ASA Foundation will continue to fight until this unconstitutional registration scheme is defeated once and for all."

Roberts joins Brown v. ATF  and Jensen v. ATF which were also filed on similar lines but in different federal circuits late last year.