‘Enjoined as Unconstitutional’: How Tax Cut Bill Unraveled 92-Year-Old Gun Control Provision

A federal court struck down parts of a 92-year-old gun control law tied to a $200 tax on suppressors and certain firearms.

The 1934 National Firearms Act imposed a $200 tax and required registration and approval for suppressors, short-barreled rifles, and short-barreled shotguns. U.S. District Judge James Hendrix, of the Northern District of Texas, on Wednesday ruled that the provision violates the Constitution’s Commerce Clause.

President Donald Trump’s Justice Department and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives defended the law in the case of Silencer Shop Foundation v. ATF.

However, Hendrix, a Trump appointee, argued in his opinion that the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” signed into law last year by the president, effectively nullified the 1934 tax. Once Congress eliminated the tax on making and transferring sound suppressors and short-barreled firearms, the constitutional foundation for those old regulatory provisions disappeared, he said.

“In 2025, Congress eliminated the NFA’s transfer and making taxes for four categories of firearms: short-barreled shotguns, short-barreled rifles, silencers, and a final, defined group of miscellaneous firearms,” wrote Hendrix.

“Because today’s NFA does not generate any revenue from untaxed firearms, its regulatory provisions cannot be upheld under the taxing power,” Hendrix added. “And there is no sign in the NFA’s text, structure, or statutory history that Congress invoked any other power in crafting the NFA provisions at issue. Thus, the regulatory provisions must be enjoined as unconstitutional because they exceed Congress’s enumerated powers.”

Days after Trump signed the 2025 bill, the Daily Signal reported on what Second Amendment advocates dubbed the “One Big Beautiful Lawsuit,” which challenged the tax.

The National Rifle Association was involved in the lawsuit.

“Our successful effort to eliminate the $200 NFA tax created the opening for our world-class attorneys to secure this historic federal court ruling that the NFA is unconstitutional,” John Commerford, executive director of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action, said in a public statement.

The National Firearms Act was enacted during the Prohibition era in response to organized crime and gang violence. The law required registration with the Internal Revenue Service as part of paying the tax. Then-Attorney General Homer Cummings said the proposal likely could be upheld in courts, but only as a tax. In the 1937 case Sonzinsky v. United States, the Supreme Court upheld the law as a permissible exercise of Congress’ taxing power.

An ATF spokesperson did not respond to an inquiry for this story by publication time.

The federal government argued that the remaining regulations were justified under the Constitution’s Commerce Clause and the Necessary and Proper Clause. The government also argued that Congress enacted the 1934 provisions pursuant to the law’s taxing authority.

The court determined that Congress enacted the NFA in 1934 under its taxing power, and that its requirements were constitutionally permissible only because they aided the collection of NFA taxes.