With the political winds blowing in its favor, the GOA began drafting language some time last year to remove suppressors and short-barreled long guns from the NFA. After sharing the proposal with a few industry leaders, they worked with sympathetic Republican lawmakers to wedge it into the budget reconciliation bill – Andrew Clyde on the House side, and Roger Marshall, Mike Crapo and Steve Daines in the Senate.
“We had the language and we had key members of Congress to introduce it,” [Luis] Valdes, the GOA spokesman, said. “We’ve been looking at challenging the NFA since GOA first came into existence 50 years ago. The NFA is clearly unconstitutional.”
The move came at a hospitable time, with Trump urging Congress to use the budget reconciliation process to pass his “big, beautiful” bill, spurring a flurry of hasty lawmaking.
Still, the NFA proposal touched off weeks of high-stakes wrangling. The version passed by the House only removed the tax on suppressors – an easy sell to moderate Republicans, but which the GOA viewed as far too watered-down. The Senate version included a full repeal of silencers and short-barreled long guns from the NFA, only for the Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, to find that the proposal violated the “Byrd rule” that bars extraneous measures from consideration during budget reconciliation. The GOA responded with a national alert calling to “fire the anti-gun parliamentarian now!”
The final version of the sweeping budget bill left intact the NFA’s registration requirements, which include some extra paperwork and fingerprint submission, but dropped the tax on suppressors, short-barreled rifles and short-barreled shotguns to $0. The changes left machine gun restrictions untouched.
It was a remarkably swift reversal of key provisions of one of America’s bedrock gun laws. But instead of declaring victory, when Trump signed the budget bill into law on 4 July, the GOA immediately filed what it called a “big, beautiful lawsuit” seeking to overturn the NFA restrictions on suppressors and short-barreled long guns entirely.
Within a month, 15 Republican-led states had joined as plaintiffs. On 1 August, the Firearms Policy Coalition, another gun rights group, filed a similar lawsuit, joined by the NRA. What had seemed like an outlandish position only a few months earlier was suddenly becoming the conservative political consensus.
— Roque Planas in Inside the gun absolutists’ bold plot to repeal one of America’s strongest firearms laws
Despite its name, the NFA is not a firearms law. It was established as and is a tax law.
I absolutely expect the courts to pull some mealy-mouthed, fence-sitting, semantic-gaming, status quo saving bullshit and leave it all intact.
I don’t have confidence in them, but if it’s ever going to be done, now is the time. It’s possible.
Best to not be too optimistic this day and time.
Both Shire-man and Dude made valid comments.
The time is right; but the courts tend to swing left.
BREAKING NOW: Court ORDERS Gun Controllers To PAY A MILLION DOLLARS For Their Unconstitutional Laws. (NY)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0r8OW4-gT6U
If an entity is going to restrict a person’s ability to protect themselves, then that entity, whatever the entity, should take and accept the physical and fiscal responsibility for any damages incurred during a visit in said restricted, i.e., “gun free zone” area. Plus the entity should be held accountable if they fail to accept the responsibility for the safety of those entering those area(s).
Any person, place or thing that restricts or prohibits the exercise of an inalienable right should be liable for all damages. And this should apply to schools, churches, parades et al. However, these days entities are quick to restrict but slow to accept liability, if they accept any liability at all.
A British newspaper whining about things that don’t affect it. Apparently we didn’t make it clear enough during the several wars we won against England and then twice when we had to bail them out that we don’t care what the Crown’s subjects think. SBRs and SBSs are harder to conceal than handguns and less powerful and harder to shoot than full-length long guns. Suppressors are freely available in Europe and are considered good manners to use while shooting. Machine guns, while cool and should absolutely be legal, are of limited practical use.
Plus machine guns are very expensive to operate, talk about turning money into noise!