Court’s Landmark National Firearms Act Ruling Affirms AFPI Research

WASHINGTON, D.C.—The America First Policy Institute (AFPI) welcomes the historic ruling in Jensen v. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which is now in effect after the Department of Justice declined to appeal. The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas held that key provisions of the National Firearms Act (NFA) can no longer be enforced after Congress eliminated the transfer tax on suppressors, short-barreled rifles, and short-barreled shotguns. For the first time in 92 years, law-abiding Americans can now purchase suppressors without having to go through the NFA transfer process.

The ruling comes after AFPI published its latest research report, Threat to American Freedom: How the National Firearms Act Taxed and Tracked Everyday Americans, which examines how the NFA has used taxation and registration requirements for nearly a century to infringe upon Americans constitutionally protected Second Amendment rights. As the court observed in its opinion, “In 1934, Congress invoked its taxing power to enact the National Firearms Act — a scheme to constrict the market for certain classes of firearms.” Now that the injunction is in effect, this landmark decision marks an important step toward restoring those rights and reinforces AFPI’s call to systematically dismantle the unconstitutional provisions of the NFA.

“For more than 90 years, the NFA has been used to push broad and unconstitutional restrictions on law-abiding citizens rather than confronting the actual drivers of violent crime,” said Knox Williams, senior fellow for American Justice at AFPI. “This ruling recognizes that once Congress eliminated the tax that served as the legal foundation for these restrictions, the government's justification for enforcing them was fundamentally undermined. This decision is an important step toward restoring the full protections of the Second Amendment and advances the broader effort to dismantle the unconstitutional framework created by the NFA.”

To read AFPI’s full NFA report, click here.